Monday, June 30, 2008

Let's have lunch


I have listened to the 3rd half-hour Pimsleur lesson four times, and have some confidence in my ability to explain how little Korean I know. I like the way it keeps reminding you of past vocab, but I'm having trouble with the differences between sources. The current lesson says that a common way to greet someone is to say: "Have you had lunch?" (chom-shim tu-sha-seyo), to which one responds, "Yes, thank you" (Ne, kam-sa-hameeda). In Korean in Plain English, which has discursive entries, they get lunch right enough (chome-sheem), but don't mention the supposedly-common greeting part, and translate "Let's have lunch" as chomshim mogupshida.

Berlitz has "Do you speak English?" as yong-o haseyo, but Pimsleur has yong-o-du ha sha-sui-su-niga. Not to be left out, Plain English has it as yongo-rul hal-jul ashim-nikka. Now, I will grant those last two may be close to the same thing.
Shuh-lay je-man, but can we have some consistency here?

1 comment:

Tanner Brown said...

Damn, Tuttle, I got the language blues too. Pimsleur, my Chinese experience has taught me, can be rather formal at times. It taught me that shang chuang was 'to go to sleep', but once I got to China I realized that people (especially youth) only said that to mean 'to go to bed with someone'. You'll be living the dream soon, kid, sauntering down the side-streets of Seoul, asking oh so rhetorically, "You eaten?"