Learn Korean Vocab with Hot Korean Women: #3

This article on 양미라/Yang Mi-ra was under the one on 김지영 I looked at yesterday. As I spent too much time yesterday blogging that rather than studying Korean with it per se, I’ll get straight into things today and see if I can keep what would be half an hour’s Korean study into less than an hour writing this post (the things I do for you guys). So, any newcomers to the site who visited because they want to learn Korean, please read that and especially this post first before you continue. With that out of the way, here goes:

The words I don’t know the meanings of in this article are, in the order they appear, are 안방, 복귀, 괴담, 자매, 억울하다, 목숨 and 맴도 (which my wife says actually means 맴돌다, but which is actually written as 매암돌다). Before the I get the dictionary out though, let me show you what I mean when I say that knowing Korean’s Chinese character/hanja roots (and native roots) helps you to guess the meanings of unknown Korean words:

• The “안” in 안방 means “inside,” and the “방” means “room,” so I guess that 안방 means inner room or something.
• The “복” in 복귀 can mean “clothes,” but that would be strange in this situation, and so it probably means “return” or “redo” instead.
• As for the rest, the “담” in 괴담 might be the same “담” as the one in “부담,” which means load or burden…and the ”매” in 자매 mightbe the same as one of the 매s in “성매매,” which means “sex buying selling”…but I doubt it in either case.
• Finally, I know the “숨” in 목숨 is the native Korean root for “breath”…but 목숨? Tree breath? Time to get the dictionary out.

• 안방 does mean “inner room.” Yay! Although in this case it would mean more “coming back inside the public eye.”
• 복귀하다 means make a return or comeback, so the second meaning of 복 was correct. Rather confusedly, the “귀” in that also means “return,” leaving me with “복=recover, restore, return” (page 99) + “귀=return” page 34 =…make a comeback? That doesn’t exactly help, so I don’t think I’ll bother learning 귀.
• 괴담 means a ghost story, and the 담 in it is the 담 on page 50 meaning “converse” or “saying.” I learned that one ages ago and should have remembered it, damnit, so to remind myself I’ll make that one of the hanja that I (re)learn today. Other words with it in them are:  회담/talk or meeting, 지담/serious talk, 상담/consultation, 농담/joke, and 속담/proverb. And here’s the character itself below. The part on the left is blue because a) for some reason, in that link they don’t have a simple fully black one for me to save(!) and b) fortuitously, the blue part is one the few characters that actually looks like what it’s supposed to represent, in this case a mouth with sounds coming out of it, and it’s always nice to be able to make some sense of the alien language hanja is. Many characters to do with language have that blue part in them.

• 자매 means sister. Both 자 and 매 have hanja roots, but as neither are important enough to be in my hanja dictionary I won’t bother learning them.
• According to my electronic dictionary 억울하다 means “feel mortified” or “chagrined,” but the ”mistreated” and ”falsely accused” that my book dictionary says sounds more accurate. 억 and 울 are both in my vocab book, but the former doesn’t seem too useful to me. But I already know “우울증” means depression, so now 울 on page 174 meaning “depressed; grow thick” makes sense to me. Some other words with it are 우울하다/feel depressed, 침울하다/be dismal, be gloomy, 울적하다/feel empty and lonesome, and 울화/pent-up anger. Here’s the character (don’t know what the deal with the blue is in this case sorry):

• 목숨 means the breath of life.
• 맴돌다 means turn oneself around, whirl around…easy once you know there’s a “돌다” in it.

Okay, so what does the article say then?

Yang Mi-ra Makes a Comeback

The talent Yang Mi-ra (26) is going to make a comeback through appearing in the horror movie “City Ghost Story Deja-vu, Season 2″ produced by the cable TV channel SuperAction (James: yes, that’s really the name of the movie).

On the 10th of November, Yang Mi-ra appeared in the seventh episode of the series “Two sisters” that screens at midnight, playing the role of of a woman who is angry at her premature death, and who comes back as a ghost to stay with and constantly protect her younger sister.

Jolly good. Before I translated that I didn’t know who Yang Mi-ra was, so I did some investigating. Based on what I’m learned, I’m very very happy she’s making a comeback, and if I was her and had a body like this, I’d be at bit angry at dying at the height of my youth and beauty too (with thanks, again, to About Joel):

I’d also want to protect her (real) younger sister 양은지 on the left here too, or her fellow ZINIS band members for that matter. If I had to die prematurely, I can think of no better role in the afterlife than constantly hanging around them all day.

If you’re interested, that post would indeed have taken just over an hour if my daughter hadn’t come in constantly demanding I read books to her…about 15 in all. In other news, I’m not quite sure what happened to the “light blogging” I said I’d be doing either. Maybe my job teaching 재수 students finishing two days ago (their big 수능시험 is tomorrow), leaving me with…ahem…a whole 2 hours of work a week until January has something to do with it?

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