Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) always have such relevant, funny and down-to-earth podcasts, videos and blogposts to help you learn Korean. This is one of my favourite lessons from them because of the popularity of these Korean exclamations between both Koreans and waygookins (foreigners) and because I love how slang-seeming they are. Korean can be daunting because of how different it is from English and because of the flatter, less ‘sing-song’ intonation that needs to be used while attempting speech. This means that, to me at least, exclamatory words stick out and are more amusing to learn and interject into conversation.
Particular words of the moment seem to be 헐 [heol] used instead of ‘what the…’, but which I like to use as ‘fail‘, 아싸 [a-ssa] meaning ‘yesssssss’ and 진짜요? [chin-cha-yo?] because, duh!, it’s what this website is called (it means ‘for real?’ or ‘really?’, by the way).
What are your favourite Korean words?
Image: Screenshot from the TTMIK video.
