Category Archives: 재밌는 한국어 (korean Terms)

There’s so much more to word meaning than what is presented in the dictionaries. This is especially relevant to words that depict feelings / emotions or other culturally distinct words.

For example, the Korean-English dictionary defines 창피하다 and 당황스럽다as both meaning ‘embarrassment’. However, the single English term does not encompass all the nuances. From a reading that I came across, 창피하다 depicts the feeling that result from the action and 당황스럽다 has to do with the feeling of worrying about the consequences as a result of the action.

In the reading, the author gives the example of using 창피하다 when a child wet his pants and 당황스럽다 when the child worry on how someone may have seen his act.

This kind of fine distinction is difficult to grasp when one relies solely on the dictionary to learn new vocabulary. In order to acquire the differences in meaning, one should learn a new word with context, either in a sentence or from television etc.

Simply memorizing the ‘definition’ and expecting to use the word accurately will be impossible. ^^

The Korean-Korean dictionary is much better than the Korean-English one, but most of the nuances is still not captured in the definition.

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My next entry will probably be written from Korea~~~ ㅋㅋ