Korean Slangs!

Recently koreanclass101.com posted a lesson on Korean slangs. Although slangs may not be part of the ‘official’ language, they are so frequently used in our daily lives. In my opinion, one can’t say that he or she has fully mastered a language without knowing the commonly used slangs in that country. 😀

After listening to podcast, I got so interested that I started to research on more slangs commonly used in Korea 😀 Below are some of my new findings.

1. OTL: suffer a shock, hit 深受打击

I kept seeing this phrase in my friend’s blog and I didn’t bother much about it until I came upon it again yesterday . Don’t be fooled by its seemingly English appearance, it is NOT an acronym. Rather, it’s something like a symbolic image.

O –> represents the head

T–> represents your arms

L: represents kneeling on the floor

So.. it supposedly represents how people look like when they are crumpled to the floor after they suffered a shock. hmmm do you see any resemblence? -tilts head and stare-

Example sentences:

이번 시험 망처서 완전 OTL이다!

or you could simply add OTL to the end of the sentence.

아..  오늘 시간 없어서 숙제를 다 못했어! OTL ㅠㅠ

2. 쏘다: to treat, it’s my treat

My korean penpal taught me this one. The original meaning of 쏘다 means ‘to shoot’. I don’t know how the meaning has evolved, but youngsters now use it to mean ‘it’s my treat’.

Example sentences

오늘은 내가 쏜다!

3. 단무지: naive, no brain, crazy/hyper

I’m sure you have come across this phrase at least a few times if you watched enough Korean dramas. It is used frequently in Pure 19 (열아홉 순정) to describe Park Yun Jeong. ^^

단무지 originally means a radish used as an ingredient in making 김밥 (korean sushi). In this case, it is actually an acronym for ‘단순,식 지랄’, which corresponds to English’s ‘naive, ignorant,crazy’. It is a word used to insult people (:

4. 페프: Best Friend

Again, another short form derived from 페스트 프랜드. Also known as ‘BF’.

(the interesting thing is that in Singapore, ‘BF’ is the short form of Boy Friend – 남자 친구. Once I was chatting on msn with a korean friend. I was telling him that I met my good friend today and he said:

‘아.. BF를 만났어요?’

haha that cause a little misunderstanding! ^^

——-

okay it’s 8am right now and I wrote this post straight after I got out of bed. So now I’m gonna have breakfast.

또 만나요!!