I thought some of the readers might be interested in these Korean proverbs from the past. Most of us are aware of — Even monkeys fall from trees — but were you aware of these?
“The Blind man stole his own hen and ate it.”
“Even the hedgehog says her young are smooth.”
“Where there are no tigers, wild cats will be very self-important.”
“A finger prick will demand attention, though the worms be eating the heart unknown.”
“What looked like blossoms on the dead tree turned out to be only the white mold of decay.”
“The flower that blooms in the morning is withered by noon.”
“Never beg from a man who has once been a beggar himself.”
(Thanks Hamel for the copy of the book)
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Was the tigers/wild-cats a reference to Canadians in Korea? jinjja…
Seriously, though, can we get a copy of the original Korean phrases so as to impress our hosts?
The curses are also very funny. One of my favorites is:
호랭이 나 물어 갈넘
“May a tiger grab you and haul you off to the mountains”
If one is *really* ticked off, they might add to that and say
“May a tiger grab you, chew on you, AND haul you off to the mountains”.
I’ve always liked the following proverb:
Hot piss on a frozen foot may give one some temporary relief, but when that piss freezes, it will be even worse than before.
The “언” in 언발 comes from 얼다, which means to freeze.
거지짓도 쪽박없어서 못할 놈 has always been my grandma’s favorite.
호*랑*이
Is this a Korean proverb? Regardless, it’s extremely popular among Koreans, and among the best I’ve heard so far.
기쁨은 나누면 두배고, 슬픔은 나누면 반이 된다.
Another one of my favorites
작작 먹고 가는 똥 누어라
hah!
here are some really common ones:
가는 말이 고와야 오는 말도 곱다
작은 고추가 맵다
누워서 침밷기
낮말은 새가 듣고 밤말은 쥐가 듣는다
고래 싸움에 새우등 터진다
미운 놈 떡 하나 더 준다
애 보는 앞에선 찬 물도 못마신다
& one for dda:
똥 묻은 개가 겨 묻은 개 나무란다
Excellent post.
@2
호랑이 나 물어 갈놈
“The flower that blooms in the morning is withered by noon.”
Brilliant proverb. It applies to so many of the popular girls in high school.
interestingly enough, “saru mo ki kara ochiru” (even monkeys fall from trees) is also an extremely famous proverb in Japan.
yuna, I love you.
Most of these proverbs are also can be found from many countries with slight degree of difference.
How about this, this described best for NK and China.
손바닥으로 하늘을 가리려한다
lol
more,
소 잃고 외양간 고친다.
빈 수레가 요란하다.
남의 떡이 더 커 보인다.
등잔 밑이 어둡다.
호랑이도 제 말하면 온다.
호랑이는 죽으면 가죽을 남기고, 사람은 죽으면 이름을 남긴다.
Yes, that is standard Korean “dda” but I was quoting from a source that was using “chelado satori”, which I am instructed to say uses that ㅐ sound instead of ㅏ.
I did make a typo on “nom”. Man, this is so challenging without the typos even! It should be:
호랭이 나 물어 갈놈
R. Elgin (#15),
And what does the “나” mean in “chelado satori,” which I assume means 전라도 사투리?
호랭이*나* 물어갈 놈
띄어쓰기 – that’s all gbevers. someone that *only* or *even* a tiger would snatch away in its mouth.
I am of the school that we should be encouraging when teaching a language.. 띄어^쓰기 is an additional curse that comes with the intricate language that is Korean, along with 존대말
아버지가방에들어가셨다 -father went into a bag or
someone went into father’s bag
아버지가 방에 들어가셨다 – father went into a room
Thankyouyuna. (#17)
So it is saying, “A guy who should be carried off by a tiger or something” (호랑이나 물어갈 놈).
I’m of the school that you are not helping a person learn a language by ignoring his mistakes, especially his or her written mistakes. That sentence sat there for more than a day without anyone bothering to correct it. I guess people were trying to be encouraging by not teaching anything.
띄어쓰기 is an important part of written Korean, whether you like it or not. Actually, I think it would be a curse if Koreans did not use it.
One of the things that used to bother me about my Korean language teachers was that they would often ignore my mistakes. I would make a sentence and wait for feedback, but would hardly ever get any. I knew something was wrong with my sentence, but did not know exactly what it was and would wait for the teacher to correct me, but she or he rarely did. My Korean wife was the same way. I asked her to correct me whenever I made mistakes, but she never did, and it used to drive me crazy.
I, on the other hand, always corrected my Korean wife’s mistakes in English, which caused her to become quiet fluent. Her not correcting my mistakes made me wonder if she really gave a shit if I learned the language or not, even though she knew the language was important to me and the career I was hoping to pursue. My wife’s attitude seemed to be that it was my problem, not hers. She felt that helping me with my Korean was not part of the job she signed up for when she married me. In fact, she would get angry when I would ask her questions about the Korean language when I was doing translation work.
I do not think it was only my experience. I have noticed that other Korean wives also seem to be fairly indifferent to their foreign husbands’ learning the Korean language beyond just the rudimentary greetings. They may think that by keeping their husband’s ignorant, it gives them more control.
There may be some truth in that, if the wife feels insecure and I agree with you about teachers letting one slide in Korean, which does not help me either.
One other thing I noticed is if I try to use satori, Koreans usually do not understand it, coming from me, no matter how I practice the accent!
Well, maybe the one foreign guy I taught Korean was different from all you guys. He used to call me a bad teacher when I tried to correct him with his Korean usage, he used to say the language itself is flawed(!!) and told me not to be too exact because it’s discouraging.
I taught Korean *to*.
I hate doing this, I hate having to proofread my own comments and add stupid things that I left out.
gbevers, you’re alright. It’s just annoying with dda who keep correcting people *wrong*. It’s not even the fact that neither Korean nor English is his native language. What bothers me is he’s wrong more than half the time – above when he said 호랑이 for 호랭이 ! We knew it was 사투리.
There you go:
하나는 알고 둘은 모른다.
The most apt saying yet.
who KEEPS
Read this one a long while back:
화산이었던 산은 지금더 가끔 용기가 난다.
“A mountain that was once a volcano still smokes from time to time.” dunno if i got the grammar right.
think it’s 지금도…heh
화산이었던 산은 지금도 가끔 용기가 난다
I’d never heard of that one till now! Impressive..
but maybe you meant 연기(smoke) not 용기(courage)
yeah…you’re right. My spelling in Korean is terrible
Yuna wrote (#20):
I do not understand why he thought Korean was “flawed.” I do not know of any flaws in Korean. Maybe he just did not know enough of the language to realize how great a language it is.
When correcting “spoken Korean,” I think one should probably focus on repeated mistakes since correcting every mistake would probably impede conversation and flood the student with more information than he could absorb. It also depends on how many mistakes the student is making. If the student is making only occassional mistakes, then you could correct them as he makes them or make notes and correct them later.
In Korea back in the 1960s they used to sell chocolate bars with proverbs in them. I won’t say I bought the candy for the proverbs but I did enjoy them. The Korean version of the fortune cookie.
One of my favorites was: even a rathole sees a sunny day.
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