Third meeting: Suomi vs 한국어

On Sunday, March 15th, we had our third EOTO meeting. This time we met in cafe Europa and held a class there in a cozy atmosphere.

First of all we repeated the material from the first meeting – ordering food in a restaurant. Then I was teaching Yoon Soo some words in Finnish, phrases for asking the way, how to ask Do you speak English?, How are you doing?. Also we looked at the Illatiivi endings. It was quite difficult to explain them on few examples, so probably we will come back to this topic in future.

After studying Finnish we came back to Korean. We talked about how to get to some place and to explain directions.I learned how to express hesitation, for example, how to say Should I go or not? Should I eat or not? It was interesting, because in Korean instead of “or not” they use a verb.

Later Yoon Soo taught me how to say about relationship between people. Koreans usually ask a pair of people in which relationship are they, so now I can say – we are in friend, love, or work relationship. Also we were talking about formal and informal Korean languages and issues connected with misunderstandings and confusing situations, when someone chooses wrong language style in a particular situation.

At the end Yoon Soo helped me to practice pronunciation. In Korean there are 3 types of “O” sound, they are different (combination of “o” and “u” sounds, or clear “o”). But some times in the flow of speech it is difficult for me to distinguish the right character for the sound, so I practiced this a bit.
For the next meeting we thought about cooking together, but not sure yet, maybe
combining of cooking, eating and watching movies. Also our friends Inga and Hyun Ssong, who are EOTO pair too(English&Korean) proposed to held one meeting together. We will plan the next meeting asap!