[Korean Culture & Language] Snow, Eyes, Chestnut, Night

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Do you like snowy weather? "A fresh snowfall has an almost miraculous capacity to calm us down — mind, body, and spirit," according to the Huffington Post.

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In Korean, snow is called ‘눈(noon)’. 

If you want to say ‘It’s snowing outside,” you say “밖에 눈온다!” However, saying ‘눈’ with a shorter vowel sound can be confusing for the listeners because ‘눈’ also means an ‘eye’. If someone asked what you were making with playdough, you should say ‘눈’ with a longer vowel sound to mean that you’re making a ‘눈(snowball)’ instead of an ‘눈(eyeball)’. 


Photo by Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Same for ‘밤’. 

‘밤’ with a longer vowel sound means chestnut, while 밤 with a shorter vowel sound means night. Some people say ‘‘군밤 (Roasted chestnut)’ as a joke to say ‘good night’ since they sound so similar to each other. Here, ‘군’ can be used here because it sounds similar to ‘굳(good)’ 


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Photo by Trollinho on Unsplash

‘벌’ can also refer to both ‘punishment’ and ‘bee’.

‘벌’ means ‘bee’ with a longer vowel sound, whereas ‘벌’ with a shorter vowel sound means ‘punishment’. A teacher saying “You are going to get the 벌” with a longer vowel sound would confuse a student. 


Try reading the following sentence with the proper vowel lengths for each word: ‘눈(snow)이 많이 오는 어느 밤(night), 나와 내 동생은 하루종일 게임을 해서 부모님께 벌(punishment)을 받았다 (My brother and I got punished by our parents one snowy night because we played games all day without finishing out schoolwork).

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