083 How Koreans Greet One Another (English)

Hello listeners and friends. This is the summary of episode number 83 in English.

The first segment, as always, is Korean word of the day. In this episode, we cover Nukki Hada. Originally it's used to describe a taste. We say when the food is too fatty or rich. Pizza is a good example. When pizza first started to become popular in Korea, many Koreans felt it was too 느끼하다, mainly because of the cheese. But the expression is also used for people, about the way they speak or behave. When someone says something that's too romantic and not in a good way, we call it nukihada.

To give examples, Yunice and I did three Sangwang role-playing in the Korean episode. For all three, the premise is that there are a girl and a guy, both pretty young, and he has a romantic interest in her. Example number one. The guy says, Hey, don't you feel tired today? And the girl says, No, why? And the guy says, I was asking, because lately you have been running around in my head. So that was the first example. Eunice says this kind of 느끼한 말 makes her feel 오글거리다.

And example number two. The guy says, Hey, do you have a twin sister? And the girl says, No, why? And the guy says, Then you must be the most beautiful girl in the world. Unit says this one does not make her feel Ogil Gordida because it was a fact. Example number three. The guy says, Hey, don't you smell something burning? And the girl says, No, why? And the guy says, Oh sorry, it was my heart burning up because I was sitting next to you.

Eunice says this one upsets her and she expressed it as 속이 끓는다. 속이 끝난다. This role playing makes us realize that we use this expression only for men and never for women. And it's not only used to describe the way men speak, but also the way they look at a girl. The guy's eyes can simply convey that Nukkihan energy. Imagine the eyes delivering the message of I'm really into you without any words spoken. Then you can describe this behavior as nukkihage choda puda.

느끼하게 쳐다보다 This kind of look is excessive, unnatural, awkward, and pluckiada, unpleasant, according to Eunice. 私たちの顔の顔の顔の顔を使っています So what is Nqkihan Olgur? I actually have no idea. Maybe you can do some image search in Google or Neighbor to see the examples of Nqkiyan Orgur yourself. Actually, Yunises managed to come up with one example of a typical Nkyan Urgur, and it's an old Trot singer named Nahuna. And Tro T is a music genre popular in Korea.

So this Naguna guy, he was huge in my parents' time and a true legend in the history of Korean pop music. and the way he looked at his fans during the performances, the way he smiled at him. That's a great example of the facial expression you can call dukyada. And many of his fans loved it.

Now moving on to the second segment, fun fact about Korea. Let's talk about how we Koreans greet one another. In Korea, the most pupyanjoggin and it's accompanied by a gesture. What gesture you make depends on a few things, but the most important factor is how close you are to the other person. If it's the very first encounter between the two, we usually bow the head.

But if it's two close friends greeting each other, there are quite a few options. For example, they can just hold hands, look each other in the eye, and say, Uremanya Chai Jinetso. It's been a while. Have you been doing well? Which is a common way to greet between two female friends.

A hug is also possible and today is a very common way to greet a friend. But we rarely hug as a greeting when you're young, except with a child. For example, emo an aunt or samchon, an uncle, would give a hug to their little nephew or niece if they haven't seen each other for a while. and petting the butt is also a common way to greet a child, or used to be. Today it's more controversial, and you may definitely not pet the butt of a child that you are meeting for the first time.

But I wonder if there are situations where it's acceptable, even today. I'm thinking about a very old harabaji or harmony, petting the butt of a very young child, like a three or four year old. then maybe it's okay to do so in Korean culture, although I am guessing here Speaking of petting, it can be added to a hug. In Korea, it's very common to pet the other person on the back while hugging them, which makes it a double greeting.

By the way, there's an interesting word to describe the gesture of petting on somebody's back. It's to duck, to duck. Unisana used it a few times in the Korean conversation, so listen for it. Hugging and patting. These are all for two people who are close to each other. Now, how about those who are meeting for the first time? What would be their greeting gestures? You can say head bowing and handshakes are the most common ones, but which one to use depends on a couple of factors.

For example, when you are meeting a much older person for the first time, you do not first hold out your hand for a handshake. You just bow your head. A handshake happens only when the older ones offer the hand first, and they may not. Even with a handshake, you should still bow your head. And how about two young people? Let's say they're both in their twenties and thirties. They can bow their heads or shake hands, or they may do both, because we love these double greetings.

Actually, this is less common among females. If you're talking about two women meeting for the first time, the handshake is usually skipped. Perhaps the most fascinating scenario is when a young guy meets a young woman. Here things get quite emehada. fuzzy or unclear. But I can tell you they mostly bow their heads. Occasionally the male holds out his right hand for a handshake, but he is very likely to put his left hand around his right elbow to show Kong Son Ham. Politeness.

But generally handshakes are not common between a male and a female, and they almost never hug. We just avoid making 신체적 접촉 Physical contact with someone of the other gender at the first meeting. Now, what if they already know each other? Here, let's think about an interesting example. Let's say Unice and I hang out with another Korean couple. When you say goodbye, I would give the husband or handshake or even a hug if you're really close.

But to the wife? Probably not. I'll just bow my head and say Anyon y gaseo Again, it's about avoiding unnecessary shin chejok chop chok with the other gender, even when it's not their first meeting. But there are some who just hug their friends, regardless of the gender, saying, Let's do an American style greeting. Of course, a hug is not exclusively done in the US, but I'm talking about the Korean immigrants living in the US, or those who have lived here in the past.

This last part leads to another interesting example. Being from the same university, Eunice and I have a lot of mutual friends, both males and females. And some of them actually live here in the US. With them, we often hug to say bye, even between a male and a female friend. But it's different when I visit Korea and meet our friends living there. With my male friends, we exchange hogs, but not with my female friends.

But that changes when the female friend has lived in a western country, in which case we occasionally hug.

Speaking of me visiting Korea, let's go back to the subject of greeting someone at the first meeting. Among those I meet for the first time while visiting Korea, there are, of course, females. Having lived in the US for a long time, handshake feels like the most natural form of greeting for me. So I always offer my hand to them and most of them hold it and shake it. But there are some who don't quite hold the whole hand, but only hold the tips of my fingers. And I always find it funny.

Eunice also has a story about meeting people for the first time and greeting them. This was right at the beginning of our new life in the US and there was a guy, a father of our kids' friend, who was from Argentina. He and Eunice had seen each other around the school a few times and they finally got to properly introduce themselves to each other. Then suddenly he got real close and tried to put his face on hers.

He was just going to give her a bisous, a greeting commonly done in Latin America and some European countries, which is putting your cheek against the other persons and making a kissing sound. Instead of responding to it, she froze, and the poor guy had to back down from it. Back to head bowing is done slightly differently in other Asian countries than it is in Korea.

In Thailand or India they put their palms together with the fingers straight as they bow. It looks like they are doing Kito, a prayer. The Japanese bowing is pretty similar to the Korean one, except they tend to bow more kipge. Kipge means deeply, meaning their head goes down much lower. There are also greeting gestures that might come across unusual for many of us. The Maori indigenous people rub their noses with each other, and the members of the Maasai tribe spit as a greeting.

Back to our main topic, greetings in Korea. We should also talk about what Koreans say other than 안녕하세요. For the very first meeting, a common greeting is to say 만나서 반갑습니다. Happy to meet you. Or 처음 뵙겠습니다. 처음 뵙겠습니다. 말씀 많이 들었어요. If you are meeting the person through someone else's introduction. When they already know each other, Koreans often say things like, You've been busy, right? Or Are you busy? To express a concern about how hectic and crazy the life may have been.

We also ask, Did you eat? as a greeting, when it's around the mealtime. This is also an expression of concern for the other person. When you see a close friend, first time in a long while, we can say, I'm afraid I might forget your face. Or if it's a phone call, we can say, I'm afraid I might forget your voice.

So after we talked about these two segments, we ran out of time. So we decided to push off the third segment to the next episode. So therefore, that's it for today's conversation, episode number eighty three. By the way, if you're interested in joining SpongeMind Korean Emergent Program that I run in Seoul with other native Korean speakers as volunteers, please go to the website spongemind.org. That's it. Bye for now.