“Gom semariga” (three bears) is a ubiquitous children’s song that appears to be derived from the tale of the three bears – whether from a native Korean version or a Koreanized version of the western folktale, I’m not sure. The song is very simple and seems to have the typical melodic “hook” that’s found in children’s songs, that can cause them to insinuate themselves into your unconscious.
I was exposed to it because of watching the drama Pulhauseu, where it recurs as a leitmotif around the on-and-off relationship between the contractually-married couple Han Ji-eun and I Yeong-jae, and with her in-laws (his parents), where the grandmother refers to her as “Three-bear” because of this song.
Anyway, it’s just a cute little song, I guess. Here are two non-Pulhauseu, cartoon renditions of it that I found on Youtube:
https://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=jYtoBRHXFJI [broken]
And here is an excerpt of various performances of the song as it occurs in the drama:
https://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=PkmE9SejiUk [broken]
[Update 2013-06-09: two of the youtube links were broken. I’ve replaced two links with embeds]
This includes Ji-eun’s initial, awkward performance, and a later hilarious part where Yeong-jae sings it in an “American accent,” apparently spoofing the fact that there seems to be a vogue among American teenagers who are fans of Korean dramas for singing this song and posting it on the interweb.
Here are the lyrics:
곰 세마리가 한집에있어
아빠곰 엄마곰 애기곰.
아빠곰은 뚱뚱해
엄마곰은 날씬해
애기곰은 너무귀여워
으쓱으쓱 자란다…
-more Notes for Korean-
context: eavesdropping on a coworker’s telephone conversation
If somebody ends a sentence with -ㄴ데요, what does this mean? For example, the copula (be-verb) 인데요. Or perhaps I misheard it.
A grammar index in my Integrated Korean textbook (the one from my Univ. of Minnesota course) says that -ㄴ데요 is a “polite avoidance of refusal,” but then points to a chapter of the book in volume two, which I don’t own. So I can’t look at any examples to make sense of the ending. My Korean Grammar for International Learners tells me that -ㄴ데 is a connective ending (meaning it can’t end a sentence), and states, “it is useful to think of this anding as a sort of verbal semi-colon or m-dash, providing a loose linkage between two clauses” (p. 264). But they make no mention of a sentence-final version with -요 added.
우산=umbrella