I was surfing around on the TV last night and watched this movie. It’s in Korean, and on broadcast television, of course, there are no subtitles. So when I undertake to watch a Korean movie on TV it’s more than just an idle undertaking. It’s work to understand. This movie is the sort that is easiest for me to make sense of, I think – family comedies. The reason why probably has to do with the prevalance of simple, day-to-day vocabulary, often stripped of the complex verb periphrastics that populate higher discourse. Perhaps this movie, with the child protagonists, was accessible because I find kids easier to understand, too. This may be because in fact, most of my Korean practice is with kids – i.e. my students.
It was a cute movie. It turns out to be based on an English-language kids lit book. The real mystery is why, of the three wikipedia articles about the movie that are available, besides Korean and English (both logical), the third is in Armenian. What’s that all about?
Notes for Korean (finding meaning)
- 뭄추다 = to stop (doing something)
- 하던 일 = “that thing [I/he/she/someone] was doing” … I’m not sure about this, because it’s a grammatical construction using -던 which is called a “retrospective modifier” (whatever that is) and a derivation of the verb+object periphrastic 일 하다 which seems to mean “to do some nonspecific thing” or “to work on something”
[daily log: walking, 1km]