First word of Korean

Hafsa Fatima
2 min readMay 1, 2023

I try to distract myself from the effects of the dream and open a book from my bag. It was a Korean language book, Korean alphabet which says “Hangul”, words and sentences. I don’t know why, but I really like this Hangul “ㅈ” its sound as “J” it seems to be pretty interesting word to me. I haven’t learned so much but simple words and phrases, mostly to greet others. The first word that I ever learn was“ 감사합니다 — Gamsahamnida “, which means “Thank you”, but it’s not that simple, this word was different pronounce for different person. “Goma-wao” to address informal such as friend and close one, “Gamsa-hamnida” formally to elders, “Gamsa” as a short form “thanks” to friends too and “Gomapda” to your close loved ones for showing deep affection. Each and every word have these multi meaning and uses and this was the hardest part. Mom was observing me all the time, I was exhausted and closed the book, mom said “cha-reso” I get it was Korean word but don’t know the meaning I ask her, but she didn’t tell and change the topic “Do you want a Korean name?” I thought of this but didn’t choose one, so I wasn’t clear “I want but have no idea which name, and you?” I told her, “Me and your dad stick to a similar name but adding the Korean family name,” According to my information, just like Pakistanis people have their caste attached to their name Korean also attach family name. Pakistan would have Butt, Rajpoot, Chudary, Awan, Rana, Arai, Malik and many more and Koreans use one, Kim, Park, Jeon, Cha, Shin, Hwang, Lee, Seo, Yoon and many that I might not know, “We choose Park which mean pure and Kim which mean Honour, we have to decide one” Mom said, I really like the Jeon one, but mom decide other “Let’s go with kim” I saw relief on mom face, and she immediately told dad about this “Noor choose Kim, let’s do this” and dad agrees.

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