Reading is one of the greatest ways to practice and improve your Korean. It helps with getting familiar with the letters and words so that next time you see them, your brain recognises them faster. The practices I include here are short text paragraphs with a breakdown of the words and sentences which will hopefully help you with your Korean.
오래만에 여행 갔어요. 요즘에 코로나 때문에 어디 가기가 너무 힘들어서 못 갔는데 이제 상황이 다시 좋아지니까 사람들이 다시 여행 가기 시작했어요. 그래서 저도 친구들이랑 주말에 여행 갔어요. 우리는 바다 갔다왔어요. 바다에서 놀고 맛있는 음식 먹고 아주 재미있는 시간 보냈어요.
Listening – slow speed
Listening – normal speed
Translation
I went on a trip after a long time. These days, it’s really hard to travel due to COVID so I couldn’t go anywhere, but the situation got betters so people are starting to travel again. So I also went on a weekend trip with my friends. We went to the beach. We played on the beach, ate delicious food and had a great time.
Vocabulary
- 오래만에 – In a while/After a while
- 여행 – trip
- 가다 – to go
- 요즘 – these days
- 에 – location marking particle
- 코로나 – corona
- 때문에 – because of
- 어디 – where
- 가기 – to go
- 너무 – very
- 힘들다 – difficult/hard
- 못 – cannot
- 이제 – now
- 상황 – situation
- 이 – subject marking particle
- 다시 – again
- 좋아지다 – to becoming better
- 사람 – person
- 들 – plural
- 시작하다 – to begin
- 그래서 – so
- 저 – me
- 도 – too
- 친구 – friend
- 주말 – weekend
- 우리 – we
- 는 – topic marking particle
- 바다 – beach
- 갔다오다 – go and come back
- 놀다 – play/hang out
- 맛있다 – delicious
- 음식 – food
- 먹다 – eat
- 아주 – very
- 재미있는 – pleasant
- 시간 – time
- 보내다 – spend
Sentence breakdown
오래만에 여행 갔어요.
오래만에 is a word that is comprised from three different words/particles. 오래 means long time, 만 – only and 에 means in. It translates to “In a long time” or “after a while”. 여행 is a trip but when combined with the 하다 word it becomes 여행해요 which means travelling. It is one of those nouns that can be turned in to a verb. In this case, it is followed by 가다 which is to go and therefore it translates to “went for a trip” but we could easily change this sentence to 오래만에 여행했어요 which would translate to “I went travelling after a long time”.
요즘에 코로나 때문에 어디 가기가 너무 힘들어서 못 갔는데 이제 상황이 다시 좋아지니까 사람들이 다시 여행 가기 시작했어요.
Ok, this sentence is very loooong but it is comprised of few shorter sentences.
요즘에 코로나 때문에 어디 가기가 너무 힘들어요. This is the first part of the sentence.
그래서 못 갔어요. This is the second sentence. I have added 그래서 which means “So”/”As a result of”/”Therefore”. Because of corona, it is hard to go anywhere and therefore I couldn’t go anywhere. 그래서 can be shortened to 서 and instead added to the previous verb i.e. 힘들어서 to combine the sentences together and make them flowing better.
근데 이제 상황이 다시 좋아져요. This is the third sentence. Again, I have added an extra word in front, in this case “근데” which means but. Just like with the previous sentence, we can shorted in and add to the previous verb i.e. 갔는데 to combine the sentences together.
그러니까 사람들이 다시 여행 가기 시작했어요. 그러니까 is similar to 그래서 and means “so”. Again, we can shorten it and add to the previous verb i.e. 좋아지니까.
그래서 저도 친구들이랑 주말에 여행 갔어요.
This sentence starts with 그래서. Of course, we could shorten it just like in the previous example, but that would make the previous sentence even longer when it is already too long. Just like with English, you can make sentences longer with all the buts and howevers and all the commas. But that is most likely to confuse people. But at the same time, you do not want to have 10 sentences, each containing 3-4 words as that would not read nice. You will need to practice to find the right balance. Therefore, as an activity, I would recommend you to try and make the longest sentence in Korean as possible and then break it down to short sentences just like we have done here. It will help you enhance your Korean skills.
우리는 바다 갔다왔어요.
갔다오다 is an interesting verb as it is one verb but it uses two different verbs; 가다 and 오다. Koreans like everything 빨리 빨리 so they like to shorten the words when they can. Here 갔다오다 simply means went there and came back. See below sample sentence.
마트 갔다왔어요 – I came back from the market.
바다에서 놀고 맛있는 음식 먹고 아주 재미있는 시간 보냈어요.
We are using ‘에서’ instead of ‘에’ in this sentence as we are describing a certain action that is taking place there which is 놀다. If we just wanted to say that we went to the beach, we would say 바다에 갔어요. This is the main difference between 에 and 에서.