When writing certain things down, it’s more natural to use symbols or characters rather than spelling it out all the way. For instance, say you are looking for a tutor, and they advertise something like:
1:1레슨
If you’re a native English speaker, you might read it as: “one on one lesson”. But in Korean, it would be read as: “일대일 레슨”.
These are curious pieces of language because if you never heard them spoken out loud or spelled out, you might never know how they are supposed to be read!
So, today we’re going to go through a variety of similar pieces of language and how to read them out loud.
Continuing with the first point, if you have watched any of 흑백요리사 (Culinary Class Wars), you might have heard this being said during the 1:1 challenges between the White spoons and the Black spoons.
A 1:1 challenge
Obviously, this point can be extended to be not just 1:1, but any ratio:
2:1 → “이대일”
5:5 → “오대오”
80:20 → “팔십대이십”
Similar to talking about 1:1 or odds, we can use percentages. It is very common to see: 20%, 25%, 80%, 100%, and they are pretty easy to read as it is just the English word “percent”.
20% → “이십퍼센트”
80% → “팔십퍼센트”
100% → “백퍼센트”
Often times, though, in Korean fashion, it is common to shorten it to just “-퍼”, especially when talking about 100% to talk about certainty or something that is 100% correct. It would read as:
100% → “백퍼”
So, you can use it in a sentence like this:
“그건 백퍼 스캠” → That’s 100% a scam
Sticking with reading numbers, you’ll see decimals like: 25.4 and 47.8. How should these be read?
25.4 → “이십점사”
47.8 → “사십점팔”
However, when actually speaking, 점 sounds closer to 쩜. So, it’ll be closer to 이십쩜사 when read aloud or in conversation!
Using this, you can say things like:
“이 영화 평점 9.2점이야” → This movie’s rating is 9.2
Look at how 점 is used in different ways here: 평점 (평균 = average + 점 = points → average points / rating), 점 to signify how many points, and then the 점 that is hidden in the 9.2 (구점이).
One place that is very common to use decimals is describing temperature, specifically body temperature. So, when you want to say something like 36.5°C, you’d say:
36.5°C → “삼십육점오도”
The “도” at the end means “degrees”, implied to be °C. So, once you know how to read decimals, you can get temperature pretty much for free. This is pretty important when you’re in a hospital and they are taking your vitals and need to see if your temperature is regular.
Other written symbols
Moving away from numbers, let’s say you want to provide your email to someone. Your email is:
tokki@dailytokki.com
In English, it would be read as: “tokki at daily tokki dot com”, right? But what about in Korean? The @ symbol is actually called 골뱅이 (sea snail 🐌) because it looks kinda like a sea snail (I guess?). So, you’d say something like:
“제 이메일은 토끼 골뱅이 데일리토끼 닷컴이에요.” → My email is tokki at daily tokki dot com.
Strangely though, after we discussed 점 for numbers, instead of saying 점컴 (.com), they say 닷컴. So, keep a look out for that! Another thing to note is that, in professional settings, 골뱅이 is closer to slang and might not be used. Instead, you would use “엣” (at) the same way you would in English.
Another common symbol is #, called either a pound sign or hash/hashtag. Most commonly, you’ll hear it called 샵 (sharp), which comes from the musical symbol (♯) which looks kind of similar. So, if you are meeting a friend at their apartment and they give you the code to get in, it could be something like:
“일이삼사샵” → 1-2-3-4-#
If you are out shopping at a store, say 롯데마트, you’ll most likely see ads like this:
There are two pieces of written text here to talk about! First, 2+1 reads the same way in Korean as in English. It reads like:
2+1 → “투플러스원” (two plus one)
And it means that if you buy two, you get one free!
The second point of interest is 2.5 - 2.8. In Korea, dates are written with points, but be careful since the points are not 점. So, you would say:
2.5 - 2.8 → “이월오일에서 이월팔일까지” (February 5th to February 8th)
Keep a look out for these in your day-to-day life and you’ll start to read them internally like this instinctively!