Here are last week's mistakes by my Korean students:
1. Nationalities vs. Countries
One mistake that happens everyday among my students is distinguishing the differences between nationalities and countries. In Korean, the country of the person is used as the adjective. For example, "He is an America person" if you translated it from Korean to English.
Therefore students always get nationalities and countries confused. They usually know Korean/Korea, USA/American, Canada/Canadian, and Japan/Japanese. It gets more difficult when they try to distinguish the nationalities of Sweden (Swedish), Switzerland (Swiss- Although in Korean, Swiss is the country), and Belgium (Belgian).
Koreans use a Korean/English dictionary from Naver.com. Never.com is the most popular website by Koreans, so they use the English dictionary there often. Often times words that are similar in English but not exactly the same are exactly the same in Korean. Yet if you translate a Korean word into English in the Naver dictionary, it is often wrong. One of these big examples are the differences between shy, embarrassed, and ashamed.
Sometimes a student will say that they fell down in front of many people and say that they felt ashamed. Yet in English, if you are ashamed, you feel bad for doing something wrong. Embarrassed is used for things that make you blush. As mentioned earlier, if you fall down in front of a bunch of people, you would feel embarrassed. If you're speaking in front of a group and you make a mistake, you would feel embarrassed. You might feel ethically wrong (ashamed) if you weren't prepared for your presentation, but you are embarrassed because you stumbled over a word. If you cheat on your boyfriend or girlfriend, you should feel ashamed. So when do people feel shy? A little child might feel shy if she is with her mother and a stranger tries to say hello to the child. Or you might feel shy if you're not a very outgoing person.
In Korean these two words mean the exact same thing (Verb in Korean is 잡다). In English, they're very different. If you hold something, that thing is in your hand already. For example, when taking a test, students hold pencils in their hands. You also might hold a drink in your hand when you're mingling with people at a party.
Yet grab is a strong way of taking something. For example, "I almost forgot my keys. I better hurry up and grab them." OR "A father grabs his child's hand because the child almost crossed the street without looking."
This is a mistake that even my wife makes often. "Make" means to force someone to do something while "Let" means to allow someone to do something. In Korean, these both mean the same thing: (Attach the verb + 게 하다).
✓"John's father made him take out the trash." -John had to take out the trash and John didn't want to.
✓"John's father let John play computer games after he finished doing his homework." - John wanted to play video games and his father said he could.
✓"John's father didn't make him study until midnight."-John didn't want to study until midnight and ✓John's father said he didn't have to.
✓"John's father didn't let John drive until he was 18."- John wanted to drive a car but John didn't allow him to until he was 18.
X "John's father let him study hard." John didn't ask his father to study hard because he didn't want to.
X "John's father didn't make him drink beer." That means that many friends of John's have fathers that make their children drink beer. That doesn't sound right. :)
5. "How is ______?" vs. "How about _______?"In Korean, these two expressions mean the same thing based on one expression (어때요). In English, when we say "How about" it's a suggestion. For example, "How about going to a movie tonight with me?" But when we ask how something is, we are asking how something feels about a person, place, or thing. For example, "How's Busan?" (Is it warm there? Is it fun?) Or "How's my cooking?" (Do you like the food?" Here's how the expression can be used simultaneously in Korean:
How about eating pizza at our house? "식사로 피자 어때요?"
How is the pizza? "피자 어때요?"
Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)