Korea is one of the most connected countries on earth: fast internet almost everywhere, one messaging app nearly everyone shares, and a texting culture full of playful abbreviations. This lesson gives you the vocabulary for phones, apps and the internet, the verbs that go with them, and a first look at chat slang. Then it puts the modifiers and comparisons from Lesson 25 straight to work โ "the app I use most", "the photo I took yesterday", "faster than my old phone".
| Korean | Meaning | Korean | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| ํธ๋ํฐ / ํด๋ํฐ | cell phone | ์ปดํจํฐ | computer |
| ์ธํฐ๋ท | internet | ์์ดํ์ด | Wi-Fi |
| ๋น๋ฐ๋ฒํธ | password | ์ถฉ์ ๊ธฐ | charger |
| ๋ฌธ์ | text message | ์ ํ | phone call |
| ์ด๋ฉ์ผ | ์ฌ์ง | photo | |
| ๋์์ | video | ์ฑ | app |
| ๊ฒ์ํ๋ค | to search | ๋ค์ด๋ก๋ | download |
| ๋ฐฐํฐ๋ฆฌ | battery | ํ๋ฉด | screen |
| ๋ ธํธ๋ถ | laptop | ๋ต์ฅ | reply (to a message) |
Some tech words look English but aren't used that way in English. ๋ ธํธ๋ถ ("notebook") means a laptop, and ํธ๋ํฐ ("hand phone") means a mobile phone. English speakers won't understand them, and Koreans may not understand "laptop" โ so learn them as Korean words.
Korean pairs each device action with a particular verb, much as English says "take a photo", not "make a photo". Learn them as pairs:
| Korean | Meaning | Polite present |
|---|---|---|
| ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๊ฑธ๋ค | to make a call | ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๊ฑธ์ด์ |
| ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๋ค | to answer a call | ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ์์ |
| ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๋๋ค | to hang up | ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๋์ด์ |
| ๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ด๋ค | to send a text | ๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ด์ |
| ์ฌ์ง์ ์ฐ๋ค | to take a photo | ์ฌ์ง์ ์ฐ์ด์ |
| ์ฑ์ ๊น๋ค | to install an app (casual) | ์ฑ์ ๊น์์ |
| ํธ๋ํฐ์ ์ผ๋ค / ๋๋ค | to turn the phone on / off | ์ผ์ / ๊บผ์ |
| ์ถฉ์ ํ๋ค | to charge | ์ถฉ์ ํด์ |
Two of these trigger irregular rules from Lesson 21: ๋๋ค โ ๊บผ์ (ใ ก drops), and ๊ฑธ๋ค is an ใน-stem, so the honorific is ๊ฑฐ์ธ์, not ๊ฑธ์ผ์ธ์.
KakaoTalk (์นดํก for short) is the messaging app in Korea โ well over 90% of people use it. It handles personal chats, group chats, work messages, payments (์นด์นด์คํ์ด), taxis (์นด์นด์คํ์) and more. "์นดํก ํด!" even works as a verb phrase: "message me on Kakao!"
| Korean | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ์นดํก ํด์? | Do you use KakaoTalk? |
| ์นดํก ์์ด๋๊ฐ ๋ญ์์? | What's your KakaoTalk ID? |
| ๋ฉ์์ง ๋ณด๋์ด์. | I sent a message. |
| ์ฌ์ง ๋ณด๋ด ์ฃผ์ธ์. | Please send me the photo. |
| ๋จํก๋ฐฉ | group chat room (short for ๋จ์ฒด ์นดํก๋ฐฉ) |
| ์ด๋ชจํฐ์ฝ | emoticons / stickers |
| Korean | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ์ ํ๋ฒํธ๊ฐ ๋ญ์์? | What's your phone number? |
| ์ ํํด๋ ๋ผ์? | Can I call you? |
| ์ฌ๋ณด์ธ์? | Hello? (answering the phone) |
| ์ ์ ๋ค๋ ค์. | I can't hear you well. |
| ๋ค์ ํ๋ฒ ๋ง์ํด ์ฃผ์ธ์. | Please say that again. |
| ๋์ค์ ๋ค์ ์ ํํ ๊ฒ์. | I'll call you back later. |
| ๋ฌธ์ ๋ณด๋ผ๊ฒ์. | I'll text you. |
์ฌ๋ณด์ธ์ is how you answer or start a phone call. Don't use it as a face-to-face "hello" โ that's ์๋ ํ์ธ์. (In person, ์ฌ๋ณด์ธ์ is only used to call out sharply to get a stranger's attention, which sounds rather abrupt.)
Korean chat is full of consonant-only abbreviations. These are very informal โ use them with friends, never in emails to teachers, bosses or customers. For now, aim to recognise them when you see them.
| Slang | Full Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ใ ใ ใ | ํฌํฌํฌ | Hahaha (the Korean "lol") |
| ใ ใ | ํํ / ํํ | Haha (softer, friendlier laugh) |
| ใ ใ / ใ ใ | โ | Crying face (like T_T) |
| ใฑใฑ | ๊ณ ๊ณ (go go) | Let's go! |
| ใ ใ | ์์ | Yeah yeah / OK |
| ใดใด | ๋ ธ๋ ธ | No no |
| ใ ใ | ์ค์ผ์ด | OK |
| ใฑใ | ๊ฐ์ฌ | Thanks |
| ใ ใ | ์ฃ์ก | Sorry |
| ใ ใ | ์ถํ | Congrats |
| ในใ | ๋ฆฌ์ผ (real) | For real / seriously |
| ใทใท | ๋๋ | Shivering / shocked / wow |
More ใ 's = more laughter: ใ ใ (mild chuckle), ใ ใ ใ (laughing), ใ ใ ใ ใ ใ ใ (really funny). A single ใ can read as dry or even sarcastic, so most people send at least two. ใ ใ feels gentler and is common with people you're less close to.
You'll also see ใ ใ (๋ฏธ์น, "crazy"). Among close friends it can mean "insane(ly good)", but ๋ฏธ์น is also a rude insult. It's worth recognising; it's not worth using.
| Korean | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ์์ดํ์ด ๋น๋ฐ๋ฒํธ๊ฐ ๋ญ์์? | What's the Wi-Fi password? |
| ์ธํฐ๋ท์ด ์ ๋ผ์. | The internet isn't working. |
| ์ถฉ์ ํ ์ ์์ด์? | Can I charge (my phone)? |
| ํธ๋ํฐ ๋ฐฐํฐ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ์์ด์. | My phone battery is dead. |
| ๋ค์ด๋ฒ์์ ๊ฒ์ํด ๋ณด์ธ์. | Try searching on Naver. |
๐ก Culture Note โ Naver (๋ค์ด๋ฒ): Naver is Korea's biggest portal โ search, maps, news, blogs, shopping, webtoons and a very good dictionary. Google is widely used too, but for Korean restaurants, local reviews and directions, Koreans usually reach for Naver (or Kakao Map). Google Maps directions work poorly in Korea, so travellers should install Naver Map or Kakao Map.
Here the tech vocabulary meets grammar you've already built. The last rows use the brand-new tools from Lesson 25.
| Korean | English | Grammar (fromโฆ) |
|---|---|---|
| ์น๊ตฌํํ ์ ํํ์ด์. | I called my friend. | ํํ (Lesson 9), past (Lesson 15) |
| ์์ดํ์ด๊ฐ ์ ๋ผ์. | The Wi-Fi doesn't work. | ์ negation (Lesson 10) |
| ํ ๋จธ๋๊ป์ ๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ด์ จ์ด์. | Grandma sent a text. | ๊ป์, -(์ผ)์- (Lesson 13) |
| ์ ํธ๋ํฐ์ ์ฌ๊ณ ์ถ์ด์. | I want to buy a new phone. | -๊ณ ์ถ๋ค (Lesson 17) |
| ์์ ์๊ฐ์ ํธ๋ํฐ์ ์ฐ๋ฉด ์ ๋ผ์. | You can't use your phone in class. | -(์ผ)๋ฉด ์ ๋๋ค (Lesson 19) |
| ์ํ๊ด์์๋ ํธ๋ํฐ์ ๊บผ์ผ ํด์. | You have to turn your phone off in the cinema. | -์์ผ/์ด์ผ ํ๋ค (Lesson 19), ใ ก irregular (Lesson 21) |
| ๋ฐฐํฐ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ์์ด์ ์ ํ๋ฅผ ๋ชป ํ์ด์. | My battery was dead, so I couldn't call. | -์์/์ด์ (Lesson 23), ๋ชป (Lesson 10) |
| ์ ๊ฐ ์ ์ผ ์์ฃผ ์ฐ๋ ์ฑ์ ์นด์นด์คํก์ด์์. | The app I use most often is KakaoTalk. | -๋ modifier, ์ ์ผ (Lesson 25) |
| ์ด์ ์ฐ์ ์ฌ์ง ์ข ๋ณด๋ด ์ฃผ์ธ์. | Please send me the photos you took yesterday. | past modifier -(์ผ)ใด (Lesson 25), -์ ์ฃผ์ธ์ (Lesson 19) |
| ์ ํธ๋ํฐ์ด ์๋ ํธ๋ํฐ๋ณด๋ค ํจ์ฌ ๋นจ๋ผ์. | The new phone is much faster than the old one. | ๋ณด๋ค (Lesson 25), ๋ฅด irregular ๋นจ๋ผ์ (Lesson 21) |
| ์ง๊ธ ๋์์์ ๋ณด๊ณ ์์ด์. | I'm watching a video right now. | -๊ณ ์๋ค (Lesson 25) |
| ์ด ์ฑ์ ์จ ๋ดค์ด์? | Have you tried this app? | -์/์ด ๋ณด๋ค (Lesson 25) |
| Speaker | Korean | English |
|---|---|---|
| ๋ฏผ์ง | ์ฌ๋ณด์ธ์? ์คํธ ์จ, ์ ๋ฏผ์ง์์. | Hello? Junho, it's me, Minji. |
| ์คํธ | ๋ค? ์ ์ ๋ค๋ ค์. ์ง๊ธ ์งํ์ฒ ์์ ์์ด์. | Sorry? I can't hear you well. I'm on the subway now. |
| ๋ฏผ์ง | ์, ๊ทธ๋์? ๊ทธ๋ผ ์นดํก ๋ณด๋ผ๊ฒ์. | Oh, really? Then I'll send you a Kakao message. |
| ์คํธ | ์ฃ์กํด์. ๋ด๋ ค์ ๋ค์ ์ ํํ ๊ฒ์. | Sorry. I'll call you back when I get off. |
| ๋ฏผ์ง | ๊ด์ฐฎ์์. ์ฒ์ฒํ ํ์ธ์. | That's fine. Take your time. |
Friends of the same age text in ๋ฐ๋ง (the casual speech level you met for recognition in Lesson 13). Read this for recognition โ you don't need to produce it yet.
| Speaker | Korean | English |
|---|---|---|
| ์์ | ์ด์ ์ฐ์ ์ฌ์ง ๋ดค์ด? ใ ใ ใ | Did you see the photos we took yesterday? lol |
| ํ์ค | ใ ใ ๋๋ฌด ์๊ฒจ ใ ใ ๋จํก๋ฐฉ์ ์ฌ๋ ค ์ค | Yeah, so funny lol. Post them in the group chat. |
| ์์ | ใ ใ ์ง๊ธ ๋ณด๋ผ๊ฒ | OK, I'll send them now. |
| ํ์ค | ใฑใ ! ๋ด์ผ ๋ช ์์ ๋ง๋? | Thx! What time are we meeting tomorrow? |
| ์์ | ๋ ์ ์ด๋? | How about two? |
| ํ์ค | ์ข์ ใฑใฑ | Sounds good, let's go! |
Tech vocabulary changes fast even for native speakers โ nobody knows it all. If you guess a word and it's wrong, you've just found the next word worth learning.
Q1: How do you say "I called my friend"?
Q2: Which completes "the app I use most": ์ ๊ฐ ์ ์ผ ๋ง์ด โฆ ์ฑ?
Q3: When is ์ฌ๋ณด์ธ์ the right word?
Q4: Your professor emails you. Which reply opener fits?
Both mean mobile phone. ํธ๋ํฐ is the everyday word; ํด๋ํฐ (and the fuller ํด๋ ์ ํ) sounds a little more formal and appears in writing and ads. Younger people often just say ํฐ.
Close friends of the same age use casual speech, especially in texts. You learned in Lesson 13 that ๋ฐ๋ง drops the ์ (๋ณด๋ผ๊ฒ์ โ ๋ณด๋ผ๊ฒ). Stay with ํด์์ฒด until a Korean friend suggests you speak comfortably (๋ง ๋์๋ ๋ผ์).
๋ฌธ์ is a regular SMS text; ์นดํก is a KakaoTalk message. In practice most personal messaging happens on KakaoTalk, so ์นดํก ํ ๊ฒ์ is often more natural than ๋ฌธ์ ๋ณด๋ผ๊ฒ์. ๋ฌธ์ is still used for verification codes, deliveries and official notices.
You don't really โ it's laughter on screen. If you had to, people say ํฌํฌํฌ or just laugh. The same goes for ใ ใ , which is a picture of tears, not a word.
You can now call, text and describe the tech in your life. Lesson 27 turns inward: emotions and relationships โ how to say you're happy, worried or lonely (with plenty of ใ -irregulars), why "I'm sad" and "she's sad" use different forms, and the Korean idea of ์ .