This probably isn’t what you expect from the title.
My friend sometimes brings me presents from Korea! And one of the things I’ve gotten is this notebook.
I am going to take this opportunity to translate some of it for you ~
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The Cover
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하얀 머릿속
하얀 is an adjective form of 흰색, the color white. 머릿속 translates as ‘inside one’s head’. 속 is used to describe the location of ‘inside’ something. So this literally translates to, as best as I can phrase it, ‘white inside one’s head’. I asked people, and it turns out that it’s more often used to describe your mind being blank. However in this context its just used to describe blank pages.
백지 썼다
백지 is easy! It just means ‘blank papers’. 썼다 is ‘wrote’. I was told that this phrase isn’t actually grammatically correct, but it means ‘wrote blank pages’. So, essentially, in the case of the notebook, its saying that it includes blank pages on which to write. (Most often though, it’s used in the context of taking a test, not knowing answers, and turning in a blank paper eg: wrote blank/wrote nothing)
달달하게 필기하자!
달달하다 is used to say something is sweet (I wrote a blog on it’s difference from 달다). The -게 on the end of the verb stem indicates that it is being used as an adverb. Therefore 달달하게 translates to ‘sweetly’
필기 is the action of ‘note taking’. 필기하다 is ‘to take notes’. In this case, -자 was added to the stem of the verb, creating 필기하자. -자, when added to a verb stem, turns the verb into a suggestions, often translated with the word ‘let’s’. So in this case 필기하자 translates to ‘let’s take notes’.
Final trans: Let’s sweetly take notes!
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The Pages
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~
맛깔나게 공부하고, 달콤하게 기록하자!
맛깔나다 is ‘to taste good’, and just like we talked about above, the -게 is added to make it into an adverb. This doesn’t really translate to English….. 공부하다 is ‘to study’, and the -고 that you see is actually -하고, which is added onto the end of verbs to create the meaning of ‘and’. So, so far we have ‘맛깔나게 study and….’
달콤하다 is another verb meaning ‘to be sweet’. (Again, I mention this along with 달다 and 달달하다 in the blog that I linked to earlier ^^). With the -게 it means ‘sweetly’. 기록하다 is ‘to record’, so this phrase is ‘Let’s sweetly record’
Now, 기록하다 has -자 at the end. Conveniently we have already discussed this! You can either put ‘let’s’ in the beginning of the second clause, but I find it more natural to add it to the beginning of the sentence.
Final trans: Let’s study tastefully and record sweetly!
Yeah it sounds better in Korean…..
~
입에서 단맛이 날 때까지 공부하자!
입 is mouth and -에서 is a particle that is added onto a place or time to indicate where or when something is occurring.
단맛 is ‘the taste of sweetness’. (Sometime 단내 is used, which means ‘the smell of sweetness’!)
날 때 is ‘the time during which 단맛 will emanate….’. 때 is a general time, and -ㄹ is added onto the stem of the verb 나다 (to emanate). This turns it into a word modifying 때, which results in the meaning written above. The -까지 simply means ‘until’.
Together this all literally means ‘until the time that sweetness emanates in your mouth’. More naturally, however, its ‘until the time that you taste sweetness in your mouth’.
When you add 공부하자, its just ‘let’s study until you take sweetness in your mouth!’
It essentially means to study until you get tired, because when you get tired you taste sweetness in your mouth. It’s just used to say ‘lets study hard!’
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The Back
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If I translate it the post will be too long but I figured the intermediate and advanced students would like to see it.
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Vocab
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흰색
white
머릿속
inside one’s head
백지
blank pages
썼다
wrote
달달하다
to be sweet
필기하다
to take notes
맛깔나다
to taste good
공부하다
to study
달콤하다
to be sweet
기록하다
to record
입
mouth/lips
단맛
the taste of sweetness
단내
the smell of sweetness
나다
to emanate
~ Hannah
Satyanghae Korean 