Gokyuzundeki Son Yildiz

안녕하세요! Hey everyone! Today we’re starting Level 11 off with a rather simple but in my opinion kind of advanced grammar structure: -치고. Let’s start!

What is -치고?

You probably often hear sentences like these: 

For a basketball player, he’s pretty short. 

She speaks Korean really well considering that she’s self taught. 

He reads well for a five-year old. 

These sentences express that, compared to some standard, one particular person/thing deviates from that standard. For instance, we expect basketball players to be very tall, but when we see a player under 6 feet, we call that “short for a basketball player.” Unlike other players, that one player deviates from the norm or from our expectations.

Also, we use this when we’re talking about a specific standard rather than speaking generally. 5′11 isn’t short at all in general, but in the realm of basketball players it is. 

If you want to say this sort of thing in Korean, use -치고! Attach it to the noun that in English we would add “for a” in front of. For example:

농구선수치고 키가 작아요. = For a basketball player, he’s short.

독학으로 배운 사람치고 한국어를 되게 잘해요. = For someone who’s self-taught, she speaks Korean really well.

5살 아이치고 잘 읽어요. = He reads well for a five-year-old.

디자이너 드레스치고 꽤 싸네요. = That’s pretty cheap for a designer dress.

뉴옥에서 겨울치고 15도 되게 따뜻해요. = 15 degrees Celsius is really warm for winter in New York.

의대생치고 공부를 열심히 안 하는데요. = Considering that she’s a med student, she doesn’t study that hard.

So that’s pretty much it for -치고! Hope this was helpful! 다음에 또 봐요!

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I found some websites that recommend children’s books listed below! I never read Korean children’s books so I can’t really recommend any from my personal experience, but hopefully these websites can give some good suggestions!

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/korean/easy-korean-short-stories/

https://www.koreantopik.com/2018/02/learning-korean-through-fairy-tales-pdf.html

https://myhangeul.tumblr.com/post/100859917407/childrens-books-in-korean (This one in particular has stories categorized into different levels!)

I have uploaded my small collection of Korean children’s books in PDF form. Since I am just learning Korean I summarized a few of them based on the pictures, so please excuse some of the titles!  There are 4 types of PDF’s in each folder, full color editions of the book with pictures (title.pdf) or just the text of the book (titletext.pdf). There are also black and white editions for those who want to print them off to write on them for translating. I’ve also included a zip file for those who want all 4 files. 

Categorized based on difficulty** : 

Beginner

Bear Adventure

Counting Monkeys 

Cow carries a rice bag

Kids and the Storm

Wheat Kids

Intermediate

Heidi

The Nutcracker

The Prince and the Pauper

Advanced(ish)

Pelé - (It’s a short biography)

★ Yatora Yaguchi | Blue Period | Episode 1 ★