안녕하세요! Koreanstudyjunkie입니다. But you can call me Junie.
I'm here to bring to your attention another slightly confusing word pair in Korean. (Click here to learn about why Korean sometimes has 2 words for one thing) In this case, Year in Korean has 2 different words.
But what's the difference? Is there one?
년 is SINO KOREAN (Originates from Chinese).
When you want to talk about an amount or number of years, you'll often see and hear 년 being used (with sino korean numbers of course)
Example:
일 년 = 1 year
삼 년 = 3 years
오 년 = 5 years
십 년 = 10 years
해 is PURE KOREAN
해 also means year, right? But its direct definition is the "time during which the earth rotates around the sun once". So technically a year.
Examples:
승규는 해가 바뀌면 스물이 된다. = Seung-gyu turns 20 when the year changes.
그들은 같은 해에 태어났어요. = They were born in the same year.
Most of the time you'll 년 and 해 in other expressions, so you should take your time to learn these:
새해 - new year
그해 - that year
올해 - this year
작년 - last year
금년 - this year
내년 - next year
매년 - every year.
THESE WORDS HAVE OTHER MEANINGS!
Besides year, 해 can mean SUN. It has another meaning of "day(time" as well.
년 can actually be a curse word meaning "b*tch".
That's all for this lesson. We have plenty more where that came from at koreanstudyjunkie.com/blog
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