top korean phrases to know for tourists (what I actually used everyday!!)

Hello my fellow travelers. Today I rounded up a few of my most used Korean phrases while I was in Korea. Okay, so let me just start off this video by saying I am in no way a Korean teacher. If you're looking for the proper and grammatical way of saying things, this is not the place. To be completely honest, most of my Korean is actually self-taught. I learned it from watching dramas, variety shows, listening to K-pop. I might have consumed too much media, but at least I gained something from it. I don't know. I will leave some recs at the end of this video for people that I watch who have really helped me in my practical use of Korean and also just learning Korean in general. A common concern that I've seen is like people are worried that their level of proficiency is not high enough to actually get around and I'm here to tell you you do not need a high level proficiency of Korean to get around Korea. People are very well educated and they actually understand English quite well. They might not speak it fluently or willingly, but they can understand it and that's all you really need to be very honest. That and Papa Go. Papa Go will be your best friend in your pocket when you are in a time of need. That being said, it does not hurt to have a few phrases up your sleeve, you know, to make this process of getting around a little bit easier and most of the conversations were very very formulaic so I was able to get through very basic interactions with people since I had to do those same interactions on a daily basis. Did I just repeat myself? Maybe, but let's get to it. The first one is going to be very very very basic. You want to know your hellos and goodbyes. So to say hello is 안녕하세요. 안녕하세요. I have also picked up the habit of doing a little head nod or a little bow whenever I say this along with like thank yous and goodbyes as a sign of like respect and so when you're saying goodbye what you can say is 안녕히 계세요 which literally means like I hope you stay in peace. This is what you say when you are the one leaving and the person is remaining. Again, hello, 안녕하세요, goodbye, 안녕히 계세요. Second thing that I say the most is of course thank you or no thank you along with like yes or no. To say thank you is 감사합니다 and if you break it up by characters actually 감사합니다. When you're saying it, it kind of flows all together so it kind of sounds like 감사합니다 just as a tip I guess if you want to sound more fluent. So 감사합니다. A lot of the times I actually use this in place of like saying goodbye especially when I'm leaving like shops and restaurants. I thank them for their services essentially. The next is like of course the flip side of no thank you. If people are offering you things then you can say 괜찮습니다 which is like I'm okay and that's kind of like my way of saying no thanks so that I'll 괜찮습니다, 괜찮아요. Of course how to say yes or no. Yes is 네 and no is 아니요. If people are confirming their orders with you and you can confirm back with a 네 or if they are asking you questions like are you Korean and I'm like 아니요. The next phrase that I use most often is asking how much is this. Usually you would think that in order to ask how much it is you should know numbers and stuff so that when they reply you have an idea. My numbers are really really bad like I get them mixed up all the time especially because they don't go by like thousands they go by ten thousand so like it's everything is like 만원 which is like whatever like ten thousand twenty thousand. To ask how much is this it would be 이거 얼마예요? 이거 얼마예요? So yeah my numbers are really bad so when typically when the sales person replies how much it is I it takes me a minute to like figure out exactly what it is but if you're not that good with numbers this is when my name comes in handy you can be like get creative. So another phrase that I use quite a bit is when I'm ordering you know after you ask how much it is you want to order it or you want to buy it you go 이거 하나 주세요. 이거 세 개 주세요. 이거 however many you want you know. This is when numbers comes in a little bit handy but 하나 is one so this one please is the literal translation. 이거 하나 주세요. 이거 하나 주세요. And whatever 주세요 is also a very very helpful phrase to have because 주세요 is like kind of like please give me so if you want to ask for help you can be like 도와주세요. Okay this next one is my new favorite phrase and I used it so much and it's kind of like a three-part phrase and it's a little bit more advanced but if you can say it it can get you places. What I say is like sorry I am a foreigner can you speak English? My Korean is not good. So this is a great way to start asking for help because a lot of the times when I enter a store and I want to ask the sales associate something and this happened actually when I went to buy glasses I like wanted her opinion on like which style fit me the best but it was really hard for me to vocalize or communicate my thoughts so I was like how do I ask her if I can speak English because I don't want to just like bombard her with English and make her get all frazzled so I rather like ask her hey can you speak English or is it okay if I speak English and then we can kind of try to communicate that way and I think this is a harder situation to navigate because I am Asian so a lot of people automatically assume that I'm Korean and just start speaking to me in Korean and I'm like ah I don't know if you are also a fellow Asian you might also run across these situations so this phrase might come in handy for you. The phrase is sorry I'm a foreigner 죄송해요 저는 외국인데요 can you speak English is English okay and then for my Korean is not good is or you can say 한국말 못해요 is like I can't Korean all together this is kind of like what I would say to approach someone like it's kind of like a spiel of like hey I'm a foreigner um can you speak English because my Korean is sucky and I need help or you can use it separately like if someone approaches you and asks and like just starts spouting Korean at you you'll be like like I've had people come up to me and ask me for direction I'm like like I don't know this last one was actually one that took me by surprise when I went to Korea the first few times I would think that my Korean is pretty okay to get by on a day-to-day because clearly I'm still alive before I went to Korea I was like oh yeah I totally know how to order I can be like and like yeah 감사합니다 but then they hit you with the and I'm like what is like do you need it and I'm like what do I need so what they were asking is do you want the receipt every single time this happens in real life I'm always so taken aback and then like do you want this when you pay at a cafe or whatever this is something that will most likely happen at the end of your conversation they'll tell you how much it was you give them the card and then they'll be like swiping it and then they'll be like and then you can be like and then take it yes this is also a really good thing to know because then you know how to ask for it too if you do need the receipt you can be like which is like please give me the receipt so aside from these basic phrases I really haven't had to use much Korean I wish that I could have used more of my Korean to be very honest so that I but a lot of the times if it's like the younger generation that you're interacting with once they find out that you're a foreigner and speaks English they'll automatically like switch to English to try to make things easier for you which is like really really helpful but then at the same time I'm like I want to practice too a few of the resources that I personally like to use to practice Korean and to learn more Korean is one talk to me in Korean they have a huge library of videos and also they have like audio lessons on Spotify I really like to use talk to me in Korean to learn about grammar rules and stuff like that I think they're really great at breaking that down the next resource I would recommend is Korean Unnie Korean Unnie videos are really great at breaking down phrases to use by topic and so if you're looking for a certain situation and like things that you could say like you want to get a haircut but you don't know the phrases that you might need to know she is a really really great resource to use the last resource I want to share is Korean with Ina I don't know about her long form videos but I follow a lot of her like reels and TikToks they break a lot of the stuff into bite-sized pieces for me to consume plus a lot of the topics that she covers are very real life applications like she talks a lot about slang and like trendy words that people use these days so that if you run across them you know exactly what they mean so yeah those are the three three sources I would recommend to people who are actually interested in learning more Korean and learning Korean properly that is like the downside of being self-taught I think because a lot of the stuff that I say is based off of what I think sounds right based off of what I have heard like I've heard people use this in this kind of way or in this phrase completely then that's how I will like regurgitate it I don't actually know the different like formal forms like what is the conjugation and all of that but I think I get my idea across I don't know Korean speakers don't don't come at me please anyways the whole purpose of this video is not to teach you how to say things do not learn from me it is literally to show you that one you don't need a high level proficiency of Korean two you can get by with really broken Korean and three to show you like the different situations where a pack to actually use Korean so I hope that this was helpful if you enjoyed this video make sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel for more Korea travel tips I will see you guys next time bye I'm so bad at this why am I making this video oh that was so hard