Counting In Korean

Yong Moon Moo Kwan teaches advanced classes mostly in Korean.

There are fascinating reasons why an English-speaking Kung Fu student should welcome the need to learn some Korean.

Your muscles have a memory of position and movement. You may not have realized this, but those old patterns of position and movement will stand in your way as you start lerning the many NEW positions and movements in learning a Martial Art.

Your training in Kung Fu will proceed much more rapidly when and as you start addressing and changing not only these old fixed habits of position and movement of your body, but of your mind.

Your mind, development of, is far more important in Kung Fu than many people think.

As you start to learn the proper posture for the resptectful bow that begins a class, you realize that the importance of the proper posture for this ceremonial action carries over to all the rest of your learning the movements of Kung Fu.

Your mind will often be slow to make the changes, just as your body finds them new and strange.

So, an important part of training in Kung Fu is to ask you to train YOUR MIND also, and one very fine way of doing that is to ask you to LEARN the Korean words and their pronunciation for the number (from 1 through 10) which are used to count the repititions of the various standard exercises.

Sure, you could count them, "One, Two, Three etc."

But that just allows part of the learning process to proceed along the old fixed path of English words.

Your success in TEACHING your body these new postures and movements will be greatly facilitated when you ALSO teach yourself to learn and speak some basic Korean words.

(It would work, in concept, just as well to have a German-speaking student learn to count in Spanish! However, it is also true that much of the philosophy of any martial art is closely connected to the language in which it has been learned by your Grandmaster. At Yong Moon Moo Kwan the Great Grandmaster, and Grandmaster, are Korean and teach in both Korean and English. You will find that your study and learning of body motions and postures will go faster and more smoothly if you start to also learn the Korean words for the counting used in exercises and the Korean names for the basic forms.)

This page begins a series of self-help pronunciations for some of the basic words you will be learning and using.

It is often true that the Kung Fu student finds the great number and complexity of changes expected of his body and mind are such that he often cannot duplicate the proper pronunciation of these basic words in Korean.

That slows his progress in learning the motions and postures.

These pages present you the opportunity of taking one number at a time, like the number "ONE" in Korean, and saying it out loud in the privacy of your home computer. Then, simply, click the button on the page to hear the correct pronunciation of that word. Go on to more numbers, return to see if you can still do it -- finally take a test of randomly presented numbers to see how you do. Say the word out loud, then hit the play button. Listen and compare that sound to your own.

Your training in the Kung Fu motions and postures will be greatly speeded.

In every class we see students who eagerly spend extra time on just this learning of the words -- and other students who do not do such.

We know who will continue up the line of belts and who are most likely to drop out -- contributing to our own sense of failure and to the student's poor future.

So, practice Korean on these pages and be proud to show off your ability in Class.

The pages that follow all look alike, except that each page presents a different word in Korean and in English. You can click the English pronunciation and then the Korean pronunciation.

Gradually you should also come to know the Korean symbols/letters for these numbers and words -- so that eventually you can test yourself on the electronic interactive tests. In some of these tests you get a Koren symbol to guide you into speaking the sound. On other pages you will click for the sound and then select the right number for that sound in a list of choices. There are many ways these tests can be varied so as to enhance your learning experience.

One of the unique features of the Yong Moon Moo Kwan -- seize the opportunity to be a Tiger!

One - Ha-na
Two - Dool - (Tul - Note: The "T" is pronounced by placing the tounge as if to say a "T" and then saying a "D")
Three - Seat
Four - Neat
Five - Da-sut
Six - Yeo-sut
Seven - Il-gob - Note: The "b" sound is swallowed.
Eight - Yo-dorn
Nine - Ah-hope
Ten - Yeol

You will find different pronunciations of these Korean words. The best source for the best pronunciation will be one of the Masters at Young Moon Moo Kwan.

When you are ready, come back to this page, click here for a lesson in Korean.