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쓰다 vs 적다

Both of these mean ‘to write’ and for the longest time I was just using whichever one whenever I felt like it, but actually there is a slight difference to be aware of. 쓰다 means ‘to write’, like ‘to write a letter’ or ‘to write a book’. But 적다 specifically means ‘to write something down’ like a memo or a phone number. My Korean teacher usually asks us ‘적어 주세요' when asking us to note something on the board after dictation, but she also says ‘써 주세요' at times when she wants us to write any text that we created ourselves.

저는 제 여동생을 위해 시를 쓸게요 - I will write a poem for my younger sister

저는 이 빈칸에 제 이름을 적을 거예요 - I will write down my name in this blank space.

하숙집 vs 기숙사 vs 고시원

I used to have a tough time remembering the difference between these accommodation spaces - I guess the take home message is that all of these are multi-person living spaces, but there is definitely a clear distinction.

하숙집 is a boarding house - the kind of place where you live when you are renting a room in a house where other people also live - sometimes things like food and laundry are provided too. It gives off a very ‘living with a host family’ vibe, even if you are pretty much house sharing with other people of a similar age.

기숙사 are college/university dorm rooms - mostly you will share a room with someone else (or more than one person... sometimes 3 other people!). When you think of the word ‘dormitory’ you are probably thinking of a 기숙사.

고시원 have you ever seen the KDrama ‘Strangers From Hell’? (kinda scary). Anyway the place where they live is a 고시원 - they are TINY narrow rooms for individual use but all the other amenities are shared. There are no other added luxuries at all but the rent is usually cheap which is why students sometimes find themselves there.

자연 vs 천연

When talking about nature, I’ve always used 자연 in it’s noun form, such as ‘I like nature - 저는 자연을 좋아합니다’. Or even in it’s adjective form (자연스럽다), ‘Just speak naturally - 그냥 자연스럽게 말씀하세요’.... but I only recently realised there is another way to say ‘natural’.

So 천연 also means natural in the adjective form, but really it’s referring to something that has never been processed or changed out of its natural form (e.g. it is naturally occurring on earth, like mountains or the sea). An easy way to remember this is that the meaning of the first character 천 (天) means sky, which is a reminder that it came from the heavens.

I read a really good example (credit here) about cotton, which has a few terms in Korean. One of these is for the natural product that is picked off plants (솜) and another is for the fabric that we use day-to-day (면). 솜 is naturally occurring therefore you would use 천연 to describe it, but you could never use 천연 with 면 because it has to be processed (changed) to make that fabric (you would use 자연 instead).

But apparently it’s common for people to intentionally use both of these interchangeably so that they can indicate that a product is actually more natural than it really is.

찾다 vs 발견하다

Almost all Korean learners will know that 찾다 means ‘to find, to search for, to look for’ etc. Well, 발견하다 means ‘to discover, to find’. The distinction in Korean is as clear as it is in English. 찾다 is used when finding something that you already know exists, whereas 발견하다 is used when finding (discovering) something that you didn’t know was there before. For example:

시계를 찾았어요! = I found my watch!

저는 새로운 서점을 발견했어요 = I found (for the first time) a new bookstore

체험 vs 경험

With these two words we’re talking about ‘experiences’ - but two slightly different nuances. 경험 is a general past experience - this is something that you have done before, and as a result got an experience from it. For example, work experience, the experience of travelling abroad, the experience of waking up late for school etc. The key thing is that it is an event that happened in the past.

However 체험 mostly talks about something that you feel/experience directly - like a spiritual experience, or experiencing hardships, or experiencing the feeling of zero gravity. It infers more of a present moment feeling rather than 경험 which is talking about things that have definitely already happened. So, 경험 is almost like the knowledge you get after experiencing something (체험).

자동차 열쇠를 잃어버렸다고? 나도 그런 경험이 있어... - Did you say you lost your car keys? I have had that experience too..

Peal VS Peel

Sometimes when I'm reading and the writer has mistaken one word for another, I can't wrap my brain around how they've mixed the two up. It's a literary echo of all the times my (mumbling) hubby drawls something at me and I just know what my ears heard can't possibly be what his whiskered lips said. I mean, surely he wasn't actually saying "fire-safe penguins," or "stink wisher," or - a personal favorite - "Hally bacon 'nanner M&Ms."

...no, I'm not joking. That second one, I never did figure out what he actually said; by the time he could inhale without choking and speak without cackling, he'd completely forgotten what he'd said.

But I digress. Point is, peal VS peel is NOT a hally-bacon-nanner-M&M. This is one I've seen even professionally published authors mix up, so if you bungle it, you're in good company.

Peel -

Verb for opening/scraping/removing skin, hair, or a coating from something -or- moving away from something in a similar manner, or noun for what has been peeled from something, commonly fruit or vegetable skins.

Peal

Noun for a loud sound/succession of sounds like bells, thunder, or laughter.