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Korean Nursery Rhymes

by Linda McKenna // March 15 // 0 Comments
Korean Nursery Rhrymes

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children. <Eeny, meeny, miny, moe>, for example, is a nursery rhyme in the United States and England. As a nursery rhyme has relatively simple and lyrics and melodies, it will be fun to practice Korean by singing a nursery rhyme. Today we are going to learn some of the Korean nursery rhymes!

๊ณฐ ์„ธ๋งˆ๋ฆฌ / Three Bears [Gom Se-ma-ri]

๊ณฐ ์„ธ๋งˆ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ€ ํ•œ ์ง‘์— ์žˆ์–ด [gom se-ma-ri-ga han jip-e iss-eo]Three bears are in a house
์•„๋น ๊ณฐ, ์—„๋งˆ๊ณฐ, ์•„๊ธฐ๊ณฐ [a-ppa-gom eom-ma-gom a-gi-gom]Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear, Baby Bear
์•„๋น ๊ณฐ์€ ๋šฑ๋šฑํ•ด [a-ppa-gom-eun ttung-ttung-hae]Daddy bear is fat
์—„๋งˆ๊ณฐ์€ ๋‚ ์”ฌํ•ด [eom-ma-gom-eun nal-ssin-hae]Mommy bear is slim
์•„๊ธฐ๊ณฐ์€ ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๊ท€์—ฌ์›Œ [a-gi-gom-eun neo-mu gwi-yeo-wo]Baby bear is so cute
์œผ์“ฑ, ์œผ์“ฑ, ์ž˜ํ•œ๋‹ค! [eu-sseuk, eu-sseuk, jal-han-da!]Eu-sseuk (strutting), eu-sseuk, good job!

๊ณฐ ์„ธ๋งˆ๋ฆฌ is one of the most famous Korean nursery rhymes. Children sing this song at home or in kindergarten with dance. As the lyric consists of the grammar structure [Subject + Subject Complement], children can learn how to describe people or things by singing this song.

๋ˆˆ / Snow [nun]

ํŽ„, ํŽ„, ๋ˆˆ์ด ์˜ต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค [peol, peol, nun-i op-ni-da]Peol (Large Snowflakes), peol, the snow is falling
ํ•˜๋Š˜์—์„œ ๋ˆˆ์ด ์˜ต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค [ha-neul-e-seo nun-i op-ni-da]The snow is falling from the sky
ํ•˜๋Š˜ ๋‚˜๋ผ ์„ ๋…€๋‹˜๋“ค์ด [ha-neul na-ra seon-nyeo-nim-deul-i]The heavenly Seon-nyeos (Taoist fairy)
์†ก์ด ์†ก์ด ํ•˜์–€ ์†œ์„ [song-i song-i ha-yan som-eul]The white cotton
์ž๊พธ ์ž๊พธ ๋ฟŒ๋ ค ์ค๋‹ˆ๋‹ค [ja-kku ja-kku ppu-ryeo jup-ni-da]Keeping sprinkling (The heavenly Seon-nyeos keep sprinkling the white cotton)

๋ˆˆ is a Korean nursery rhyme that elementary school students sing in winter. As the lyric contains a metaphor for the snow, students learn how to refer to one thing by using metaphor. You can also see the Taoist influence in the word โ€œ์„ ๋…€,โ€ which is a Taoist fairy (similar to angels in other religions).

์†œ์‚ฌํƒ• / Cotton Candy [Som-sa-tang]

๋‚˜๋ญ‡๊ฐ€์ง€์— ์‹ค์ฒ˜๋Ÿผ ๋‚ ์•„๋“  ์†œ์‚ฌํƒ• [na-mus-ga-ji-e sil-cheo-reom nal-a-deun som-sa-tang]The cotton candy, flying to the branch like a silk
ํ•˜์–€๋ˆˆ์ฒ˜๋Ÿผ ํฌ๊ณ ๋„ ๊นจ๋—ํ•œ ์†œ์‚ฌํƒ• [ha-yan-nun-cheo-reom hui-go-do kkae-kkeus-han som-sa-tang]The cotton candy, white and clean like a white snow
์—„๋งˆ ์† ์žก๊ณ  ๋‚˜๋“ค์ด ๊ฐˆ ๋•Œ ๋จน์–ด ๋ณธ ์†œ์‚ฌํƒ• [eom-ma son jap-go na-deul-i gal ttae meok-eo bon som-sa-tang]The cotton candy, that I had when I went on a picnic with my mom
ํ›… ํ›… ๋ถˆ๋ฉด์€ ๊ตฌ๋ฉ์ด ๋šซ๋ฆฌ๋Š” ์ปค๋‹ค๋ž€ ์†œ์‚ฌํƒ• [huk huk bul-myeon-eun gu-meong-i tdulh-ri-neun keo-da-ran som-sa-tang]The big cotton candy, that I blew off

์†œ์‚ฌํƒ• is a song that children sing when they are on picnics or in amusement parks. This song describes the cotton candy and the memory related to it. I feel quite nostalgic when I think of cotton candy. Maybe it is because of this song!

ํ…”๋ ˆ๋น„์ „ / Television [tel-le-bi-jeon]

ํ…”๋ ˆ๋น„์ „์— ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๋‚˜์™”์œผ๋ฉด [tel-re-bi-jeon-e nae-ga na-wass-eu-myeon]If I was on the television,
์ •๋ง ์ข‹๊ฒ ๋„ค, ์ •๋ง ์ข‹๊ฒ ๋„ค [jeong-mal joh-gess-ne, jeong-mal joh-gess-ne]It would be really cool, really cool
์ถค์ถ”๊ณ , ๋…ธ๋ž˜ํ•˜๋Š”, ์˜ˆ์œ ๋‚ด ์–ผ๊ตด [chum-chu-go, no-rae-ha-neun, ye-ppeun nae eol-gul]Dancing, singing, my beautiful face
ํ…”๋ ˆ๋น„์ „์— ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ๋‚˜์™”์œผ๋ฉด [tel-re-bi-jeon-e nae-ga na-wass-eu-myeon]If I was on the television,
์ •๋ง ์ข‹๊ฒ ๋„ค, ์ •๋ง ์ข‹๊ฒ ๋„ค [jeong-mal joh-gess-ne, jeong-mal joh-gess-ne]It would be really cool, really cool

ํ…”๋ ˆ๋น„์ „ is a modern song that got popular in the late 20th century. At that time, television was a luxury, and getting a chance to be on TV was more difficult than now. Soon being on TV became a synonym of wealth and fame. Singing this song, children were dreaming of being actors and singers!

์›์ˆญ์ด ์—‰๋ฉ์ด๋Š” ๋นจ๊ฐœ / Red monkey butt 

์›์ˆญ์ด ์—‰๋ฉ์ด๋Š” ๋นจ๊ฐœ[won-sung-i eong-deong-i-neun ppal-gae]A monkeyโ€™s butt is red
๋นจ๊ฐ€๋ฉด ์‚ฌ๊ณผ, ์‚ฌ๊ณผ๋Š” ๋ง›์žˆ์–ด[ppal-ga-myeon sa-gwa, sa-gwa-neun mas-iss-eo]Red is an apple, an apple is delicious
๋ง›์žˆ์œผ๋ฉด ๋ฐ”๋‚˜๋‚˜, ๋ฐ”๋‚˜๋‚˜๋Š” ๊ธธ์–ด[mas-iss-eu-myeon ba-na-na, ba-na-na-neun gil-eo]Delicious a banana is, a banana is long
๊ธธ๋ฉด ๊ธฐ์ฐจ, ๊ธฐ์ฐจ๋Š” ๋นจ๋ผ[gil-myeon gi-cha, gi-cha-neun ppal-ra]Long is a train, a train is fast
๋น ๋ฅด๋ฉด ๋น„ํ–‰๊ธฐ, ๋น„ํ–‰๊ธฐ๋Š” ๋†’์•„[ppa-reu-myeon bi-haeng-gi, bi-haeng-gi-neun nop-a]Fast is an airplane, an airplane flies high
๋†’์œผ๋ฉด ๋ฐฑ๋‘์‚ฐ[nop-eu-myeon baek-du-san]High is the Baek-du mountain

์›์ˆญ์ด ์—‰๋ฉ์ด๋Š” ๋นจ๊ฐœ is a song that children sing when playing. This song starts with a word and moves to another word that has similar attributes. Children would modify or lengthen the lyrics for fun.

Conclusion

Today we learned 5 Korean nursery rhymes. Which one was the most interesting? Knowing and singing Korean nursery rhymes will give you an understanding of both Korean grammar and culture. So why donโ€™t you sing Korean nursery rhymes today!

About the Author Linda McKenna

Linda was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the U.S. as a teen. She previously taught at a Korean language school. She is a language enthusiast and loves learning about different languages and cultures