(Listening to Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, and Burt Bacharach for this post. Tim Buckley's "Once I Was", Nick Drake's "River Man" and "Time Has Told Me", and Mr. Bacharach's "Trains, Boats, And Planes", "Anyone Who Had A Heart", and "Walk On By" are some current favorites.)
감다 - 1) wind, coil, reel in
2) close/shut one's eyes
3) wash one's hair
4) swim (bathe) in a river
I've mostly used 감다 when speaking about eyes and closing them. I remember the first time a girlfriend said "머리 감아야해" and I was at a loss for what to say after that. You have to close your hair? Needless to say, I quickly learned though.
Let's have a look at this verb. First we have the sense of wind, coil, and reel in. Reel in should be immediately understandable, considering the act of reeling in fish is all about winding or coiling your line around a fishing spool (or whatever those things are called, my city roots never educated me on the finer points of fishing). Some quick sentences pulled from Naver.
붕대를 감다 - wrap a bandage
밧줄을 감다 - coil up a rope
낚싯줄을 감아 올리다 - reel in (and coil up) a fishing line
We have a number of rope-related actions, as well as a bandage one. Easy enough. Pretty much anything that can be wound or coiled up can be said to be 감다-able. First question that comes to mind is an electric guitar cable, one that is used to connect a guitar to an amplifier. Here's the first hit when I Googled "기타 캐이블 감아":
기타 캐이블 감는법
Cool, I feel I understand this now. Not that I would have expected a guitar cable to have a different verb associated with it, because it does have all the qualities of a rope. But now I'm curious... how do you say "unwind"? Quick first guess would be 풀다. You 풀다 your shoelaces when you untie them... But that's releasing a knot, while unwinding or uncoiling something usually involves pulling one end away from the spool, turning the whole spool and making the unwound portion longer. Let's look.
Typed in 낚싯줄 into Google and I got:
낚싯줄 묶는법
낚싯줄 매는법
Interesting... With further investigation, this is what I expected - fishing/lure knots. I'll have to study 묶다 and 매다 in detail down the road. Back to 감다...
Unwind/uncoil on Naver turns up 풀다. I was right. But I couldn't find much in the way of 기타 캐이블 풀다. However I did find 이어폰을 풀다 (http://twitter.com/DrMyung/status/130579904059285504).
이어폰을 풀다가 열 받은 적 많죠? 이어폰을 두번 접고 매듭을 지어 보관하다가 사용할 때는 매듭을 푼 후 잭 부분을 잡고 중력을 이용해 아래쪽으로 몇 번 털면 "대개"는 금방 풀립니다.
Found this gem on a certain Dr. Myung's Twitter. Apparently he's a doctor of remedies for day-to-day annoyances as well.
You've gotten angry after unwinding earphones, yes? Fold your earphones twice and tie a knot to store them. When you want to use them untie the knot, grab the jack, run your hand down the cord a number of times, and with the help of gravity, they should "usually" unwind themselves easily.
I took some liberties with the translation. 금방 is one of those words that always seems to escape a simple word-substitution translation. In this case, the good ole' Doctor means to say that the cord will unwind in an instant, in a matter of seconds, etc. I suppose I could have put "in a matter of seconds" in there, but for the sake of retaining how I felt the Doctor meant his words to sound, "easily" was my choice for 금방.
Anyways, where was I... 풀다. Certified antonym to 감다. Moving on.
눈을 감다 - close one's eyes. This is easy enough. Be sure not to say 눈을 닫다. This might illicit laughter from surrounding Koreans (especially ones who know English), but you'll be sacrificing any hard-earned respect you had up until that point.
Here's an interesting expression I've never seen or heard before:
눈감다 - to pass away
나는 그가 그렇게 젊은 나이에 눈감을 줄은 몰랐다.
I didn't think that he would die at such a young age.
Koreans can express death as closing ones eyes (for the last time). Good to know.
감다 also means to wash your hair. This may be a big stretch, but I can see how, back in the 조선 days of Korea (or even before that), people's hair could get pretty oily and tangled up with knots. One would need to tangle up their hair even more when washing it to release the knots... Meh, actually this doesn't seem to make much sense. Scratch that theory.
Anyways, when you wash your hair, you can say 머리를 감다. Good, moving on now.
I always try to find 의성어/의태어 (onomatopoeia) that can be used with these native verbs. Here's a good one:
방울뱀은 먹이를 몸으로 칭칭 감았다.
The rattlesnake wound itself around its prey.
I wonder if 칭칭 means "tightly" or refers more to the organized, layered fashion of wrapping something (like a snake's body or an ankle bandage). My feeling is it's the second one. Tightly is usually 단단히 or 꽉.
Here's a couple nice contextual uses of 감다.
그녀는 두 팔로 그의 목을 감았다.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. (I'm assuming a hug and not something more sinister)
테이프를 처음으로 다시 감았나?
Did you rewind the tape back to the beginning?
This makes sense, and now I know why they use 감다 on DVDs as well (I think I've seen that?). There's probably a 한자 word that means this as well. You don't really "rewind" a DVD, but that word can be used naturally in English because of the history we have of rewinding tapes. DVDs are the next evolution of movie/tv viewing, and despite the fact that there's no tape being wound, the concept has stuck. "Rewind back to that last scene" - listeners know that rewind means "go back to" in this context. This seems to be the same in Korean.
I'm also seeing a lot of 되감다s. Anytime you attach a 되 as a prefix, you get the sense of "return to before". So 되감다 means to rewind, literally.
Here's the oddball for 감다.
멱을 감다 - go for a swim / bathe in a river
So 멱 is a noun for swimming or bathing (outside that is). So if you 감아 a 멱을, then you are swimming or bathing in a river or something. Interesting. Maybe this is where the meaning for washing one's hair came from with regards to 감다? Back in the old days in Korea people probably bathed in rivers, yea? Hmm...
That's it for 감다. Now onto 가늘다.
가늘다 1) thin, slender, fine
2) small, faint, weak
I don't think I've ever used this myself, hence the reason for writing this blog. It's obvious this word describes thin and slender things. Fine seems to refer to sand or something.
가는 실 fine thread
가는 철사 thin wire
눈을 가늘게 뜨고 보다 squint at / look with narrowed eyes
그녀의 머리카락이 부드럽고 가늘다 her hair is soft and thin (fine)
빗줄이 점점 가늘어졌다 the rain tapered off (slowly thinned)
가는 모래 fine sand
Pretty much anything that is long and thin can probably be called 가늘다. We have thread, wire, eyes (narrow ones), hair, rain, and sand. Sand is the only one that doesn't fit the long and thin description, but fine is also a definition as well. Here's the second meaning:
가는 목소리로 말하다 speak with a faint/weak/small/soft voice
그녀의 목소리가 점점 가늘어졌다 her voice grew faint
흥분해서 그이 목소리가 가늘게 떨렸다 his voice quivered with excitement
It seems that the only other noun associated with 가늘다 is 목소리. Who knows if that's because Koreans made a connection between vocal cords being the source of one's voice. Who knows. But I imagine that 가늘다 could be used with other sounds as well, maybe music? Let's look.
Having typed 가늘다 into Google the first thing that popped up was 가늘다 얇다. Looks like we have a synonym. To be thin or flimsy is 얇다.
채소를 가늘고 길게 썰어라 cut the vegetables into thin strips
얇다 could easily substitute 가늘다 in this sentence. I can't find anything right now regarding music and 가늘다, I will have to look later. Let's find an antonym real quick.
두껍다 or 굵다.
If 가늘다 is long and thin, and 얇다 is thin and flimsy...
It seems that 가늘다 - 굵다, 얇다 - 두껍다. 굵다 seems to be thick, stout, etc. 두껍다 seems to be thick and heavy (flimsy means light in weight as well, so this makes sense). Obviously these aren't exact opposites, but I would say that 얇다 - 두껍다 is the natural pair in a Korean's mind.
That's all for today.
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