Games to increase Vocabulary in Korean

I have seen a particular game countless times on variety shows and dramas. I never knew the name until I saw it on Talk to me in Korean's (TTMIK) YouTube channel. The game is called 끝말잇기 which literally translates to 'linking the ends of words'. This is how it is played. 

 

As with most of my Korean language study activities, I played this game several times by myself. It is quite fun. When you play, you come to realize that there are certain combinations of characters that hardly come at the beginning of words, at least words taught in the beginner-intermediate stages. Some of these include 쇄, 업, and 리. I then thought that perhaps I should try to find a list of words that start with these syllables that would help you to be better at this game. Doing this, I remembered trying to always keep note of names of animals which start with uncommon letters just to be better at the game "Animal, Person, Place and Thing" or researching two letter words for Scrabble.

I just typed 끝말잇기 into Google and came across an online version that you can play if you don't feel like being your own opponent. There are several levels. Even at the 바보 (idiot) level it can be difficult. According to the page, they took the words from the National Language Institute's Dictionary of Standard Korean.The words used include standard language, old language, dialect and words used in North Korea. The good thing about this version is that for each entry the computer gives, you can hover over the word to see its definition. Unfortunately, the definition is also in Korean. Sometimes the definition may not be too hard. For example, when I was playing, the computer gave the word 프록. I didn't know what this was so I checked the definition. The given definition was 농부가 입는 작업복 (A farmer's working clothes). This was not too bad. I believe that 프록 is supposed to be the word "frock" Koreanized. It is quite funny because when I think of the word frock, I think of a pretty white dress a little girl would wear that should never be dirtied, unlike a farmer's overalls.

My wish for a list of words also came true. The creators of the same game have a "cheat page". You just type in the syllable you wish to start with and a list of words comes up. This list also has the definition function. Once when I played by myself I came to a dead end with the word 이름, a simple but deadly word in the 끝말잇기 business. When I entered the syllable block 름 into the word generator on the cheat page, several words came up but these words started with 늠 instead of 름. I know that depending on the character that comes before ㄹ, it can take on the sound of ㄴ (폭력) so I figured that there were no words starting with 름 and so this rule was made. I asked my Korean friend and he said that using words starting with 늠 would be against the rules. He said that I would have to use a word like 르망 (Le Mans) which would sound like I had used 름 as in 름앙. He however told me that there are a lot of words starting with 름 but these words are used in North Korea and not South Korea. He sent me this list.

He then said that there is only one word in this list that was familiar to him and that followed the NK름 to SK늠 rule is 늠름하다 (to be manly/imposing). This is so interesting. The definitions of these 름 words cannot be found on Naver or Daum dictionaries but in the National Language Institute's Dictionary of Standard Korean.

More recently, once again on TTMIK's YouTube channel, I saw another word game. It was my first time seeing this one. This one is called (사)행시 - literally (4) line poem. The number of lines can be varied. Instead of focusing on just words the aim of the game is to create coherent sentences beginning with the syllables of a given word. You can view the tutorial in the video.

This game definitely requires more skill than the previous one. I have to up my 끝말잇기 skills before I attempt this one. *Off to practise*