Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, lovers…etc.

This class was certainly an interesting one. People seemed a bit shy at first and kind of gave me looks telling me that they were not interested in talking about this topic. Well, once we got into pairs it was another story as the questions were shooting around the room like fireworks. It was very interesting for me to watch.

There were quite a few words that came up during the lesson. Some of them are:

bronchial tubes The bronchial tubes connect the trachea to the lungs.
bronchitis I have had bronchitis before, it really hurts.
bangs Charly had a new hairstyle today–she had bangs.
background Many people said that they did not care about family background.
picky If someone is picky, they are not often satisfied with choices.
convert Many people convert so as to the same religion as their spouse.
success rate A good success rate for a hitter in baseball is .300.
break up They decided that they were not happy so they broke up.
couple They are both so energetic and fun–they make a great couple.
single Some people want to stay single forever.
advice You shouldn’t give advise unless someone asks for it.
advise As your lawyer, I advise you to tell the truth.
confess He felt much better after he confessed his sins.
propose She is getting sick of waiting for him to propose.

Please do notice that the last two words are English words, but are often misused in Korea. Confess is rarely used to tell someone that you love them, and propose is almost never used to simply ask someone out. Mi-young made a good point, it is used to bring up an idea, in a meeting or something like that.

One question that was asked lot in this class was, “Do you have boyfriend/girlfriend.” We need to be careful not to forget the article here, so, “Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?” is more correct.

Also be careful of questions like, “How many boyfriends do you have?” because while grammatically correct, this question could make someone angry. I suppose that the question that was intended was, “How many boyfriends have you ever had?”

A few people talked about the importance of letting someone “know your mind.” I think I would usually say that “you need to tell him/her your feelings” or “let him/her know how you feel.”

Because today’s topic was very personal and private, occasionly we needed to escape from a question. Some useful ways of doing that are:

Sorry, that’s private.

That’s personal.

I’d rather not say.

I’d prefer not to say.

As I wrote above, I thought that everyone did a great job in the class. Some examples of conversations questions about dating that you could have asked are here. Conversation questions about friends can be found here.

Good job!