When bargaining it's a good idea to know how to speak at least the numbers/prices in Korean. Luckily, this is relatively basic (compared to most things here).
Two things: each decimal place is said in order (so twenty is just two-ten and twelve is ten-two); and the numbers are partitioned according to ten thousands, not thousands, so there is a term for 10,000, 100 million and 1 trillion. It takes some getting used to but it can be learned (if I can, you can!).
The base numbers are:
one - 일/il
two - 이/i (said:ee)
three - 삼/sam (sahm)
four - 사/sa
five - 오/oh
six - 육/yook
seven - 칠/chil (cheel)
eight - 팔/pal (pahl)
nine - 구/goo
ten - 십/ship (sheep)
for larger denominations:
hundred - 백/baek (beck)
thousand - 천/chun (cheon)
ten thousand - 만/man (mahn)
100,000 - 십만/ship man
1,000,000 - 백만/baek man
10,000,000 - 천만/chun man
100,000,000 - 억/ok (like 'oc'-topus)
1,000,000,000 - 십억/ship ok
10,000,000,000 - 백억/baek ok
100,000,000,000 - 천억/chun ok
1,000,000,000,000 - 조/jo ('joe')
Thus, 1,234,567,890,123 won is il-jo-i-chun-sam-baek-sa-ship-oh
-ok-yuk-chun-chil-baek-pal-ship-goo-man-baek-i-ship-sam 'on. They always cut off the 'w' in won to make it 'on' after a price. They also slur baek and won together to that 500 won becomes oh-beg-on (for some reason).
The numbers look big, but when you start converting (about 1,200 won per USD) even 100,000,000 won (il-ok-on) becomes nothing more than 83,000 USD--the price of a nice car. For regular shopping practice numbers in the chun, man, ship-man and baek-man area.
Also, some price signs have Hangul on them for the prices, not numerals. So if you know about a few (5-6) hangul you can read those signs too (usually they say /만원/10,000 won or 오천원/5,000 won, nothing too complicated).
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on May 3, 2004
