I made this list a few years ago and it never fails to interest Korean students. Who isn't interested in food?

With younger children it is best let them make small sketches of the food to help their memory. By writing the Korean names in Roman/English letters the students have to use their phonetic abilities. Teacher can print this page and erase white-out either the English or Korean word for some of the foods and thus make a challenging work sheet, quiz, or exercise for the students.

1. Apple = sa-gua.

2. Pear = bae. This also means sea in Korean and belly. Korean/Chinese/Japanese pears are hard round and watery.

3. Grapes = po-do.

4. Persimmon = kam. Persimmons, soft and hard, are common in north Asian but not popular in the West.

5. Small yellow melon = cha-mway. Cantaloupe and honey dew melons are rare in Korea.

6. Strawberry = dal-gi. Explain to students that strawberry plants were once grown surrounded with a layer of straw to suppress weeds and prevent soil splashing on the clean growing berries. Today a black plastic mulch is used instead..

7. Raspberry = san dal-gi. This actually translates as mountain strawberry but it is a viciously hooked raspberry plant with less flavor than the Western type. I suggest you sketch a rasp tool and show its use like removing foot callus, to help students understand that the raspberry has many small hooks or thorns.

8. Blueberry, banana, pineapple, mango, pineapple, tomato, olive = same as English.

9. Green onion big variety = pa.

10. Ball type storage onion = yang-pa. Literally Western onion as it came to China from the West.

11. Cabbage = bae-chew. The loose head type called Chinese /Korean cabbage used to make gim-chi or Korean sauerkraut.

12. Western cabbage = Yang bae-chew. The ball type use to make cole slaw.

13. Egg plant = ka-ji.

14. Red/green chili = go-chew.

15. Mild red/green/yellow sweet pepper = pima. There have been introduced into Korea in very recent time and are increasing in popularity.

16. Spinach = she-goom-chi. Many people know the Popeye, Olive and Brutus cartoon.

17. Corn/maize = ock-soo-soo. The ock refers to hard and white polished jade stones and soo-soo is the small brown grain of sorghum plants which look almost identical to tall growing corn plants. So the corn kernels can be read as jade sorghum. Interesting.

18. Giant white raddish = moo. The tops are eaten as well as root.

19. Pumpkin = ho-bak. Pumpkin, chili, corn, chocolate, tomato, potato, sweet potato, some beans and tobacco all came in from Central and South America. I always ask students to thank and respect the gifts from American Indians.

20. Sweet potato = gau-gu-ma.

21. Potato = kam-ja.

22. Beans = kong. Make a joke/cartoon of King Kong, a giant bean with a crown.

23. Meat = gogi.

24. Fish = mul-gogi. Water meat. This is an interesting Korean point of view.

25. Sugar = sa-tang.

26. Salt = so-gum.

27. Soy sauce = kan-jang. Jang is a general term for sauce.

28. Cucumber = o e. Literally o and e. It is a joke in Korean.

29. Garlic = mah-nill Difficult to pronounce in Korean. People in Korea smell of gim-chi and garlic just as Indians smell of garlic and curry powder. You will too. It's part of the culture. Really noticeable when you step on the subway cars.

30. Wheat flour = meil ga-ru. Garu is flour or powder and you can also use pun for powder.

31. Buckwheat = mae-meil. Cold buckwheat noodles are wonderful in the hot summer.

32. Rice powder = sal ga-ru.

33. Cooked rice = baup. This word must be ejected quickly and can sound like baup or bob or bop to the English ear. Takes practice.

34. Rice noodle or dough = dukk. Very chewy and pleasant. It gets hard in the fridge. Steams nicely.

35. Water = mul.

36. Barley = borey. Little change. This grain was domesticated in Mesopotamia and brought to China-Korea.

37. Water melon = su-bak. Originally came from Africa along the silk road to China.

38. Millet = joe. This is an old grain, a budgie seed to westerners, yellow or green, and domesticated along the Yellow River, China.

39. Korean side dishes = na-mul

40. Taro root or tubers = tor-an, and the big elephant-ear leaves are often prepared too (toran tae). Taro came from SE Asia and the name has not changed much.

41. Sweet chestnut = paum. The chest refers to the wood being used to make fine chests/boxes, especially in Europe.

42. Walnut = ho-du. The wall refers to the wood being used to make fine wall (byuk) paneling.

43. Sesame seed = cham. The oil is also popular in Korean cooking, cham ki-rum.

44. Pepper (black or white) = hoo-chew. It may be onomatopoeia for the sneeze sound, like chili powder go-chew and the English word tissue. Act it out. Students are fascinated by this possibility.

45. Cinnamon = gay-pee. This one and pepper came from Indonesia. Koreans use few foreign flavorings compared to European cuisine.

46. Mountain mint = san-cho. This powdered herb, in the mint family, is sometimes added to cabbage soup.

47. Greens or weeds = jap-joe. Koreans have domesticated few vegetables but make use of many weeds or mountain greens for their side dishes: na-mul.

48. Carrot = tan-guun.

49. Ginseng = in-sam. Korea is one of the top producers in the world and even processes Canadian ginseng.

Copyright Robin Tim Day