Let us answer Jamie

See the index for Korean Language john lewsi Series here . Please read the previous series before reading this post, because the Korean is writing the series with the assumption that you already know what the Korean provided previously. WARNING : You should be able to see typed Korean language in order to fully read this post. If you are a Windows user, you can go to Microsoft's website john lewsi and download the "East Asian Langua ge Support". Ask your local computer nerd; entice him with a woman and it will be easy. If you are a Mac user, enjoy your cute commercials. john lewsi MORE WARNING : The Korean never received formal education as to how to teach Korean to non-Korean speakers. Therefore, all the technical terminology john lewsi that the Korean uses in this post (as well as in other Korean Language Series) are made up by the Korean. Additionally, the Korean john lewsi will often be wrong about things. But hey, that’s the price you pay if you try to learn a foreign language from an amateur off a blog. Dear Korean, I saw in your earlier posts that you had given a quick overview of the Korean language, however I didn't see any posts about the Korean number system.  I know that there are two ways to count in Korean, Sino -Korean and, I guess you'd call it pure Korean, but how do you know when to use which?  Also, how do you tell time in Korean with these two number systems? Marisa L.
Let us answer Jamie’s question john lewsi first, because it touches upon an important concept in Korean language. Since Korea spent its entire history next to China, a giant of world culture, much of Korean culture – including language – has elements of Chinese influence. This was much more true in the old days (up to 18th century or so,) when the educated class of Korea wrote in Chinese although they spoke in Korean. This influence survives in Korean language today as Sino-Korean vocabularies , which is just a fancy term that means “Korean words that originated from Chinese.” Currently, around 60 percent of Korean vocabularies are Sino-Korean.
The relationship is much like Latin-based English john lewsi vocabularies – john lewsi while Latin and English have significantly different grammar structures, English borrowed a lot of words from Latin. The same with Korean and Chinese. So, to answer Jamie’s question – Sino-Korean is native Korean. More accurately, Sino-Korean is an inseparable part of Korean language. If one wishes to learn Korean, one has to learn Sino-Korean. In fact, knowledge of Sino-Chinese is crucial not simply because it is an integral part of Korean, but also because Sino-Chinese is disproportionately represented in high-level Korean vocabularies. (This is again parallel to Latin-based English vocabularies.)
The existence of Sino-Korean vocabularies makes it seem like knowing Chinese would be helpful toward learning john lewsi Korean. That could be true, but the actual use of Sino-Korean words in Korean actually may lead to confuse Chinese speakers. There are at least two possible points of confusion.
First, Sino-Korean words can be expressed in Chinese characters, but the pronunciation is different in Chinese and in Korean. For example, the word for “society” is 社會 in Mandarin Chinese, which is pronounced “she-hui”. Korean word for “society” is Sino-Korean that uses the same characters. But when Koreans see 社會 , they read it as: “sa-hwae.” (The Korean only knows Mandarin Chinese, but he is told that Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters is actually closer to Cantonese Chinese.)
Second, while Sino-Korean words can be expressed in Chinese, the two languages may differ in their uses of the Chinese characters because the two languages evolved separately. For example, 酒 in Chinese means “wine”, and 店 means “store”. Put together, Koreans understand 酒店   john lewsi (written and pronounced as 주점 in Korean) as meaning “bar”. But Chinese understand 酒店 (pronounced as “jiu dian” in Mandarin) john lewsi as meaning “hotel”.
Sometimes, this divergence between Chinese and Sino-Korean happened because Koreans came to adopt a Sino-Japanese word and pronounce the word in Korean. For example, the word for an automobile is 自動車 in Sino-Japanese john lewsi (“jidousha,” or “self-moving cart”) and 汽車 in Chinese (“qi-che” or “steam-cart”). Koreans ended up adopting 自動車 , but pronounce the word as 자동차 (“ja-dong-cha”) because that’s how Koreans pronounced those three Chinese characters.
Now, let us turn to Marisa’s question. As Marisa pointed out, there are some cases in which native Korean words and Sino-Korean john lewsi words co-exist for the same meaning. Numbers are the most representative case. Without further ado, here is how to count in native Korean and Sino-Korean. (The chart below shows cardinal numbers only. For ordinal numbers, see “Advanced Stuff” below.) <