Today we focus in particular on lyrics from Girls’ Generation’s famous ‘Genie’.
소원을말해봐
(so-won-eul mal-hay-bwa)
This phrase opens the first verse and is repeated throughout the song. Let’s break it down…
소원– This is simply a noun that means ‘wish’.
을– This is a subject marking particle. All that this means is that you add it to the end of a noun to show that it is the subject of the sentence.
말해– This comes from the verb 말하다 (mal-ha-da), to speak, lit. to do speaking. Here it isn’t conjugated in the present tense, but with the next component…
봐– This comes from the verb 보다 (bo-da) which means to look or to see, but also to try, as is the case here. Together with말해, this loosely means ‘try to say,’ or ‘try telling me.’ We can translate it here as something along the lines of, ‘Go on, tell me,’ or ‘Why don’t you tell me.’
Can you work out the meaning yet? Together the whole phrase means, ‘Tell me your wish,’ but you probably knew that by now! So talk to us in the comments and소원을말해봐…!
