Red Velvet are back with a new EP called ‘Red Summer’ which is filled with 5 juicy summery songs. Today we are going to learn some Korean vocab with the fruity, fresh and funky title track – Red Flavor! This song captures the summer season in it’s happiness, youthfulness and it’s creative imagery, most importantly, about taste!
The song title 빨간 맛 (bbalgan mat) directly translates to red flavour, 빨간 coming from the word 빨간색 (bbalgan-saek) which is used to refer to the colour red and 맛 (mat) which refers to flavour or taste.
빨간 맛 궁금해, Honey (bbalgan mat / gung-geum-hae / honey)
This is the first line of the song and is translated as “I’m curious about the red flavour, honey.” 궁금해 comes from the base form 궁금하다 (gung-geum-ha-da) which means to be curious about something. This opening line also leads us as the listener to be curious too! We will spend the rest of the song trying to work out what this mysterious red flavour is.
Vocab!
여름 (yeo-reum) – Summer
깨물다 (kkae-mul-da) – To bite or to chew
녹다 (nok-da) – To melt
야자나무 (ya-ja-namu) – Palm tree
뜨겁다 (ddeugeopda) – To be Burning hot
여름밤 (yeo-reum-bam) – Summer night
바람 (ba-ram) – Wind or breeze
무지갯빛 (mu-ji-gaet-bit) – Rainbow light
내가 제일 좋아하는 건 여름 그 맛 (nae-ga/ jae-il / joa-ha-neun / geon / yeo-reum / geu / mat)
Translated as ‘What I like most is the taste of the summer“
What flavours come to mind when you are thinking about summer? For me, it’s fruit! In the Red Flavor MV, each member of Red Velvet symbolizes a different summer fruit and throughout the song there are references to many different kinds of fruit. Let’s learn what they are called in Korean!
Vocab!
딸기 (ddalgi) – Strawberry
수박 (subak) – Watermelon
포도 (podo) – Grapes
복숭아 (bok-sung-ah) – Peach
Other fruits like kiwi, pineapple and orange are the same word in Korean as in English.
니가 자꾸만 생각나 (ni-ga / ja-kku-man / saeng-gak-na)
“I keep thinking about you.”
태양보다 빨간 니 사랑의 색깔 (tae-yang / bo-da / bbalgan / ni / sa-rang-e / saek-kkal)
“The colour of your love is redder than the sun.”
내가 제일 좋아하는 건 여름의 너 (nae-ga/ jae-il / joa-ha-neun / geon / yeo-reum-e / neo)
The song concludes with this last line which means “What I like most in the summer, is you.” This means that all along the thing that reminded Red Velvet most of summer, the thing which had the best summer flavour was the summer love to whom this song is addressed to!
