# 아이고 진짜!



## kidarimnida

아이고 진짜!!!!!!!!! I've heard this expression when something was bothering to someone. I know what those words mean separately but no together. 

And I wonder if " 아이고, 진짜 심심하다!!! means I'm really bored (in a upset way)


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## saintjohanna

아이고 is just an exclamation that someone can say when he or she is surprised, extremely tired, or something. It is usually used in a little bit negative situation but it is still okay to use it out of hapiness.

If you add 진짜 right after 아이고, 진짜 barely has a significant meaning. It simply shows the intensity of your feeling. So the whole bunch of 아이고 진짜 bears almost no meaning. 'Argh' serves similar usage/meaning in English.

And yes, you can say "아이고, 진짜 심심하다!" and it doesn't even sound that awkward as long as you are extremely bored and want to shout it out aloud. It can be translated as "Argh, I'm so bored!" in English.


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## vvelder

I sigh 아이고 when I feel exhausted, tired, helpless, disappointed, and so on. I sometimes shout or exclaim 아이고 when I'm annoyed. And there are many more usages.
My parents and grandparents sigh 아이고 more than I, which makes me think that one's generational or physical aspect plays an important role in choosing the exclamatory expression as a means of communicating their feeling. But I'm not sure whether I will be saying it more than now when I am in my 60s. 

Although 진짜 is the opposite of 가짜, 진짜 could not be replaced with 가짜 in the given example, except for an awful joke:
"아이고, 가짜(로) 심심하다!!!"
In this respect, the word 진짜 in the sentence you wrote sounds more emphasizing the speaker's being bored than conveying its literal meaning.

But it seems unreasonable to me to consider the word 진짜 - whether it's emphatic or not - as a brand new adjective, adverb, or something far and independent from its principal meanings: 'genuine(-ly)', 'real(-ly)' or 'serious(-ly).' We can find an evidence:

"아이고 심심해."
"정말?"
"가짜로 그러겠니? 진짜 심심하다고!"


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## Superhero1

kidarimnida said:


> 아이고 진짜!!!!!!!!! I've heard this expression when something was bothering to someone.QUOTE]
> 
> Does this help?
> 
> "아이고 진짜 (짜증나려고 하네)",  "아이고 진짜 (화나려고 하네)"  "아이고 진짜 (열받으려고 하네)"
> 
> 
> The accent and the tone of voice change the meaning of this expression completely.
> 
> As you stated, it can be used as '아이고 진짜 심심하다 (not in an upset way, just mumbling) or '아이고 힘들어 (when climbing the mountain, you might feel tired. or there's too much work to do.) etc.


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## 가르시아

I feel like someone saying 아이고 진짜!! is just expressing frustration, as someone above said with the English equivalent being "Argh!!" or, say, "Uggh......"
Yeah, the tone is very important as well...the use of a lot of !!!!!!! makes me believe it's just a young person who's expressing frustration.


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## 조금만

Someone should write a book about 아이구 / 아이고. Properly explored, that one word could open up insights into everything from phonology (final-position ㅜ ㅗ vowel alternation) to anthropology (characteristic semi-ritual behaviour of female mourners at Korean funerals) and shed light on the processes of socio-linguistic change which alter the usage  of particular words among people from various social strata and generations as time goes by (especially since in modern Korea time and economic change moves faster than anywhere else on earth, so phenomena can be observed over a span of a few years that take decades or even centuries to become apparent in other languages.)

Exclamations, in all languages, fall into two broad categories: Those which are just noises with no definite semantic import in their own right; and those which are, or once were, nouns or verbs or adjectives with a specific meaning that occurs in contexts other than exclamatory remarks.  아이고 (or  아이구 according to taste or hometown provenance) is in the "mere noise" category. 진짜 is in the other category that have more semantic substance in their own right.

아이구 / 아이고 as a free-standing interjection occurs in so many contexts in Korean speech that it is impossible to say what "it" means. It can be an "Oh, that's my friend over there, what a nice surprise" sort of noise, or a "How can I possibly survive this disaster?" kind of primal scream.  As for who is likely to say it, it's by no means as gender-skewed as the overwhelmingly female "어머" or as age-skewed as "자기" the term of endearment predominantly observed between younger couples (re-purposed from 自己, originally meaning "oneself") but 아이구/고 is heard slightly more frequently from females, and is nowadays less often said by younger persons of either gender, except jokingly. Even among older people, it is now less universally used across all sorts of contexts by men than it is by women. A man in later middle age, presented with his baby grandchild, may well utter an 아이고 followed by a string of coochie-coochie noises, but he's rather less likely to use the exclamation when downing soju with his cronies than his wife is when she's helping her neighbour prepare the kimchi. However, advancing towards old age, "아이고" tends to be heard from men and women equally as the Korean equivalent of what my wife calls the "Senior Sigh" after she noticed that both of us had taken to sighing quietly to ourselves, for no particular reason, whenever we stand up or sit down. Koreans of a similar over-60 vintage tend to say 아이고, to no-one in particular and with no especial meaning, at such junctures, which are rather more frequent in Korea, since the over-60's in that culture find themselves needing to sit down on the floor, or hoist themselves up from it, more often than their coevals elsewhere.

However, when such all-purpose multi-contextual noises are paired with exclamations with more intrinsic semantic content, their meaning tends to become rather more specific. This is the case when 아이구 is paired with 진짜 or, more or less interchangeably, 정말, both of which in isolation mean "really" in the sense of "truly". 

Said with the two words in close succession with a similar tonal pattern on both words (first syllable rising or high, second syllable lower, for both words) the combination takes on some of the semantics of 진짜 or 정말 and gives a particular range of meaning to the "noise" as a whole, related to the original sense of 진짜 / 정말 in that it implies that the thing being expostulated about "defies belief". It's somewhat like the catchphrase of archetypal grumpy old man Victor Meldrew in the BBC sitcom _One Foot in the Grave_ when confronted with some aspect of modern life: "I don't believe it!" Though it is undoubtedly an expression of frustration, I think the description can generally be narrowed down a bit further to _indignant_ frustration. It's mainly uttered after an encounter with something the speaker feels pretty strongly should never have happened or shouldn't be the case. In the original example, my guess is that the speaker was saying the person addressed ought to have known better, or had more sense, than to keep yakking on in those particular circumstances, whatever they were. 

Like all Korean expressions that imply some sort of negative judgement about other people, we foreigners should use it with great care, and never to anyone in authority or older than ourselves, unless we want to be wilfully objectionable.

However, said with an additional prolongation on the last syllable of 아이구 and a slight pause before 진짜, with that second word pronounced with a questioning intonation, low-high, on its two syllables, the combination has an entirely different character, expressing surprised delight (though the semantics of "I can [hardly] believe it" are still there in the background) A child who is normally something of a classroom duffer who comes home from school saying he got top marks on a test may well elicit an 아이구 .. 진짜? from a delighted, but slightly incredulous parent. "Gosh! Really? [That's great!]".

It's perhaps worth mentioning as a chaser a related combination, 아이구 참 (or sometimes just 아이 참) which also expresses slight surprise and possibly also some annoyance, but not necessarily indignation. Some sources regard 참 here as another case of semantic-free noise (while others interpret it as the Sino-Korean 暂 -- brief [span of time] as found in 잠시만 or similar). By itself, 참 is the noise you make in Korean before mentioning something that just occurred to you (or which you choose to pretend just occurred to you, because you've only just plucked up enough courage to come out with it). When said in stern tones, the combination 아이구 참 generally implies a mild(ish) reproach to someone whom one thinks ought to have known, or done, better. It is often heard where English speakers would say "Tsk tsk", or "tut-tut", or maybe "Oh, come on! [You can do better than that...]" and again, Korean etiquette demands that it should only ever be used from senior to junior. Here too, though, a change in the manner of delivery can make a huge shift in meaning. Said in a kindly, smiling way (though again, only from senior to junior) 아이구 참 can be an appreciative (perhaps also mildly self-deprecative) response to someone who has visibly put themselves out beyond the call of common courtesy, equivalent to an English "Well I never! How thoughtful of you!"


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## 가르시아

Or, in the case of IU, or girls just trying to go the "extra mile" for that cute effect: 아이쿠 ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Thank you for the really detailed post 조금만


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