I sat down to catalogue (yes, dammit, Spellcheck, that's how it's spelled) the Korean words I know; there are more than I had thought. Here's what I came up with:
Hello, goodbye (that you say when you're leaving), goodbye (that you say when the other person is leaving), hi/bye (it's the same word), thank you, excuse me, dog, cat, elephant, apple, *banana, *papaya, *tomato, potato, bag, *cup, *computer, *cake, man, woman, boy, girl, child, good, honeydew (which is in Korean, phonetically, "muskmelon"), rice, bread, rice with vegetables, vegetable, California roll, *pizza, glasses, *contacts, medicine, pharmacy, teacher, school, middle school, who, one through nineteen in the Korean numbers (used for counting), zero through five, and one thousand, in Chinese-derived numbers (used for bus numbers, money, and such), *bus, person, United States, *France, Korea, Japan, *Canada, *Russia, book, cell phone, *chocolate, where, what, car, father, mother, dad, mom, please give me, this, that, over here (said to a waiter), *hotel, *motel, water, milk, *orange, *juice, tea, *lemon, *ice cream, beer, soju, bar, pencil, *pen, room, karaoke, *ski, *skate, *tennis, *camera, *cocoa, *coffee, mister, sir/ma’am, mountain, temple, *sauna, *health club, *golf, baseball, baseball park, *ball, *strike, *out, *home run, hit, *catcher, *first baseman, *second baseman, *third baseman, *left fielder, *center fielder, *right fielder, *strikeout, is, isn't, have, don't have, love.
(The ones with asterisks are derived from English and are basically phonetically the English words.)
Perhaps you can tell from this list where my interests lie (mostly baseball and food), though I only seem to know nouns, which makes it a little difficult to put together even a simple sentence such as "The left fielder is eating a papaya."
Also, I can read Korean letters and make the sounds, though that doesn't mean I know what any of it means.
And if anybody asked me about syntax, I'd probably say, "You mean like the surcharge on cigarettes?"
I have about the same size vocabulary that Koko the gorilla had, but one more cat.
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