For First-time Lovers

처음 사랑하는 연인들을 위해 (For First-time Lovers) - 정용화 (Jung Yong-hwa)

This is a song about a concept that doesn't really exist in English. As some of you know and others of you don't, Korean is a language where levels of politeness are worked right into the grammar. Depending on your relationship to another person, you change how you say some words and you change other words all together. The formal half of this system is called 존댓말 (jondaemal) and the informal half is called 반말 (banmal, literally "half words" because you form it mostly by chopping off the polite endings used in jondaemal). (A good discussion about both jondaemal and banmal can be found by clinking on the links here: jondaemal and banmal.) To summarize, jondaemal is what you use with people who are superior to you in some way, whether by age, status, or otherwise, or with equals you're not especially close to or with whom you would like to maintain a polite or respectful relationship. Banmal is used to your social inferiors or with close friends or those older than you with whom you have a close relationship. 

So now you have a bit of a context to understand the context of this song. It's actually based on the actual experience of the singer (who also wrote and composed it, with a little help on the lyrics), Jung Yong-hwa, with his on-screen "wife" who is a few years younger than him. He sings about how he wants them to have a relationship where they can both speak banmal to each other -- in other words, both be comfortable enough to speak to each other informally, and thus remove the barrier of formal language. It's really quite a pleasant song, even if you don't know the words; I think, though, that the person who uploaded the song onto YouTube also has a translation of the lyrics if you care to click through.

And now, just because I can, and just because I love my Super Junior, I'll share my little sister's favorite music video ever (with English subtitles), 너 같은 사람 또 없어 (No Other).