What to actually say in the first ten minutes
Say your name, say where you are, and say that your Korean is still rough — fifteen seconds, in that order. Then ask one question, and whatever they answer, ask a follow-up about it before you ask anything new. The twelve openers below fill a first conversation; the follow-up is what stops it ending at minute four.
The first fifteen seconds are a script, and that is fine
You are allowed to have the opening memorised. Nobody on the other side of a first call is grading you on originality in the first minute — they are doing the same thing you are, which is finding out whether this is going to be painful. A fixed opening is how you get through the part where you have no information, and the reason to fix it is that it frees the whole of your attention for the part where you do.
Three moves, in this order. Your name. Where you are. That your Korean is still bad. The third one is the one people skip and it is the most useful of the three: it resets what the other person expects, and a Korean speaker who has been told you are a beginner will slow down, simplify, and stop waiting for sentences you cannot build yet.
안녕하세요. 저는 다니엘이에요.
Annyeonghaseyo. Jeoneun Danielieyo.
Hello. I'm Daniel.
이에요 after a name ending in a consonant, 예요 after a vowel. That is the whole rule.
안녕하세요! 저는 지현이에요. 반가워요.
Annyeonghaseyo! Jeoneun Jihyeonieyo. Bangawoyo.
Hello! I'm Jihyeon. Nice to meet you.
반가워요. 저는 시카고에 살아요. 그리고 한국어를 조금밖에 못 해요.
Bangawoyo. Jeoneun Sikagoe sarayo. Geurigo hangugeoreul jogeumbakke mot haeyo.
Nice to meet you. I live in Chicago. And I can only speak a little Korean.
Say the last sentence before you need it, not after you have already stalled.
괜찮아요! 천천히 하세요.
Gwaenchanayo! Cheoncheonhi haseyo.
That's fine! Take your time.
Formality, in four sentences
Korean puts politeness in the verb ending, so you cannot avoid choosing one. Put -요 on the end of everything and you are speaking 해요체, which is polite, used by adults with each other all day long, and correct with a stranger you have just met. The stiffer form, 합니다체, ends in -습니다 or -ㅂ니다 and belongs to broadcasts, presentations and service staff talking to customers; using it on a call is not wrong, it just makes you sound like the news. The one to avoid is 반말, the plain form with no -요 at all, which is what close friends use and what a stranger will hear as either a mistake or a slight.
That is the entire formality problem for a first conversation. Not four paragraphs, not a table of seven speech levels — one habit: the ending is -요. You will sound slightly formal at worst, and nobody has ever been offended by that.
Twelve openers, and what comes back
These are ordered the way a first conversation actually runs, not by difficulty. The fourth column is the one worth reading twice: knowing the sentence is half of it, and knowing what lands back on you is the half that decides whether you keep talking.
| Say | Means | What comes back | Your follow-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 안녕하세요.annyeonghaseyo | Hello. | The same word back. | Go straight into your name. Do not wait. |
| 저는 …이에요.jeoneun …ieyo | I'm …. | 저는 …이에요. | 반가워요. |
| 이름이 어떻게 되세요?ireumi eotteoke doeseyo | What's your name? The polite form. 이름이 뭐예요 is fine and blunter. | Their name, often with 저는 in front of it. | Say it back once, with 씨 after it. It tells them you caught it. |
| 저는 …에 살아요.jeoneun …e sarayo | I live in …. | 저는 서울에 살아요. | 거기 어때요? |
| 한국어를 조금밖에 못 해요.hangugeoreul jogeumbakke mot haeyo | I can only speak a little Korean. | 괜찮아요! 천천히 하세요. | 감사합니다. |
| 천천히 말해 주세요.cheoncheonhi malhae juseyo | Please speak slowly. | They slow down, usually more than you asked for. | Nothing. Just carry on — you have bought yourself the rest of the call. |
| 지금 몇 시예요?jigeum myeot siyeyo | What time is it there? | A time, and often surprise at the gap. | 피곤하세요? |
| 밥 먹었어요?bap meogeosseoyo | Have you eaten? A genuine greeting in Korean, not a question about food. | 네, 먹었어요. / 아니요, 아직이요. | 뭐 먹었어요? |
| 주말에 보통 뭐 해요?jumare botong mwo haeyo | What do you usually do at the weekend? | One activity, named quickly. | 얼마나 자주 해요? |
| 영어는 왜 배우세요?yeongeoneun wae baeuseyo | Why are you learning English? The question that makes the call mutual instead of a lesson. | Work, an exam, or travel. Very often an exam. | 뭐가 제일 어려워요? |
| 다시 한 번 말해 주세요.dasi han beon malhae juseyo | Please say that once more. 네? on its own does the same job in one syllable. | The same sentence, slower. | 아, 알겠어요. |
| 저도요.jeodoyo | Me too. | Usually a laugh, and more of whatever they were saying. | Nothing — this one is the follow-up. It is the cheapest sentence in the language and it keeps more conversations alive than any question. |
The habit that decides the whole call
Every first conversation that dies does it the same way. One person asks a prepared question, gets an answer, says nothing about the answer, and asks their next prepared question. Four questions in, both people can feel it: this is an interview, and neither of them is enjoying it. The fix is one move, and it costs one sentence.
Ask about the answer before you ask anything new. You do not need a good follow-up. 거기 어때요 works on any place, 왜요 works on any decision, 얼마나 자주 해요 works on any activity, and 저도요 works on anything you have also done. Four sentences, and they compose with almost everything a person can say to you.
저는 서울에 살아요.
- You caught the city, and you know nothing about it
- 거기 어때요?What's it like there? Any answer hands you three more things to ask about.
- You caught it, and you have been there
- 저도 가 봤어요!I've been there too. Now you are two people with a place in common instead of two people practising.
- You did not catch the city at all
- 다시 한 번 말해 주세요.Asking is not a failure. It is the sentence that stops the next two minutes being a guess.
- They ask you back before you can follow up
- 저는 시카고에 살아요. 서울은 시카고보다 훨씬 커요.Answer, then say one thing that is not the answer. That is what turns a swap of facts into a conversation.
Where a first conversation stalls, minute by minute
The stalls are predictable, which means they are preparable. This is the shape of almost every first call between two people who have never spoken: two easy minutes, one bad minute, and then either a subject or a goodbye.
0:00–0:20
The greeting, and nobody is really listening
Both of you are checking your own camera and audio. Say hello, say your name, and do not put anything important here — it will not be heard.
0:20–1:00
Names, slowly, and one repeated back
Say yours slowly enough to be caught first time. Ask for theirs, then say it back once with 씨 on the end. A name you repeat is a name you will still have at minute nine.
1:00–2:00
Where you both are, and what time it is there
The easiest two minutes of the call. Places and clocks are concrete, they need no opinions, and the time difference is genuinely interesting to both of you.
2:00–3:00
The stall. You have run out of prepared questions
This is where most first conversations quietly end. The script is spent, nobody has said anything they care about, and the silence starts to feel like evidence. It is not — it is minute three, and it happens to everyone.
3:00–7:00
One subject, gone into properly
Pick a subject before the call and go down into it rather than across. Why they are learning English is the strongest one, because the answer is usually a real thing in their life — a job, an exam, a person — and real things have detail in them.
7:00–10:00
Close it on purpose
Say one thing you liked about the conversation and one thing you want to ask next time. A call that ends on a named next subject is a call with a second one, and that is the only thing the first ten minutes is really for.
Two things to have ready that are not sentences
The first is a subject, chosen before you open the call. Not a topic in the abstract — one concrete thing you could talk about for five minutes in your own language, and would want to. The whole of minute three is decided by whether you have one.
The second is a way to say you did not understand, said without apology. It will happen five or six times in ten minutes, and the difference between a good first call and a bad one is very often just whether those moments cost four words or thirty seconds of visible panic. 다시 한 번 말해 주세요. Then carry on.
If you are doing this on TwinTalk
Two things are different, and both of them change the first two minutes. You are on camera from the first second and so are they, which removes the entire question of who you are actually talking to — and it is why safety here starts with the camera rather than with a report form. And you speak your own language when you need to, with live captions running both ways, so a sentence you cannot build in Korean is not a dead end. Use the twelve openers anyway. The point of them is not that you have no alternative; it is that saying something in Korean at minute one is the only way minute one ever gets easier.