Somehow I felt like studying with Quick Korean again today so that’s what I did.
I watched video for lesson 3-10, and then this expression came up: 그땐 그랬지. [geu-ttaen geu-raet-jji]
The teacher explains in Korean that 그땐 그랬지 is what you say when you think about the past feeling nostalgic and all warm inside.
I remember that 그땐 그랬지 is the title of a K-pop song that I liked some time ago. It was sang by Ali and C-Clown.
In Japanese, I would translate it just literally as 「その時はそうだったな」 but then I wonder how Popgasa translated the expression into English. Found it here.
So, according to Popgasa, 그땐 그랬지 is: “it was like that back then”.
Back to the sample sentence from Quick Korean:
어렸을 땐 빨리 어른이 되고 싶었어. 그땐 그랬지.
When I was a child, I wanted to grow up fast. Good old days.
And, my friend, that’s how Korean language is useful and relevant for me. You might think that you can learn anything if only you ‘apply’ yourself but it’s not true, your brain is not designed to remember things that are not useful for your real life. Why do you think we forget things we learned at school? ###