Talk:Konglish

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[edit] V v. B.

just wanted to add..that 'v' sound cannot be pronounced by koreans..so they use 'b' sound instead but it is not that case in north korea..they substitute it with 'w' sound hence, 'vodka' in s.korea pronounced 'bodka' whereas in north, 'wodka'

I think this is very likely to be a lie. You can't write down 'wo', 'wu', 'yeu', or 'yi' in Hangul, and I doubt people would be able to pronounce 'wo' in the North. --KJ 07:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
In Korean it would just be called yangju. Korean people reading English words can certainly pronounce 'wo' so you can't assume this is wrong based on that.
No, of course each type of alcohol has its own name. Yangju is a general term that means foreign spirits. If you ask a Korean "what is this called in Korean" they will usually tell you "양주" (yangju) because they know you already know the names, since they are the same in English and Korean. If you were to ask what whiskey is called, then ask what vodka is called, and then look puzzled when you get yangju both times, I'm sure they would tell you whiskey is 위스키 and vodka is 보드카. They use Konglish for these because there is no native term for them.
Koreans love the Konglish term "whoa whoa whoa." It is spelt "워워워" according to YBM-Sisa's English to Korean dictionary (Under the entry for "Whoa"). Remember that the vowel 워 is written as "wo" when romanized, even though the sound is very slightly different. It is possible that North Koreans chose to call vodka "워드카" (wodka). The 워 sound would be closer to the vowel sound made by a Russian speaker saying vodka, and the north would have been more likely to have vodka introduced to them by Russians rather than Americans. However, I have no evidence of this to support the OP's claim. I did read a North Korean newspaper article with a Korean journalist friend of mine one time and the spellings of non-Korean words were extremely different.
It's important to note that North Koreans generally do not adopt foreign words. This article mentions that: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/30/news/dialect.php From the article: "When North Korean defectors are asked to go 'shopping' after they arrive in the South, they are at a loss about what that English word means. Likewise, South Koreans puzzle over what North Koreans mean by a 'vehicle that goes straight up after takeoff,' when the simple English word 'helicopter' will do."


I've never heard of some of these Konglish words, but I like to mention one thing: You forgot "Hwai ting!" ("Fighting!"). Back then when I first heard this strange word, I saw a bunch of athletes in a team putting their hands all in the center and raising them up at the same time after shouting "Hwai Ting!" I thought they were saying "High Team!" Hilarious.

Heh. I totally forgot this article. [wo] is indeed impossible for a Korean speaker to pronounce on the first try. It's just not possible under the phonotactics of the language. If people say otherwise, they're wrong or not understanding the statement correctly. --Kjoonlee 19:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] dialect v. accent

To me this article does not cite it's sources and it seems like it's missing parts. Also there is a huge difference between "dialect" and "accent" Dialect is the within one language use of words. Such as BEV versus what people term as "Standard English". The article also contradicts itself, it says things like it borrowed from the soldiers, then it says it borrowed it from TV. However, from my understanding of Korean and taking Korean classes it's neither of those. The influence was from the opening of Korea's gates to the west and finding things like "highway"s which they didn't have in Korea. Most of the loan words are words that were not found in Korea at the time of this event. THEN there was the occupation from Japan. (There is also no source that the loan words are Japanese from English loan words, and in fact the hangul doesn't seem to support this idea either... so that needs a source from an objective non-Japanese source.) Then the advent of TV took place. But even then the majority of the loan words seem to be technology-based. Such as television, computer, highway, ice cream. (Note that North Korea is another issue since they are trying to get rid of loanwords completely.) This badly needs sources and someone who knows what they are talking about. For example a linguist studying Korean... I'll give this about a week before I slap on the this article doesn't cite its sources tag and ask one of the linguists to look it over. BTW, I took first level Korean and I'm aiming to major in Cultural Anthropology... --Hitsuji Kinno 02:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is 'black english'?

Can some one enumerate on the term? Even the dictionary is kind of spotty on it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.179.67.14 (talk) 16:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC).

The use of “Black English” on this page is indicative of the shoddy scholarship Wikipages offer the world. I am taking the liberty of removing the term, as it is insulting to anyone of even moderate intelligence. “Black English”? Please. Konglish is strewn with US military slang, but to suggest that it is “Black English” is asking us all to traipse down the garden path past the point of logical return.

[edit] Added reference, sublanguage, not dialect

dialect is a linguistic term for lexicon and syntax defined by social class or geography. Konglish is not defined by this, since Koreans in general use it. The article which is more academically written and more creditible since it cites its references says that Konglish is a sublanguage(Linguistics), i.e. part of the larger language, but unlike register, is not defined by a social situation. This article still seriously needs citations. That means footnotes, etc as per wikipedia rules. I re-put up the request for citations that I had in the last revision.

The guy who wrote Life In Korea article was missing citations which breaks the rules for credibility--he's not a linguistic professor or even a Cultural Anthropologist. Journalists are journalists, not trained scholars. (Also the argument about Fan fic was weird because there was no tracking or backing up to the statements made and seems entirely wrong to me.) There is also no proof that it comes from BEV (Black English Vernacular) either, which is why I support that cut.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:K-qT1oSOh-sJ:www.cels.bham.ac.uk/resources/essays/Doms5.pdf+origins+of+Konglish&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&client=firefox-a http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:oYDEzPR4qhEJ:www2.kumagaku.ac.jp/teacher/~judy/gyoseki/36konglish.doc+origins+of+Konglish&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us&client=firefox-a

On the other hand, both countries had a clear and steady favorable relationship with the US. Moreover, the continued presence of the US military meant that modernization came to be synonymous with westernization in both countries. Thus, both Korea and Japan continued to introduce loanwords directly through English. In Korea, these newer borrowings clashed with the older Japanese ones, resulting in some linguistic confusion:
Many of the modern loanwords were borrowed through their Japanese renderings, but some of those have been given new versions taken directly from English. There remains considerable controversy over the standardization of current loanwords from English. The trend is to favor close imitation of American pronunciation of the words, rather than to follow Japanese patterns, as was sometimes done in the past. But for words well established over several generations, the now traditional version is usually conceded. (Martin 1992: 94)

is more reasonable (second link). It doesn't say the words "come from the US military and are military slang... but that the continued presence of the US military had the effect of Koreans wanting to borrow English. (As my Korean teacher put it, it became important to learn English.) So that mis-wording needs to be fixed because this shows there is no backing for those statements. (It also cites its references and doesn't put much weight on Scott Soper...) --Hitsuji Kinno 02:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Konglish words

Of course it would be quite possibly very boring to list all of the English words adopted by Koreans such as the terms for Western spirts (양주) like whiskey (위스키) and gin (진) or what have you now. But, it would be interesting to list the Konglish words which do not immediately transliterate into English. Examples would include: shutter man (셔터맨), gag man (객맨), and there are other examples I can't think of right now. Now, one can often guess the meanings of Konglish words if one thinks about it for a while, but others, such as my example of "shutter man," which is a term for a man whose wife runs a shop while he does not work (hence she is the chief bread winner of the family), and his "job" is to come to the shop to pick her up and close the shutter (hence, shutter man). There are other examples of words like this, but I'm sort of pressed for time. Anyway, it would be interesting/informative to get a list going on this page.

Justin