"동서남북"
Translation:East, west, south, north
43 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I've tried looking briefly and haven't found anything to suggest there is a set idiomatic order in the English. Do you have a source to support the idea that most common is NSEW? Most common order I saw was NESW, that is starting with north and running clockwise around the compass. IMHO, since English appears to lack the same idiom, the course should either accept any order of the cardinal directions or require a translation of the Korean order.
Since we're trying to learn Korean here, I don't see why they would mix up word order to fit some US speaking habit. For one, many people here aren't from the USA so we won't have the same order in mind, and secondly translating in different order will only confuse anyone who's seeing Korean translation for the first time. How are we supposed to figure out which word means which side of the world if you randomly switch the order in English, Duo?
1011
It depends how you remember it. If you use the mnemonic "Never Eat Soggy Weiners" as we were taught in school then it goes NESW, others use NSEW as in "from north to south and east to west", the order daylight arrives in the summer, or NEWS, say, for what it spells out.
919
I was taught that too, but there was a kid in the class who's initals were S.W., so we would just put his name in instead of Soggy Waffles
38
In Bulgarian we usually say "изток, запад, север, юг", but there is no rule that the directions always have to be repeated in that order. Apparently there's no single rule for English either. So if you want to teach us that Koreans have a fixed order for the directions please do, but do not confuse us by changing the order in English.
269
There are a variety of possible combinations depending where one comes from. Best to stick to the literal translation.
269
Yes. "Everywhere; all directions; all sides ...(at virtually the same time)", but it is used more in the sense of "far and wide; all four corners (globally/nationally); widespread".