"주황색"
Translation:Orange
12 Comments
Depends if you want to learn a real word or an English word in another language. Korea uses way too many English words. One of the best things about this course is how little loanwords are included.
While I agree it's good for the course not to rely on loanwords (soley to enpower the learner to understand someone else who doesn't use as much Konglish), I think the rest of your statement is way off. "Korea uses way too many English words" totally ingores the uniques useages of those words in Korean and suggests you think the use of English is a deterioration of Korean. Loanwords are natural in any language, so I'm not sure why you have a problem with it. Or do you also think English should also give up all of the French words? I'll stop here, but I think you should reconsider the value of Konglish within the Korean language.
Loanwords have purpose when there is no natural basis for the word. English is a crazy example considering it's patchwork history; unlike old French or old German, old English has much less in common with its modern version because of that. Korean's lingual history may be a bit hazy, but it certainly has words for silk, leather, service, and orange of course. If you want to compare English using French words with Korean using English words, ok. French actually has a history in England, since the Norman Vikings took it over and made French the official language for 300 years, so you have the English word eat and the fancy French word dine (there are tons of examples like that). In Korean, if you say 아이 쇼핑 or 실크 or 콘디션 or 오랜지, there isn't the same history behind it, unless they shopped for eyeballs in the past and I didn't know. I can understand saying 엘리베이터 (even though they have 승강기) or 트럭 or 아파트 since English speakers helped rebuild the country. I don't think supporting native words ignores any uniqueness, but rather quite the opposite. There isn't a unique way to say 실크 or 오랜지 or 선글라스, it's just marketing most of the time. When I go to get ice cream, I don't want to have to say 스트로벨리 아이스크림 라지 사이즈 주세요. A whole one of those words is Korean. That's not some unique flair, in my view.
To be fair though, globalism and imperialism changed the way cultures (including their languages) spread. It became much easier and faster. So while you say that korea has no history with english (besides during the war) the truth is because interactions have increased and spread so much, much more is being packed into a much shorter amount of time.
Globalism tends to move towards homogenization since there is far less isolation (though you could argue the rise of far right parties kn many countries is trying to change that) than there used to be. And since english is now the lingua franca of the world, practically everyone under the age of 40 in the entire world knows at least some english, even if theyre not fluent.
I was going somewhere with this but i forgot where... I guess im just saying languages and cultures and merging and morphing at a faster rate, and due to imperialism and english being the lingua franca it and its attached culture seems to be the dominant one.
In any case, just because it is happening does not mean one raises their arms in surrender. That is precisely the reason why activist organizations exist for any cause whether you agree with that particular cause or not. The resulting reality is a product of all the different efforts to shape society.
That aside, globalism and cultural exchange eventually destroys participating cultures or dilutes them. So I tend lean on the side of cultural preservation by means of linguistic purification and immigration restrictions.
Of course, there is no inherent logical reason for supporting nor opposing any particular ideal. People just like to support things that are meaningful to themselves and supply the reasons to support their own views.
I think the key to the survival of individual cultures is a degree of cultural protectionism. Allowing cultures to mingle necessarily subjects them to selective pressure.
Really interesting comment chain. Thanks to all involved. My personal take is that regardless of their 'belonging' in a language or not, while loanwords are an easy win for learners, it's equally important to know the original. Both will come up in natural conversation. However, only loanwords benefit from intuitive understanding coming from English (what the hell is orenji... ohhh orange). So I think for the purposes of this course it's maybe better that they are not included.
What I'm saying though is at one point English was influenced by languages around it and Korean has also been influenced by other languages. I disgree that only the origional Korea words with "history", or maybe just a cooler story, have value. I dont see why Konglish's creation is any less of a history just becauase it wasnt born by trade. Like I said, I think it's a mistake to dismiss the origionality and ownership that Korean has over Konglish words. Konglish is seperate from English. Pronunciation and meaning often vary. I personally feel it has value.
As Kevin says there isn't a clear right or wrong and it's not really something we need to agree on. That said I don't think there's any need to put down someone who is asking why Konglish isnt being accepted as if they dont want to learn ~real Korean
Actually, it sounds more like Chinese word '橘黄色' hahah~ not from English but Chinese, many words sound similarly when i learn Korean. just kidding~
