Everytime I heard my teacher or someone say "원해요" I just assumed it was Konglish and they were saying "Want 해요" but my teacher just told me it's a Korean phrase. I had no idea. Am I the only one? My teacher started laughing saying she's never thought about that.
원 is Sino-Korean from the Hanja character 願 which means "desire" or "want."
English loan words generally aren't clipped like that in Korean. A final -T gets transcribed as 트 for clarity, as in 탤런트, 콘서트, 노트, and so on.
There's a small Korean clothing brand and an unrelated fitness training app with the word "Want" in their brand names, and they spell it out in hangul as 원트.
This reminds me of myself learning that 많이 isn’t just “Many.”
BTS's "원해 많이, 많이" fits this particular post-thread combination so well.
Yes! I literally learned BOTH words with that song.
But it's a great way to remember it.
True dat!
or how 왜 wasn’t taken from “why”
Yes that’s another one! I remember learning to associate it with “Why” and with Chinese’s “为什么” (wei shen me/why)
This reminds me of reading a comment some years ago where someone said they believed 알겠습니다 was "I guess습니다" as in the agreeing "I guess (that's right)"
that reminds me of when espresso came out i and many other people on twitter were saying “is it that sweet? 알겠어“
omg
I always hear 알겠어 as "I guess so"
LOL!
it’s a fun coincidence for sure!!
Look up "false cognates". Plenty of fun examples between basically every language.
There's also false friends, words with the same origin that still sound similar, but mean very different things in their respective languages.
omg false friends is such a cute term
in cantonese, the word “cold” sounds like 똥 lol. so whenever my mom and i are at our local korean supermarket, which is always super cold for some reason, i have to tell her to refrain from commenting on how cold it is hahaha
It reminds me of how I see the Filipino "puto" steamed rice cakes at the Asian grocery store. Some Spanish-speaking friends busted out laughing because in Spanish "puto" is a very derogatory sexually charged insult.
I also thought that was a loan word when I was first learning Korean. I also used to think 신호 was from "Signal". Then when I learned about Hanja I thought "분식" was "minute food" (because it was fast).
한국사람들도 분식의 분이 밀가루라는 뜻을 모르는 사람도 많아요
Many korean people don't know that the 분 in this word means "flour!"
Omg that's such a fun fact! Does the 식 in it mean anything on it's own?
BunShik in hanja is 粉食. Shik is 食, in Chinese- shí which is denotes anything food related, to eat,
Food or meal, or to eat
I didn't learn as much Korean as I would have liked from my mom growing up, but I can never forget being called to the table with 식사~~~~~~~ㅏ!!
First time I saw USA's full Korean name as 미합중국, I thought it was about China.
I mean you could consider it a loan word… but from China. However, East Asian countries usually put Chinese vocab in a different category than “foreign words”because they have been in the language longer. Korean is harder to tell because every thing is written in hangeul.
It is the same thing in Japanese, but Japanese still uses Chinese characters so it is easier to tell what words came from Chinese. Words like that are called 漢語 “literally Chinese words”Then they classify other foreign words, usually Western in origin, as 外来語 or “Outside words.” It’s also easy to know what is a foreign borrowed word because they are almost exclusively written in a script called katakana (カタカナ). Then they have native Japanese words or 和語, written in a mix between Chinese characters and the other native script hiragana (ひらがな).
You’re on point.
As someone who also knows Japanese, I sometimes wish Korean still used mixed script to help with learning vocabulary. Learning the Hanja for words like 이용(利用), 현금(現金), and 확인(確認) is just instant neuron activation. Of course, I also know a majority of learners and Koreans themselves wouldn’t be keen on Hanja anymore. Oh well, I at least have my Hanja converter ready in my phone.
I barely know any Korean yet, but knowing Japanese helps me with my Korean. I've picked up a ton of vocab like 분위기 (雰囲気), 이유 (理由), and 도착 (到着). I love learning/noticing new ones! What's less fun is when my brain gets scrambled and I end up using the Korean word instead of the Japanese one when I'm speaking Japanese. I bet my pronunciation sounds super wild sometimes haha!
Watching any Japanese media since improving my Korean has been eye opening! My most recently-notcied commonality: the adverb 솔직히 for "honestly", which I believe has its equivalent as shōjiki (or 正直, per google?)
Chinese-etymology vocab in East Asian languages is like Latin-etymology vocab in English. It’s everywhere in the language, and just as often the vocab was created anew by the language’s own speakers using Chinese/Latin roots
And much Sino vocabulary having to do with modern concepts of technology and science, government and politics, industry, etc. etc. was coined in Japan and then imported into Korean and some even back into Chinese.
Edit: Apparently somebody out there doesn't like uncomfortable factual information, but this is simply objective reality. Instead of leaving anonymous drive-by downvotes, how about actually engaging with the information and educating yourself. It is basic historic fact that as part of Japan's modernization efforts around the Meiji Restoration and into the Taisho period, they imported a TON of "modern" concepts from the western world and coined a bunch of new Sino-based vocabulary for such concepts. Sometimes it was "repurposing" an older literary Chinese word that originally meant something else. And then in turn, said modern vocabulary was borrowed into Korean using Korean pronunciation of the Hanja characters.
Just a few examples:
공화국 / 共和國, republic. From Japanese 共和国 / きょうわこく / kyōwakoku.
비행기 / 飛行機, airplane. From Japanese 飛行機 / ひこうき / hikōki.
혁명 / 革命, revolution. From Japanese 革命 / かくめい / kakumei.
영화 / 映畫, movie. From Japanese 映画 / えいが / eiga.
전화 / 電話, telephone. From Japanese 電話 / でんわ / denwa.
병원 / 病院, hospital. From Japanese 病院 / びょういん / byōin.
And there are numerous others.
I'm still convinced the '터' in words like 쉼터 comes from English, too haha
햄스터 ㅋㅋ
As a Korean American, even I thought this was Konglish for the longest time
Haha you’re definitely not the only one.
Actually, maybe, yes.
Actually, no.
Understandable, have a nice day