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.”
But it's a great way to remember it.
True dat!
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
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,
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'm still convinced the '터' in words like 쉼터 comes from English, too haha
햄스터 ㅋㅋ
Haha you’re definitely not the only one.
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)"
Actually, maybe, yes.
Actually, no.
Understandable, have a nice day