The reasons Why Korean has so many words 4: Social Reasons Again

Last time I discussed how Korean society used to be caste dominated and how each caste had their own "language" which became part of modern Korean with the arrival of democracy. But even with democracy, Korean society and language continued to be layered.

That's right, it's still layered by age. So you still need all the polite and respectful duplicate words to talk to older people. And older people need to use all the duplicate words to talk down to younger people. Not to mention all the words they use to talk amongst themselves!

Old people, who do not have so much contact with popular culture, use old words for things which young people would use English words for nowadays. Young and old people alike will use special words and phrases, on purpose, in order to show their age and status. And this is another reason why Korean has so many words.

If you want to talk to older or more important people than you, here are the most common polite forms (honorific or humilific) of normal words:

• 자다ja-da / sleep - > 주무시다ju-mu-shida / honorific of sleep
• 있다itt-da / there is, stay, be -> 계시다gye-shida / honorific of there is, stay, be
• 아프다a-peu-da / it hurts -> 편찮으시다pyeon-chan-eu-shi-da / honorific of it hurts
• 죽다juk-da / to die -> 돌아가시다do-ra-ga-shi-da / honorific of to die
• 주다juda / give -> 드리다deu-ri-da / humilific of give
• 데리다dae-ri-da / give someone a lift -> 모시다mo-shi-da / humilific of give someone a lift
• 만나다man-na-da / meet -> 뵙다bwep-da / humilific of meet
• 밥bap / rice -> 진지jin-ji / honorific of rice
• 집jip / house -> 댁dek / honorific of house
• 이름i-reum / name -> 성함seong-ham / honorific of name
• 나이na-i / age -> 연세yeon-sae / honorific of age
• 안내an-ne / wife -> 부인bu-in / honorific of wife
• 말mal / word -> 말씀mal-sseum / honorific of word
• 사람/명saram/myeong / person -> 분bun / honorific of person

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 3: Social Reasons

Last time I discussed how many, many Korean words come from other cultures. However, many many Korean words are also a product of Korean culture and social history too.

Much like India, Korea had a caste system. As a cultural-Brit, I always assumed a caste-system was much like a class-system. Basically, top, middle bottom. What a European way of thinking! Caste-systems are far more complicated than this. You have upper and lower and middle castes, but each caste is more of a represtantion of your specific role in society, not a designation of wealth.
Your job or rather your father's job decided your caste. Basically manual labourers were in the bottom layers of society, but each different job was considered higher or lower than the next. People never intermarried even at those levels. It wasn't just princesses and paupers who couldn't see each other. It was carpenters and masons who couldn't get married. These strict, clear distinctions created a very distinctly layered society.

This solid layering created a society where the only caste mixing took place when trading or doing business. Each caste would have spoken their own language to same-caste-members. There wasn't just "one Korean". But, there wasn't simply a "common language" either. When communicating with higher or lower caste members, people used language specifically designed to talk up or down to people. Just look at all the different speech levels in use today.

So historically, the Korean language had many different branches spoken by many different people. When Korea became a democracy in the 1990s, the caste-layers were blended into one new society. As social barriers broke down, suddenly, all the language and words which were only used by one caste became part of a much larger language which is modern Korean today, growing and multiplying the number of words.

Footnote 1: I am talking about official Korean here, the Korean which is taught to foreigners. There are still many different kinds of Korean.

Footnote 2: Just because the caste system was abolished by no means does this mean the wealth was redistrubted. Generally 양반yang-ban / the top or warrior and scholar caste still have all the money, they just don't wear the hats any more!

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 2: English & 한자 (hanja) the hidden terror behind Korean words

Last time we saw that the very nature of Korean is to have many words because Korean doesn't really use patterns to create meaning. As a result of this, Korean is extremely open to new words from other languages.

Anyone who is familiar with Korea has been baffled, amused, concerned and surprised by the huge amount of English words that have come to Korean and are in every day use. With America as the only superpower and political antithesis to China, Koreans have embraced many aspects of their culture and language.

But long ago, when the world was a different place, Koreans were doing the same thingno surprise here with language. Back then China was the political and cultural centre of Asia. So naturally Korean is full of Chinese too (I've heard about 50% of the words). Before Korean had an alphabet and even after Korean had an alphabet, everything was written in Chinese characters. In a similar way like Latin influencing European languages Chinese did the same thing.

Originally these words came to the language through scholars, traders and politicians (the educated and therefore high classes). So more often than not there is a "pure" Korean equivalent to a word of Chinese origin, which the lower classes would have in common use, resulting in two words with the same meaning.

Even nowadays suffering Korean children are made to memorise countless Chinese characters which form the backbone of so many words. But there is a logic to this, much like English becomes Koreanised So have these characters and Koreans use them as building blocks for making new words which have no Chinese equivalent.

Korean needs words to create meaning. So by absorbing and adapting foreign words they can satisfy that need, often resulting often in duplicate and triplicate synonyms.

Tomorrow one more reason why Korean has so many words!

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 1

As a student of Korean you can go pretty crazy with the sheer number of synonyms a word can have, and you should learn them all! I first came across this when I started learning family members. For example there are more than three words for wife: 부인, 아내, 집사람bu-in, an-e, jip-sa-ram or child: 자식, 아이(애), 어린이ja-shik, a-i(e), eo-ri-ni. And these are just ones I've heard in conversation or come across in class!

It doesn't stop with nouns or even people, sometimes it seems like there are at least three words for everything in Korean. And by three words, I mean three words that are used every day. Know any other words for children in English? How about progeny or offspring? These are words used in horror films or dusty tomes. (look! another word for book!).

So why is that there are so many more words in use in Korean?

The underlying reason for this is the nature of Korean. Korean words do not change according to their role in the sentence.
In fact the only words which change at all are verbs, and they only change a little. Compare that to English with over 100 irregular verbs. And then bear in mind there are also irregular nouns in English - what's the plural of man, woman, child, person? Or how about adjectives? big - bigger, good - better. This does not happen at all in Korean.

However the point that I am making is not that there are exceptions in English. The point is that there are patterns in English. Korean has very few patterns. So instead of meaning coming from patterns, meaning comes from words and particles

자식ja-shik means something more like "my child(ren)" so you wouldn't use it for some children you saw on the street. In English we just attach "my" to show this relationship or "some" to show that there is no relatiosnhip. Words like "my" "some" or "any" can be attached to any noun and always mean the same thing. ie They follow a pattern. Korean doesn't have this pattern, so in every case of "my" you need a new word.

On the other hand 어린이eo-ri-ni is more of an official word for child. So you see childcare centres called "어린이 집"eo-ri-ni jip / children's house or "children's" tickets as opposed to "adults". So often 어린이eo-ri-ni has a plural sense to it. In English we would just change child to children.

So where English uses an established pattern to change the meaning of a word, Korean instead uses a specific word for each different situation. And that's one reason why Korean has so many words!

In the next post. More reasons why Korean has so many words.