Konglish: Encyclopedia II - Konglish - Origins of Konglish

Konglish - Origins of Konglish

Words such as chan-seu (찬스; "chance," "opportunity") and hom-reon (홈런; "home run") are adoptions of English words that are fairly faithful to their original meanings. In most cases, however, they are not exact counterparts to the original English words. For example, chan-seu is not used in the sense of "chance" as in "luck", but has an expanded meaning that covers bargain sales and other promotions.

Some words derive from regional or unusual varieties of English. For example, hat-ke-i-keu (핫케이크; "hotcake") is the Korean word for the dish more familiar as the "pancake". A haen-deu-pon (핸드폰; "handphone") is more familiar as a "cell phone" or a "mobile phone" to most speakers of the language. "Hotcake" is more popular in some regional varieties of English, and indeed is used in the popular expression "to sell like hotcakes". "Handphone" is used, notably, in Singaporean English.

In the 20th Century, a large class of Konglish words came into Korean usage by way of Japanese. These include words that originate from English and other languages, were modified or transformed in meaning from the original language as they were adopted into Japanese, and then were adopted into Korean usage. Because of this, many of these words were made to conform to Japanese phonological features, and therefore can be unrecognisable.

• wa-i-sha-sseu (와이샤쓰; "shirt; dress shirt", from Eng. "white shirt"; J. ワイシャツ waishatsu) in standard usage, "wa-i-sheo-cheu"—a form closer to the English pronunciation—is preferred
• ppa-kku (빠꾸; "back up") not standard usage

As longer English words were often abridged when they were adopted into Japanese, many words of English origin show up in Korean as follows:

• a-pa-teu (아파트; "apartment"; J. アパート apāto)
• mi-sing (미싱; "sewing machine"; J. ミシン mishin) in standard usage, "jae-bong-teul", a Sino-Korean word, is preferred
• te-re-bi (테레비; "television"; J. テレビ terebi) in standard usage, "tel-le-bi-jeon" is preferred

Some words came from other European languages, but are generally classified as Konglish as well.

a-reu-ba-i-teu (아르바이트; "part-time job", from German Arbeit, work; J. アルバイト arubaito, with same meaning as Korean)

The non-standard expression o-ke-ba-ri (rough synonym for "OK", "That's good") most probably came from a combination of English "OK" and Japanese "okimari (おきまり; to decide)". There is also an opinion that it came from the English phrase "Okay, buddy."

Konglish is commonly mistaken as the term for Korean Romanization.

Similar words exist for the mixture of English and other languages, notably Spanglish.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins of Konglish", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki