kangmi: learning korean

What Is Konglish?

The announcement by Rep. Kim Choong-whan that he is introducing a bill that would create a unified romanization system sparked a post by Scott Bug on the Korea Studies list (posted by the kind permission of the author):

Looks like a new bill is being put forward to enforece the standardization of romanized Korean - even personal names.

While they’re at it, they should practice what they preach and enforce a standardized Han’gulization of foreign words such as English. Is it “supa” or “syupa” for “super” ie, “supermarket”? The examples are endless. The next step would be actually to use English loan words properly in Korean, many of which are Koreanized versions of Japlish. The word “apart” in Korean is in fact an adverb-adjective used to refer to a noun (apartment) here. Again, the examples are endless. Splitting hairs over whether it’s “Pusan” or “Busan” (both are valid but ultimately failed attempts at rough approximation) seems self-indulgent and hypocritical to say the least when far more egregious examples of bastardized English and other foreign languages abound in Korea…

I’m not the first or the last person to wonder why Korean companies (as well as the Korean government) don’t employ more native English speakers to correct English usage in publications, signage, menus, and web sites clearly intended for a foreign audience. Korea would be doing itself a service by taking seriously the responsibility of communicating well with its intended audiences. (I can only assume that native speakers are needed to correct other foreign language usage as well.) I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend that stationery companies and clothing manufacturers employ the same quality control...real Konglish has a charming and amusing place in Korean culture. This might bring a smile to your face:

WOMAN
Woman is the Heart of
WALTON
How Can I Forget your Great Love?
The Name is Great,
plentiful of Love...

but this makes you wonder why they didn’t hire someone to clean it up:

So far, we have been concentrating on expansion of the hardware: improving the galleries and other facilities for visitors’ convenience. From now on, we will put more effort into developing the software related to operation of the Museum and life-long learning.

Konglish is the bad use of English by Koreans (and should also be expanded to include the bad use of Korean by native English speakers). Bad use may not be intentional, but left uncorrected it remains Konglish.

However, using loan words is not Konglish. Using loan words is a natural and sometimes uncomfortable part of language evolution. Speakers of the loaner language may disapprove of how loan words are used in another language, but once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s up to speakers of the new language to figure out how to use the new words. The process may be messy, but it’s their process.

Posted by kangmi on February 23, 2005 at 2:20 PM1 comments