The Shoe is on the Wrong Foot — Fun with Korean Spelling

(This material is also available here as a doc file with the correct layout.)

The Shoe Is On The Wrong Foot

–

Fun with Korean Spelling

Dick Grune

dick@dickgrune.com

Version 1.4.0 – DRAFT

November 2015

Introduction

Hangul was originally designed to record the sounds of the language on paper, breaking with the Chinese method of recording the notions of the language on paper, there being far fewer sounds than notions. In accordance with this design goal, originally, that is for many centuries, people wrote the way they spoke: 머거요–I eat; 머가써요–I ate. This ended with the spelling reform of 1933, when the Korean Language Society decided¹ that when roots, particles, and endings could be written separately they should. So since 머거요 consists of the root 먹, the particle –어-, and the ending –요, it now had to be written 먹어요. The spoken form 머가써요 consists of the root 먹, the particle –어-, the particle –ㅆ-, and the ending –요, but since the particle –ㅆ– cannot be written by itself, it is combined with the preceding one into the writable form –었-, resulting in the present-day written form 먹었어요.

This principle is not followed, however, when the components are not roots, particles, or endings that could in principle be replaced by other similar roots, particles, or endings. A clear example is 바깥–the outside, the open space, which is obviously composed of 밖–outside, and 앝–field (as in 터앝–vegetable garden) but is written 바깥 nevertheless.

It is instructive to try and identify more roots and particles in words that may otherwise look quite obscure. Below is a list, and I am sure that as I learn the language better, I’ll find lots more of them.

List of Wrong-Footers

In arbitrary order:

우습다–to be funny, from *웃읍다:

웃다–to laugh, and –읍다–an adjective ending

만큼–as much as, from *많금:

많-–much, and –금: some adverb ending, cf. 지금, 조금, etc.

무겁다–to be heavy, from *묵업다:

묵– in f.e. 묵직이–heavily, and –업다–an adjective ending

–부터–starting from, from 붙어:

infinitive of 붙다–to stick to

즐겁다–to be enjoyable, from *즑업다:

즑-, and –업다–an adjective ending

즐기다–to enjoy, from *즑이다

즑-, and –이다–a causative ending

먹으러–with the plan of eating, from *먹을어:

먹을, future of “to eat”, and –어, the infinitive ending

슬프다–to be sad, from *슲으다:

슲-, and 으, a filler vowel? although there exists a verb 읊다 – to recite

슬픔–sadness, from *슲음:

슲-, and –음, a particle deriving a noun from a verb

너무–too much, from *넘우:

넘– (from 넘다–to exceed), and –우, an old adverb ending

달걀–egg, from *닭의알:

닭의–of-chicken, and 알–egg

며칠–how many days, from *몇일:

몇–how much, 일–day

(although Martin [pg. 39] derives it from 흘–day, as in 사흘, 나흘, 열흘)

실큼하다 – to be somewhat dislikable, from *싫금하다:

싫다 – to dislike, and –금, an adverb ending

말끔 – totally, from *맑금:

맑다 – to be clear, and –금, an adverb ending

Absence of Right Foot

Sometimes the shoe will not fit on the right foot, as is the case with the prefix 암ㅎ-–female-, in which the ㅎ should be under the 아, next to the ㅁ. But the required patchim ㅁㅎ does not exist. This leads to moving the ㅎ to the next syllable:

암캐–female dog (암ㅎ-–female-, 개–dog)

암탉–hen (암ㅎ-–female-, 닭–chicken)

and for consistency

수캐–male dog

수탉–rooster,

although 숳– could be written: *숳개, *숳닭.

In the same category would probably come words like

예쁘다 – to be pretty, from *예ㅃ으다:

예ㅃ-, pretty (the ㅃshould be written under the 예,but ㅃis not a patchim),

and –으(다), some connecting vowel (see above)

나쁘다 – to be bad, id.

This does not apply to ㄲ: words like 닦다 – to brush, and 깎다 – to reduce, do exist.

Are there verbs in –뜨다 or –쯔다?

The situation is even worse for words like

몰라요 – don’t know, from *몰ㄹ아요:

몰ㄹ-, not knowing (the ㄹㄹshould be written under the 모,but ㄹㄹis not a

patchim, it’s not even an official double letter),

and –아요, the polite indicative ending.

1Ho-min Sohn, The Korean Language, pg 143

Forms of the Korean verb 그렇다 – “to be so”

(This text is also available as a doc file here.)

In the first year alone of my learning Korean I collected the following clearly related but also unclearly related words:

그래서 – so

그래요 – that’s right; OK

그러면 – in that case

그러니까 – therefore

그러지요 – OK, I’ll do so

그런데 – by the way

그럼 – then

그리고 – and

그렇지만 – however

그렇다 – to be so

I tried to look up these words in Jungbum Seo’s “Korean Etymological Dictionary”, only to find that it mentions none of them (out of 1500 words). But it turns out that by simply using Naver one can already create considerable order in the above chaos.

It is reasonable to assume that all these words derive from or at least are connected to the verb “그렇다–to be so”, which can be found in any elementary text book. Naver gives us its original form, 그러하다; its stem is 그러하-, which over time reduced to 그랗-, which yields the present-day verb 그렇다.

This stem is used before some endings, for example –다, and –지만“but”. This immediately gives us

그렇지만 ← 그렇-+-지만 (stem + –지만) = that is so but → however,

where the ← means “is derived from”, and → means “leads in meaning to”.

Other endings use the infinitive, the form that is usually obtained by adding –아-/-어– to the stem, as in 먹어요 from 먹다. In this case we start with the old stem 그러하-. All verbs in 하– change their 하– to 해– in the infinitive, so 그러하– yields 그러해-. Over time this infinitive reduced to 그래-, the present-day infinitive. This 그래– gives us

그래요 ← 그래-+-요 (inf. + –요“polite”) = that is so → that’s right; OK

and

그래서 ← 그래-+-서 (inf. + –서“because”) = because that is so → so.

The endings –으면 and –으니까 follow the stem, and keep the 으 when the stem ends in a consonant:

그러면 ← 그렇-+-으면 (stem + –으면“if”) = if that is so → in that case,

with reduction of 렇으 to 러; or with even more reduction, both in form and in meaning:

그럼 ← 그럼–연 ← 그러면 = in that case → then.

The same reduction of 렇으 to 러applies to the ending –으니까:

그러니까 ← 그렇-+-으니까 (stem + –으니까“because I know”) =

because I know it is so → therefore.

The stem-following ending –지 has several meanings; one of them (in affirmative sentences) is that of reassuring the listener, for example: 했지요– I assure you, I’ve done it. This meaning is found in

그러지요 ← 그렇-+-지-+-요 (stem + –지– “reassuring” + –요“polite”) =

I assure you that it is so → OK, I’ll do so,

with loss of the ㅎ. Remarkably, Naver shows that the most usual meaning of –지, “asking for confirmation”, also occurs in the same construction:

그렇지요? ← 그렇-+-지-+-요? (stem + –지– “seeking confirmation” + –요“polite”) =

don’t you agree that that is so? → isn’t it?

but now without the loss of the ㅎ.

The old form of the stem is required to explain 그런데:

그런데 ← 그러하-+-는데 (stem + –는데 “against the background of”) =

against the background that that is so → that being so → by the way,

with reduction of –하는– to a single ㄴ.

These explanations find support in the fact that some forms exist in which 그– is replaced by 이– or 저-:

이래서 – for this reason

저래요 – it just is like that,

but none of these has as wide a collection of forms as 그-.

This leaves the form 그리고–“and”. The ending –고 means “and” after the stem of a verb but no applicable verb stem 그리– seems available, so for a while I puzzled over it. But Sohn, “The Korean Language” (1999), pg. 261, has the answer: 그리고 derives from the old noun 리 – direction, which is still used in “이리 앉으세요” – “please take this seat”. So we have

그리고 ← 그 리 하고 = this/that way doing and → and,

and 그리고 is not related to 그렇다 (unless of course if 리 and 그렇다 are related, but that is lost in the mists of time).

A Remarkable Phonetic Correspondence in the Chinese Numerals in Korean and Japanese

Both Korean and Japanese have two sets of numerals (words for numbers) for the numbers from 1 to 10: a native set and a set borrowed from forms of Early Middle Chinese (2^nd to 12^th century). The native sets are unrelated to each other but those borrowed from Chinese of course are, and the relationship is fairly obvious:

	Korean	Japanese
1	il	ichi
2	i	ni
3	sam	san
4	sa	shi
5	o	go
6	[r]yug	roku
7	chil	shichi
8	phal	hachi
9	ku	kyu, ku
10	shib	ju

Especially 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 are almost or completely the same, when we take into account that initial `n-‘ followed by an i-sound tends to disappear in Korean. Japanese words cannot end in a consonant except `-n’, and if such a word is imported into Japanese it is extended with a vowel, usually -u or -i. So the -u in the word for 6, `roku’, does not belong to the word en can be ignored, which makes it a good match for `[r]yug’.

The words for 1, 7, and 8 look similar too when we remember that initial `p-‘ in Japanese turns into `h-‘. But there is something funny here with the final consonants: where Korean has `-l’ Japanese has `-chi’, or actually `-ch’, since the `-i’ is just stuffing. With three occurrences in such a small sample this can hardly be coincidence. Now this is an unusual correspondence, and requires a sound in the original language that can appear as `l’ in one language and as `ch’ (as in `church’) in another.

When we pull in the numerals from Middle Chinese and from three present-day Chinese languages from the Wikipedia the mystery clears somewhat but new questions pop up:

	Korean	Japanese	Mandarin	Cantonese	Meixian	Mid.Chin.
1	il	ichi	yī	yaat	yit	ʔyit	Kor. -l ~ Jap. -chi ~ MC -t
2	i	ni, ji	èr	yee	nyi	nyiy
3	sam	san	sān	saam	sam	sam
4	sa	shi	sì	sei	si	shi
5	o	go	wǔ	ng	ng	ngu
6	[r]yug	roku	liù	loogh	liuk	lyuwk	r = l
7	chil	shichi	qī	tsaat	tshit	tshit	Kor. -l ~ Jap. -chi ~ MC -t
8	phal	hachi	bā	baat	pat	peat	Kor. -l ~ Jap. -chi ~ MC -t
9	ku	kyu, ku	jiǔ	gau	kiu	kyuw
10	shib	ju	shí	sap	sĕp	dzyip

We see first of all that the Korean and Japanese numerals are very similar to Meixian and Middle Chinese, and less to Cantonese. Mandarin is even more distant, in spite of the fact that Beijing, where Mandarin originates, is much closer geographically to Korea and Japan than the Guangdong region which is where Cantonese and Meixian are spoken now. Apparently Mandarin and Cantonese changed much more over time than Meixian, Korean and Japanese did, at least as far as numerals are concerned.

Next we see that our Korean `-l’ / Japanese `-ch’ correspond to a `-t’ in Middle Chinese, and again the correspondence is systematic. And it is striking that in all three cases a long `aa’ precedes the `-t’ in Cantonese. Still the path from Middle Chinese `-t’ to Korean `-l’ is not obvious.

A fair lot is known about Middle Chinese pronunciation, but most of it concerns initial consonants and vowels; much less is known about final consonants. But the Wikipedia page “Historical Chinese phonology”, section “From Old Chinese to Early Middle Chinese / Medials and finals” mentions that some Old Chinese vowels ended in `r’, and that in Early Middle Chinese this `r’ turned a following `t’ into a retroflex `t’, somewhat like the last consonant in the American pronunciation of `Burt’.

This retroflex `t’ seems a good candidate for the origin of our -l/-ch/-t trio. Its retroflex nature would make it easy for it to turn into a Korean `l’; its sound is less clear and more hissing than a normal `t’, so it could easily turn into -ch[i] rather than into -ts[u] in Japanese; and it can of course easily lose its retroflexness and become a normal `t’ in present-day Meixian and Cantonese. And the disappeared `r’ may help explain the long `aa’ in Cantonese.

Open and Closed Short O in Dutch / Open en gesloten o in het Nederlands

This item is of special interest to people with a more than usual interest in the Dutch language.

Until about 1850 Dutch had two different short o sounds, one pronounced  roughly like in the English word `loud’ and one like in `load’, but shorter. By 1900 the difference was largely lost and forgotten, but unbeknownst to almost all Dutchmen the difference is still alive and kicking to this day in a small part in the East of the Netherlands, which is indeed from where I hail.

To prevent this bit of linguistic curiosa from getting lost, I have made a list of all 1100 or so Dutch words with a short o, and have indicated how I pronounce them, plus all information I could find about this. The result you can find in this paper. It is in Dutch, since I reckon anybody interested in this level of detail of the Dutch language is at least able to read it.

My Web page on the subject contains two more items: the full list of 1100 words with their info, and a paper from 1849 by one D. Bomhoff Hz. detailing the pronunciation of the two o-s  in the town of Zutphen.

The Korean irregular verbs

Summary: Please look at my The Korean (Ir)regular Verbs.

Almost all languages that have conjugations (verb modifications) also have irregular verbs (Turkish being the only exception I’m aware of). English has verbs like “to write – wrote – written”; French has “écrire – j’écris – j’écrivais – écrit” and there is no shortage of examples from other languages.

Irregular verbs are a burden on language learners, but often there is help. Any self-respecting English dictionary has a list of the 300+ irregular verbs in the back, and for French there is a useful little booklet “Bescherelle La conjugaison pour tous” (“Conjugation for Everybody”), which for less than 7 euro’s explains everything there is to know about the French verb.

No such list or booklet seems to exists for Korean. There may be one in Korean, but with my present level of Korean (just passed my Beginners 2 test), it would be pretty useless to me anyway. There is the Web site Dongsa, which will conjugate any Korean verb for you, but it does not distinguish between regular and irregular, nor does it give any rules. And the rest of my learning material, from the simplest 50-page leaflets to the most solid and extensive 500-page works are all sketchy at best on the subject. I suppose if you’re a person who reads the 50-page leaflets you’re too junior to be interested in irregular verbs, and if you read the 500-page works you’re too senior to worry about them. Me, I’m in between, and confused.

In my The Korean (Ir)regular Verbs I’ve tried  to cover the Korean verb with the same thoroughness as the Bescherelle does for French. I have collected material from all sources available to me, cross-checked and tested in Internet searches. I think it is over 95% complete, but that’s just a guess.

A bit about the irregularity of Korean irregular verbs:

Usually the irregular verbs of a language are a jumble; it’s more or less every verb for itself. English “to write – wrote – written” does not lead to “to bite – bote – bitten”; it may be related to “to ride – rode – ridden” but that is already running  thin.

Not so in Korean. All irregular Korean verbs fall neatly in 6 groups, depending on the last consonant of the stem. So where is the irregularity? Answer: not all verbs that seem to fall into these groups are actually irregular. For example, all irregular verbs in -ㅂ (-p) are irregular in the same way, but not all verbs in -ㅂ are irregular. So when you see a verb in -ㅂ you know it might be irregular, and if it is irregular you know how to conjugate it, but you still don’t now whether it’s irregular or not. This means that for the language learner each group should come with a list of verbs that belong to it and a list of verbs that look as if they belong but don’t. In all learning material I have these lists are sketchy and by example only. I try to provide the complete lists.

The Small Words of Dutch

Most languages, including English, have a number of small words like “also”, “even”, “yet”, etc., which allow the speaker to make the sentence more precise. Dutch has a considerable array of such small words and the effect of them is sometimes less than straightforward. In a grammatical sense these small words are adverbs, and they are comparable to particles in some other languages, for example Japanese.

As a native speaker of Dutch I will in this page try to cover as many of these small adverbs as I can. This page will be primarily for foreigners who already speak Dutch reasonably well and want to improve their command of it, and for those with a general interest in Dutch. And maybe even native Dutch may find here something they hadn’t realized.

I don’t yet have a complete list of these small adverbs, however, nor do I have the time to discuss all of then at once, so this page will be updated (ir-)regularly.

I will start with an especially vicious little word,

      vast

None of its meanings are related to the English word “vast”.  As a small adverb in Dutch it has two unrelated meanings, depending on whether it is stressed or not. Unstressed it means “in anticipation of something” and stressed it means that the speaker implies “I suppose this and I’m almost certain of it”. In its unstressed form it comes near the end of the sentence, before the final verb if present; in its stressed form it comes right after the conjugated verb. (Why? See my Making Sense of Dutch Word Order).

Examples:

1. [de tafel dekken = to lay (set) the table]

(Unstressed) → Wij hebben de tafel al vast gedekt. = We’ve already laid the table (in anticipation of your arrival or of you finishing something else).

(Stressed) → Ze hebben vast de tafel al gedekt. = I expect they have already laid the table.

(Unstressed) → Gaan jullie maar vast. = You go ahead (in anticipation of us following).

(Stressed) → Ze zijn vast al weg. = I expect they are already gone.

2. The next pair of sentences is even worse:

[afruimen = to clear the table]

(Unstressed) → Jan en Greet hebben al vast afgeruimd.”” = John and Maggie have already cleared the table (so we can go right ahead with …)

In this sentence both “al” and “vast” are concerned with time, and they are often written as one word: “Jan en Greet hebben alvast afgeruimd.”

(Stressed) → Jan en Greet hebben vast al afgeruimd. = I think J & M may already have cleared the table (so we may be too late to help…)

In this sentence “vast” is concerned with probability (high) and “al” is still concerned with time (“sooner than expected”), and there is no special relationship between the two.

3. The stressed “vast” can easily be combined with negation:

(Stressed) → Dat gelooft vast niemand! = I don’t think anybody will believe that!

(Stressed) → Ze hebben vast nog niks gemerkt. = I’m pretty sure they haven’t noticed anything yet.

But I can’t make a sentence with the unstressed “vast” and a negation.

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Korean Language Learning Aids on the Internet

There are zillions of Korean language learning aids on the Internet, but there are two that I especially like: KWOW (Korean Word Of the Week) and Korean Word of the Day. In spite of their similar names they are unrelated, both in origin and in method.

KWOW is an ever-growing list of weekly video clips by Professor Oh, aka Ramona Champion, each 3 to 10 minutes long. Each covers a couple of related words, first in an explanation and then in a short sketch. The explanation is simple, but the sketch is real-world Korean, subtitled in 한글 and in English. For language learners the first 60 episodes are the most relevant.

Korean Word of the Day is a page that refreshes itself every day, redacted by koreanclass101. It takes the word of the day, and uses it in one or two sentences and a few constructions, shown both in 한글 and in transcription. A click on a button gets you the text pronounced by a very clear and very pleasant female voice. There is a calendar allowing you to visit earlier pages.

There are tens of other excellent teaching sites, for example those by BusyAtom. I wish I had the time to do more of them. Ah, well, language learning is a slow process, certainly of a totally alien language like Korean.

Why Korean?

When I had finished my last computer science book (Modern Compiler Design, 2nd Edition (2012)) I had only one project left, a computer project named Teckel. Not wanting to spend all my time programming, I thought I might learn yet another language, in addition to the ones I speak well: Dutch (from birth), German (from growing up in Enschede, on the German border), English (from school and life), and Hebrew (from having lived in Israel). So the question was, what language.

Having seen and partly studied quite a number of languages apart from the above (see f.e. my language summaries) , I thought a good criterion would be “the most exotic language that one can still reasonably learn to proficiency”.

That immediately eliminated languages like Russian and Hindi (Indo-European, so not exotic),Yoruba or Navaho (no way to reach proficiency), and Klingon or Loglan (not reasonable). I don’t think that at my age I’d still be able to learn a tone language, which again eliminated another bunch. Next went languages like Indonesian (too easy), Hungarian (I learned some from a colleague 30 years ago), and Arabic (I know Hebrew (closely related) already).

So in the end I was left with three contenders: Georgian, Korean, and Japanese. Georgian was attractive: it is a well-studied ancient language with a complicated and very interesting synatctic structure, Georgia is an upcoming nation, and the president is married to a Dutch woman (Sandra Roelofs). But it isn’t half as exotic as the other two. The choice between Korean and Japanese was easy: Japanese writing is clumsy and a huge and definitely no fun obstacle, whereas the Koreans have taken the logical step and designed an alphabet that “a clever man can learn in a morning and a stupid man in a week”.

There was another reason. When we visited Israel over the last ten years, we saw that visitors stayed away, except busloads of Koreans. They were the ones that were not afraid, and I liked that.

So now I am studying Korean at the Korean School of Amsterdam, which is actually in Amstelveen. A side effect of this process of elimination is that I am the only one in the class with no relation whatsoever to anything Korean.

Scope of this blog

Welcome to my blog about my projects! At the moment these are: Learning Korean, and a programming project Teckel.

For a further intro see the About page.