KF뉴스레터-Reexamining Popular Attitudes toward the Use of Foreign Words

Reexamining Popular Attitudes toward the Use of Foreign Words

Five months have already passed since I first came to Korea, but I can still remember clearly the emotion and excitement I felt when I heard last year that I had been selected for a Korea Foundation fellowship. For me, as a teacher of Korean, Korea was the country that had occupied my thoughts day and night.
As I resolved to do from the beginning, I tried to make each day in Korea count, and so I made an effort to experience many new things. Most of all, it was a joy to be in Korea to learn for myself things that I had only been able to learn and teach from books. The fact that such an organization as the Korea Foundation exists to promote the development of Korean Studies in foreign
countries makes it worthy of the highest praise.

Of course, despite all the wonderful things I have experienced, I have found that there are some things to regret, and one in particular is the rampant use of foreign words. Whenever I see foreign words that seem to be so common in books, newspapers, ads, notice boards, and signs, I am always a little perplexed and cannot help being surprised at Koreans irresponsible and indiscriminate use of foreign words.

The thing I find particularly difficult to understand is why Koreans use foreign words for things that have long had Korean or Chinese-derived words, such as "chicken,""white," "wife," "position," "event," "know-how," "propose," "scandal," "agent," and "comment." Why do such words, for which Korean or Chinese-derived words already exist, have to be replaced with foreign words? Is it due to a lack of confidence in the native language? Or is it because of a sense of vanity, thinking that it looks fashionable to use foreign words?

Furthermore, I find the attitudes toward the acceptance of foreign words improper on the whole. It is well-known that Hangul, the Korean writing system d by King Sejong, is a phonetic alphabet with a wide vocal range, and is therefore very adaptable for copying sounds. But I doubt that this is the reason for the indiscriminate use of foreign words. As the saying Sinto buri implies, what comes out of the Korean soil is best for the Korean body. Accordingly, the direct borrowing of foreign words and their adoption into Korean does not suit the Korean constitution, like the way young Koreans dye their hair blonde. The same goes for the Chinese language.

In China, we adhere to a principle of accommodating foreign concepts from an egoistic perspective. Thus, "Coca Cola" is rendered "a drink that is fresh and tasty," "sausage" is "a savory stuffed pig intestine," "supermarket" is "a high-level market," and "computer" is "an electronic brain." Of course, these creative s are possible because Chinese is a language where sound and meaning are one and whose characters are syllabic. But in Korean, too, if the rich potential to coin new words using native Korean and Chinese characters is exploited, then surely foreign words can be expressed in Korean, even those words that do not exist in the ordinary Korean vocabulary. Thus, sausage could be called yang sundae, or Western stuffed intestine; supermarket could be chogeup sijang, or basic market; computer could be jeonja noe, or electronic brain; think tank could be dunoe jibdan, or a collective of brains; and roommate could be bang chingu, or room friend. The problem lies not in whether it can be done or not, but whether the will exists to do so. It could be that behind the easy accommodation of foreign words is a rejection of the creative process and an inclination toward laziness.

These days, as I watch Taejo Wang geon or Deoggi on television, I am captivated by the lines spoken by the actors who try to deliver the full flavor of the native Korean or Chinese-derived words. How beautiful is the Korean language! The sad thing is that this beautiful language is being defiled by the rampant use of foreign words. For all the various races on this earth, most find confirmation of their identity in their native language. There is a saying, 횗anguage is the index of a culture, and indeed language reflects the culture and history of the people who use it. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that language is the spirit and face of a people. As people take care to protect their faces, should they not also protect and take care of their language?

There is a Chinese saying that when a person says more than three words, one can tell what kind of work he does. For myself, as a teacher of Korean in China, I do not think it presumptuous to discuss Korean attitudes toward the accommodation of foreign words. Also, my concerns are not just superficial worries. That would be nothing more than sticking my nose into another person　 business. The important thing here is my love for the Korean language, and it is because of this love that it hurts me to see foreign words being adopted in such a rampant fashion. Of course, in an age of information and globalization, adoption of certain foreign words is inevitable to some extent, and I am not against such an approach as a whole. However, my only wish is that foreign words be adopted from a self-serving perspective and accommodated in a more creative way. Surely this will contribute to the preservation and development of an age-old culture handed down by generations of Koreans, and help to promote the excellence of Korean culture around the world.

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Reexamining Popular Attitudes toward the Use of Foreign Words

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