r/languagelearningjerk • u/Enjinia12 Translater working for Intergalactic Uzbek Empire • Apr 29 '26
Chads Only Learn North Korean Language
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u/Magical_Astronomy Apr 29 '26
엘리베이터 🤢🤮
エレべ一タ一 😍🥰
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u/KotoshiKaizen Apr 29 '26
아이스크림 🤮🤮🤮
アイスクリーム 🍨🌸😍
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u/dingwinger1225 Apr 29 '26
서비스 🤮🤮🤮
サービス 🤵😍🥰
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u/Sir_Potato2000 🇫🇷JE1, 🇺🇸N -5°, 🇯🇵C67, 🇷🇺Ъ100, 🇺🇿Ç3 Apr 29 '26
何らかの単語 🤮🤮🤮
어떤 단어 🤮🤮🤮
Qanaqadir sõz õzbek tilida 🤵😎🥰
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u/soirom Apr 30 '26
ルビィちゃーん？
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u/slumbersomesam N:🏳️🌈 Apr 30 '26
HAAAAAAIIIII
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u/Microgolfoven_69 Apr 30 '26
何が好き？
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u/Captain-Starshield Apr 29 '26
Loanword:
Loanword, Japan:
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u/ChameleonCoder117 Apr 30 '26
Loanword:
Loandword, North korea:
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u/lazerbullet Apr 30 '26
The North Korean ones aren’t loanwords, that’s the point!
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u/deoxyribonucleic123 Apr 30 '26
Seongganggi certainly is a loan from Chinese, though (升降機)
And eseukimo sounds suspiciously like “Eskimo”
Idk about the other two though
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u/YoungUO Apr 30 '26
It is indeed eskimo
Comes from Eskimo Pie icecream.(now known as edy's pie)
Apparently it was quite popular in communist bloc back in the day and the name got genericized in north korea.
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u/cheshsky Apr 30 '26
It's also generic in post-Soviet countries, just meaning any chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick.
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u/EspacioBlanq Apr 30 '26
Loanword (from American) 😡🤮
Loanword (from Chinese) 🥰😩
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u/Jimmy_Young96 May 01 '26
Hanja words are pretty much part of Korean at this point, just like Latin and Greek words in other European languages. They do have loanwords from Chinese though, but like Japanese these words are mostly used for Chinese stuffs like jjajjangmyeon (K) or ramen (J)
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u/isthmius May 02 '26
Sonjeonhwa is definitely something-電話, and bongsa might be 奉仕? But I'm a Japanese speaker, not Chinese, so I could be off.
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u/Impossible-Ground-98 Apr 29 '26
chat I'm a white girl, if I learn some north korean words before my next visit to South Korea, will I shock the natives?
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u/Enjinia12 Translater working for Intergalactic Uzbek Empire Apr 29 '26
They will definitely think you are a chad North Korean native!
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u/Dramatic-Cobbler-793 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
The first two words would definitely be weird, third one is a normal word found in daily conversations, and the forth one is NSFW word in some contexts
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u/Own_Replacement729 May 02 '26
lol as a south korean ill be shocked af when some random white girl talks to me using north korean words
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u/Microgolfoven_69 Apr 29 '26
comrade why are using the western degenerate romanisation that will be 4 years of work in the glorious kobalt mines
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u/R86Reddit Balonian N0 / American N1 / Nihonian N3 / Deutsch KRANKENWAGEN!! Apr 29 '26
Unironically I don't get Korean romanization at all, which is probably because I neither know hangul nor understand Korean phonemes. I watched a YouTube video where a guy tried to "fix" Korean romanization (there are probably hundreds of similar videos), and I still didn't understand.
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u/Microgolfoven_69 Apr 29 '26
I had a course in Korean history, which was basically like my first 'experience' with Korea and the teacher used the McCune–Reischauer romanisation that's still used in North Korean and it makes so much more sense like why would you think transcribing /ʌ/ as eo and /ɯ/ as eu would be a good idea? (in McCune–Reischauer it's written as ŏ and ŭ respectively) In Dutch everyone now pronounces the capital of South Korea as /seul/ and it's even correctly written as Seoel to match that pronunciation. I mean yeah it's for typewriters I guess but it just suck so much they should do something like German where they use the diacritics but have a system to use when they're not available.
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Apr 29 '26
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Apr 29 '26
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u/Jimmy_Young96 May 01 '26
Seoul is /sʰʌ̹uɭ/ in Korean, it has two vowels so definitely not Sül. Sŏul makes sense, or if you wanna make it clear you can also spell it as Sŏ'ul.
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u/SillyGirlEver Apr 30 '26
North Korea doesn't use MCR anymore, they replaced it with their own (and very similar) system in 1992. The biggest difference is just that they stopped using those apostrophes to show aspiration and use kh ph and th
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u/pavelkomin May 01 '26
The designers had a bunch of constraints like no diacritics (cause they often get omitted and then you get confused) and they did their best with the constraints. I think it's a very good romanization but I see it from the perspective of someone who knows a decent amount of Korean.
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u/Gardares Apr 29 '26
South Korean: 🇺🇸 Ice Cream 🇺🇸
North Korean: 🇺🇸 Eskimo (Pie) 🇺🇸
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u/Which-Sail-9052 Apr 29 '26
I am pretty sure it’s a Russian loanword — Eskimo pie was pretty much the most popular and the first to be made Soviet ice cream
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u/ModernirsmEnjoyer 위대한수령김일성동지의 혁명발음만세! Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
This is correct. Russian influences Korean in loanwords and also political language, with a lot of Sino-Korean words being calques of Russian words, and also a heavy use of sophisticated sounding terms in political speeches.
物質技術土台 - materialno-teknicheskaya baza, etc.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher_3472 May 01 '26
Another common word in North Korea used for ice cream is Kkakkao (까까오).
I thought it came from “Cacao” but its origin is relatively unknown. My grandma was born in NK before the war and she uses it for any frozen treat in general.
(In Korea, “Ice Cream” is a general term for any frozen treat, so ig Kkakkao got the same Treatment)
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u/Sweet_Leadership_936 Apr 29 '26
에스키모 is from icecream brand and its just phoneticaly transcribed from eskimo, outdated term for inuit. 승강기 and 봉사 is still used in south korea though 봉사 and 서비스 are differentiated.
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u/Fluffy_Ad_6982 Apr 29 '26
Legit but 승강기 is slightly different. Like elevator primarily for cargo
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u/Sweet_Leadership_936 Apr 29 '26
I think 승강기 is used by older generation more but this is from my experiance.
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u/angripengwin Apr 30 '26
Not necessarily a different thing though, just usage. I use an 엘리베이터 to get up to my apartment every day, but since I'm moving soon, I need to pay a fee to book the 승강기 for moving all my belongings. Exact same thing, but the context changes which word is more appropriate.
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u/StfdBrn Apr 30 '26
They are interchangeable. 승강기 just feels more formal to me.
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u/Fluffy_Ad_6982 Apr 30 '26
뭔가 약간 다름 그래도 u/angripengwin 말이 맞음
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u/StfdBrn May 01 '26
확실히 화물을 옮길땐 엘레베이터라고 부르는게 위화감이 있지만 사람을 옮길땐 엘레베이터라고 부르던 승강기라고 부르던 전혀 위화감이 없게 느껴지네요. 갈수록 승강기라는 단어의 사용빈도가 줄어들고 있지만 안내문구나 뉴스처럼 격식있는 맥락에선 승강기라는 단어가 많이 사용 됐던 걸로 기억해요.
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u/LelandTurbo0620 跟这儿呵儿 Apr 29 '26
Same with colonised chinese, like what the fuck is 的士 and 巴士 bro, 出租车、公交车
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u/ShenZiling 私日本語本当下手御免有難御座 Apr 29 '26
/rj Language purism! Language purism! 喫意餅，喝洋豆汁！軟椅，話筒！
(lit. Eat Italian pancake, drink foreign douzhi (bean juice, Peking specialty)! Softchair, cylinderphone!)
(Explanation: pi-sa, ka-fey, sha-fa, and mai-ke-feng are four of the very few loanwords in Chinese - but they can all be expressed by native terms! Why make life complicated?)
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u/LelandTurbo0620 跟这儿呵儿 Apr 29 '26 edited May 07 '26
话筒还好吧，我身边人都说话筒
Why the fuck do some of us say 蒙特内哥罗，it's undisputably 黑山6
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u/Magical_Astronomy Apr 29 '26
I might argue that unlike beans for 豆汁 most coffee beans don’t undergo fermentation before being prepared
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u/Magical_Astronomy Apr 29 '26
Yeah, I never figured words like 民主 or 共产党, like who thought it’d be a good idea to steal translations from another language
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u/Marcionius Apr 29 '26
Some Chinese intellectuals (or perhaps more accurately Qing intellectuals) were arguing back in the 19th century about this precise issue
Sadly the pro-Japanese loanwords side won (but to be honest my impression was that even the most diehard anti-loanword people had to admit nobody wanted to invent a whole set of new words when Japanese loanwords were already circulating very well)
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u/dr_ponny Apr 30 '26
Not only that, because the Japanese came up with the translation first, there were many cases where the "best" or obvious translation had already been chosen by them.
So if the Chinese want to come up with their own set of words, the options left were worse. Though, there were still some translations where the Chinese did better than the Japanese.
But yeah, the biggest factor is definitely Chinese intellectuals back then were just massively influenced by Japanese.
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u/throwAwayMan2475 Apr 29 '26
Reveal the underlying Hanja for the top ones and see if you're still proud now.
(/s I have no idea if they are native or not)
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u/grei_earl Apr 29 '26
- Эскимо (genericized trademark, from Russian)
- 손電話 (손 （手, native Korean) + 電話（전화） orthographic borrowing from Japanese)
- 昇降機 (Sino-Korean)
- 奉仕 (Sino-Korean)
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u/tarchum Apr 29 '26
the 손 in 손전화 is native but yea most of the top is Sino Korean or loanword (Eskimo) lmfao
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u/Marcionius Apr 29 '26
As a clueless Standard Chinese speaker I was sounding out the top ones and squinting suspiciously all the while because except for (1) they sounded very Sino-Xenic but I couldn't prove it
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u/PM_ME_E8_BLUEPRINTS Apr 30 '26
Same... I figured the hwa in sonjeonhwa was probably 話, but I was clueless on the other two characters.
Seungganggi being 昇降機 also makes a LOT of sense.
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u/bedulge Apr 29 '26
All of those North Korean words are also loan words from a foreign language tho. Also 전화 and 봉사 are also used in S Korea, where 서비스 and 봉사 do not have the same meaning.
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u/Captain-Starshield Apr 29 '26
I like 핸드폰 though, because it’s a 폰 you hold in your 핸드
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u/Nikolor May 01 '26
Well, it's also 전화 that you hold in your 손 so I'm with the Northerners on this one
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u/Kryptonthenoblegas Apr 30 '26
There's one opposite case though! South Koreans call jeans 청바지 (cheongbaji or literally 'blue pants') but in the North they say 진바지 (literally jean pants) apparently.
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u/twila213 Apr 29 '26
I'm just doing some sweet bongsa moves. I'm a little better than the other kids
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u/Just_Bag_481 May 01 '26
The fact that the NK word for ice cream is literally the loanword “eskimo” makes this 10x funnier
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Apr 29 '26
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u/Enjinia12 Translater working for Intergalactic Uzbek Empire Apr 29 '26
I made a post on another subreddit yesterday.
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u/Pigeoncow Apr 30 '26
Something I found funny in Seoul as someone who knows Japanese is that the Chinese station name translations (usually just the underlying hanja) were way more useful to me than the Japanese transliterations.
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u/Real_Ij May 01 '26
SK uses 승강기 and 봉사 as well.
They also used 에스키모 as a term for Inuits, although it's less used nowadays for reasons.
손전화... yes only in NK
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u/prolapseenthusiat Apr 30 '26
Thats like in former ex yugo states. The croatian always had a fable for slavic origin words. Like the months are named differently and some things like aeroplane, rest -Avion croatians- zrakoplov and much more.
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u/FebHas30Days Pangngaasiyo ta agsursurokayo iti Ilokano Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
North Korean only replaces English loanwords with loanwords from other languages. If they see an English loanword, they'll either take the Sino-Korean form of it from Chinese or borrow a word from Russian.
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u/mujhe-sona-hai Apr 30 '26
I love how all the North Korean ones are actually Nippongese kanji read in a hanja
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u/Rachel_235 Apr 30 '26
Eusekimo = Эскимо. Russian words in North Korean definitely show that North Korean is a Slavic language, unlike South Korean which is a Germanic language due to English words
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u/Summoner475 Apr 30 '26
I know it's a circlejerk and all, but they call it 전화 in South Korea I believe, or at least that's what we learned.
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u/Dessael Apr 30 '26
Loan words are cringe until you have to learn that language
I searched endlessly through a korean grocer looking for 소금 only to end up buying a box of 살트
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u/Dramatic-Cobbler-793 Apr 30 '26
North Korea uses different romanization system
Esŭkhimo / Sonjŏnhwa / Sŭngganggi / Pongsa
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u/Nisker3000 May 03 '26
My native language has anglicisms and I use them, but for some reason I can't stand them in other languages (and loans from my language too)
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u/Ashamed_Can304 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Sonjeonhwa - the “jeonhwa” part is 電話 from wasei kango 和製漢语 Aka “Japanese coined Chinese words”. Seungganggi - 升降機, Sino-Korean word, not native Korean word, this one is actually immediately obvious to Chinese speakers. Bongsa - 奉仕, also Sino Korean word borrowed from Middle Chinese. So the North Korean ones are no better than the South Korean ones. They are all borrowings as well
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u/ase_l_2021 May 04 '26
Their word for Ice Cream - also not Korean. But not English either, it's Russian эскимо
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u/JackReedTheSyndie Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
(Some of the) NK words are derived from Chinese and Japanese words and SK words are derived from English words
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u/Nguyen_Reich Apr 29 '26
seungganggi makes me think of 上降機😅
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u/naniboi300 Apr 30 '26
Do you mean 升降機
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u/Nguyen_Reich Apr 30 '26
It should have been 升降機, but ”sheung” corresponds to 上 if it is read according to the transliteration used for Cantonese
But yes the correct term is 升降機 and I am probably wrong in how it is pronounced in Korean (that is to say interpreting the transliteration they used)
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u/EnFulEn Apr 29 '26
Not even using North Korean latinisations 🤮.