Similarities between Japanese and Korean Part One

Korean is one of the languages that has always seemed so alien and has had so little impact on my life till now (apart from the most important word- “kimchi”), that I’ve had a complete mental block on even your basic “anyong haeseyo”s. Luckily, being in Japan has not only added several important words to my Korean vocabulary (bulgogi, kalbi, namul- all foods, I’m afraid) but has also made learning Korean very slightly easier. This is not because I have personally proved the historical link between the roots of the Japanese and Korean languages (I’ve finally learnt enough about linguistics to understand that I know nothing about historical linguistics), but mainly because they have both spent the last 1500 years or so importing Chinese words with the passion of present day Americans importing Chinese toys. Add in some Japlish influence on Konglish and some grammatical similarities due to something or another that I don’t understand, and there is at least enough to stop me panicking for now. It has also given me something to collect that doesn’t take up any room in my luggage:

Vocabulary similarities between Japanese and Korean Part One
Months are named “one moon”, “two moons” etc. (irwol, iwol/ ichigatsu, ni gatsu etc)

The Chinese symbols and therefore meanings of the days of the week are the same, being 日／月／火／水／木／金／土曜日 – sun/ moon/ flame/ water/ tree/ gold/ earth day. The pronunciations of Wednesday (suyoil/ suiyoubi), Thursday (mogyoil/ mokuyoubi), Friday (kumyoil/ kimyoubi) and Saturday (t’oyoil/ doyoubi) are also similar.

Many words made from English roots but not used in English are similar, e.g. wonrum = ワンルームマンション – wanruum manshon = studio apartment (from “one room”), rinsu = リンス – rinsu = conditioner (from “rinse”), otobai = オートバイ- outobai = motorbike (apparently from auto + bike), nait’u = ナイト – naito = nightclub (in Japan, of a dodgy kind). There are also hundreds of shared words borrowed directly from English, and a few from other European languages like pang = pan (Portuguese- pao = bread) and misa (Latin- misa = Catholic mass)- Looooads more on this coming up I’m sure, maybe even a whole collection!

In both languages, there are totally different words for cooked and uncooked rice and for salt and salty.

Jar and bottle is the same word (byong/ bin)

Vocabulary that is exactly the same in Japanese and Korean
kion = 気温 – kion = temperature (weather)
kagu = 家具 – kagu = furniture
shimp’an =審判 – shimpan = referee
sagi = 詐欺 – sagi = fraud/ a ripoff
do = 度 – do = degree (Centigrade)
toshi = 都市 – toshi = city
un = 運 – un = luck/ destiny
misa = ミサ – misa = (Catholic) mass (both from Latin)
sanso = 酸素 – sanso = oxygen

There are also many words that are basically the same but have changes in pronunciation, and that will be coming up in Part Two (I really mean it for once, as I’ve already written this one)

NB. Translated words above are written in the order: Korean in Roman script (but without the accents showing the different o and u sounds that are usually used) = Japanese (usually written kanji, then Roman script) = English.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 4:29 am and is filed under Konglish, Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, Teaching English in Asia, Teaching English in Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.