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Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

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Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#41

Post by famouswaffles »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #37
famouswaffles wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formality and politeness is baked into Korean and you are basically always speaking at the right formality unless you ignore the rules. Your relationship to who you're speaking to (and who you are referring to if you speak about anyone else) changes the grammar of the sentence. The grammar changes mostly manifest in different suffix endings.

How do noble or formal titles work then? It seems very unlikely to just be a suffix ending.

The rules for how you speak to people and how you address people you are speaking about are different.

The whole thing is a bit more complex than suffix changes alone especially with more out there titles but generally speaking,

I think you've seen a bit on how the endings would change depending on your relationship to the hearer.

For the latter(addressing people you're speaking about)

For instance, You would basically never call an acquaintance just by name

Take the name 김영철

If you were on relatively equal social standing, you would generally address 김영철 as 김영철 씨 or 영철 씨

If you wanted to take it a step further in respect, you would replace 씨 with 님

For a senior in age or experience in say the workplace, it would become 선배 but this can be used to address the person on its own without the name attached.

There are also different words for how you would address different members of the family. Unlike in English, you would basically never call an older brother or sister by their actual name. It's more a generic brother or sister word that changes depending on if the speaker is male or female.

오빠 - female referring to older brother

형 - male referring to older brother

누나 - male referring to older sister

언니 - female referring to older sister

For royalty, there'll be different titles for different members of the royalty.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#43

Post by bee_rider »

photonbeam wrote: post #8
rcme wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English you can say "One beer please."

Or “Beer me”.

This definitely is the one that comes to mind. It is a special case though, it would be unusual to say “soup me.”

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#44

Post by hashmush »

yongjik wrote: post #24
schwartzworld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just decorative. Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

Korean has a crapload of complex speech patterns (degree of politeness - that's sheer madness) but the nice(?) thing about it is that it all comes at the end. So you can start your sentence without even deciding if it's a statement or a question. E.g., 오늘 그 식당 열어요 Today that restaurant is open. 오늘 그 식당 열어요? Is that restaurant open today? 오늘 그 식당 열 것 같아요. I guess that restaurant is open today. 오늘 그 식당 열 것 같다고 들었어요. I…

> In fact, learning English as a native Korean speaker, one of the greatest difficulty was asking questions - you can't just start your sentence and make it a question later, you have to mentally pause, construct your question in your head, and then invert the first word! It took me years.

This is quite interesting to hear, but I assume you mean that you always knew if you were going ask a question before you asked it. So the issue was the actual construction of the sentence itself?

If not, there are plenty of ways to bail out of a statement midway through a sentence.

- Korean is more efficient than English... right?

- Korean is more efficient than English, isn't it?

- Korean is more efficient than English? (raising intonation at the end)

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#45

Post by jinwoo68 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #40
KMnO4 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many levels of honorifics, from very low form to very polite form. Most aren’t used on a daily basis though, just like how most people don’t speak like they’re a lawyer addressing a courtroom. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_honorifics#Addressee_...

I tried translating it with a tool: "존경하는 각하, 맥주 한 잔만 드시게 해달라고 겸손히 부탁드려도 될까요?" Does that sound about right?

Close. But 드시게 is not correct in that place because its an honorific form given to yourself when you're trying to honor the other person. And I'd rather use 감히 instead of 겸손히, which can be roughly translated into "dare to"

"존경하는 각하, 맥주 한 잔만 마시게 해달라고 감히 부탁드려도 될까요?"

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#46

Post by LudwigNagasena »

localplume wrote: post #10
neom wrote: post #4

Having spent the last 5 years learning Korean, I've grown to find it an incredibly efficient language. 맥주 한 잔 주세요 Beer one please 화장실은 어디에요? Toilet where? 와이파이 있어요? wifi is here? You can process and even start answering someone before they've finished their sentence. By contrast in English, I'd say "Could I have another beer please?" - tell me what you need up front!

especially when you have great words like 눈물 = 눈 + 물 = eye + water = tears 물고기 = 물 + 고기 = water + meat = fish (although this only means the animal, not the food, which is weird. 생선 is the fish meat like cow v beef) 돼지고기 = 돼지 + 고기 = pig + meat = pork etc. there is a lot of other examples I'm forgetting but its cool. The modification of the verb root to denote tense and formality as well is pretty intuitive. Korean is…

Isn't English (and other Germanic languages) very similar in its propensity for noun+noun compounds? There is crab meat, horse meat, shark meat, etc. And if it weren't for the Norman Conquest, pork would probably be called pig meat. After all, it is simply called Schweinefleisch in German.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#48

Post by LudwigNagasena »

yongjik wrote: post #28
schwartzworld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just decorative. Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

Oh, and there's one really succinct way of expression that's not found in English: One can say something like 난 라면 - literally "I am ramen" (or something like that - it's a bit fuzzy because the "be" verb is omitted). It would be a ridiculous sentence by itself, but if your friend just asked "I'll have noodles, how about you?" then it's a perfectly fine response. Similarly you could even say 난 프랑스 ("I am France") if…

Isn't 난 just 나 (I) +‎ ㄴ (topic marker)? So it seems like 난 라면 should be translated more or less as "As for me, ramen" and 난 프랑스 as "As for me, France".

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#49

Post by creamyhorror »

yongjik wrote: post #28
schwartzworld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just decorative. Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

Oh, and there's one really succinct way of expression that's not found in English: One can say something like 난 라면 - literally "I am ramen" (or something like that - it's a bit fuzzy because the "be" verb is omitted). It would be a ridiculous sentence by itself, but if your friend just asked "I'll have noodles, how about you?" then it's a perfectly fine response. Similarly you could even say 난 프랑스 ("I am France") if…

You could just say "Ramen", "Ramen for me", "I want ramen", or maybe even "Me, ramen". But I get your point - it's more common in English to use a longer sentence. The same thing is pointed out about Japanese too - "watashi wa ramen" for "As for me, ramen" - it has the same topic-comment structure as Korean.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#50

Post by l3000 »

yongjik wrote: post #28
schwartzworld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just decorative. Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

Oh, and there's one really succinct way of expression that's not found in English: One can say something like 난 라면 - literally "I am ramen" (or something like that - it's a bit fuzzy because the "be" verb is omitted). It would be a ridiculous sentence by itself, but if your friend just asked "I'll have noodles, how about you?" then it's a perfectly fine response. Similarly you could even say 난 프랑스 ("I am France") if…

I may want to add that as a person who had a lot of exposure to Korean (but is not native). Directly translating for instance “나는 라면” with the example context you mentioned, feels like „in my case, Ramen“. The 는/은 is describing the 나 in a way that is contrasting whatever was said in the current context. It is certainly used for saying something that is different from the other. „Well in MY case, it is …“, but it may work for other cases too, I am not totally sure.
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