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Why Koreans ask what year you were born

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Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#331

Post by jjani »

GreyMolecules wrote: post #42

This article does not address another layer that makes the Korean age system complicated: the "빠른" system. It refers to people born in January or February who, due to the school cutoff being in March, often enter school a year early and socially identify with those born in the previous calendar year. For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to…

Just so you know, the system has been adjusted a while ago so that new 빠른 no longer occur.

And it wouldn't matter anyway; the changes from the top are already having their effect, elementary school kids are starting to consistently use 만 나이 with each other.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#332

Post by jjani »

kwillets wrote: post #209
Leftium wrote: post #114

Koreans have some "hacks" to get around this (age-based) social hierarchy: 1. Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language. 2. Social (partnered) dance clubs go by nicknames for the same reason. Even though I dance with them on a regular basis, I don't know most of my dance friends…

Kakao ended the English names a year or so ago due to inevitable confusion, but now people are supposed to add the "nim" (dear) suffix to each other's Korean names instead, which sounds creepy. The funny part of the Kakao CEO asking to be called Brian is that there was a K-drama (Search WWW) with a fictional tech company, but they also made the CEO name Brian. I suspect if this idea had gone on every CEO would be cal…

Never heard someone saying 님 sounds creepy, it's very commonplace in tech companies, Kakao was far from the first to introduce this. I've worked at a place where everyone was ..님 and no one cared.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#333

Post by mhink »

dpifke wrote: post #213
sfifs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I find addressing people by surname uniquely stupid. Like are you calling the person or the historical clan? It perhaps made sense for medieval lords to address their underlings as if they were interchangeable, in our modern context that has largely done away with royalty, using surnames makes no sense. It becomes even more interesting when traditionally cultures (like mine) don't use surnames, but modern IT sys…

I have a very common first name (Dave) and a very uncommon last name (Pifke, pronounced PIF-key). The majority of my close friends call me by my last name, since there are several other Daves and Davids in our friend group. My brother's friends do likewise, since his first name is Mike and he runs with a bunch of other Mikes and Michaels. There's a naming collision when my brother and I hang out together, but since w…

Similar here. My last name is pretty unusual, but my first name is common, so I generally go by my last name with friends and colleagues. Oddly, I've gotten so used to this that it feels a little bit more formal when someone addresses me by my first name.

To make matters even more complicated, when I do use my first name, I almost always use an abbreviation. The only people that use my full first name are my parents, sister, and (occasionally) my wife, and it's really off-putting to hear it otherwise.

Names are interesting and weird.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#334

Post by jjani »

wccrawford wrote: post #254
Llamamoe wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary... I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan.…

As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that. I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it. And I've read sto…

> As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.

Are you sure? In Korea, everyone who seriously cares about this stuff absolutely prefer it if you get all of it right. Of course, plenty of people (probably most under 30) secretly hate it and are therefore thankful if you don't get it right as it gives them a semi-out to be slightly more loose as well.

> I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.

> And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.

Not trying to be rude but this pretty much tells me your first claim is likely wrong. Plenty of the exact same stories abound about Korea, especially online, yet they're both outdated and very cherry-picked. They're real, they happen (I've experienced them myself), but 99% of people would strongly prefer it if you were fluent in the language and followed every procedure as "normally" as possible.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#335

Post by jjani »

Leftium wrote: post #119

It can also be considered rude to use the more formal style of speech when the social hierarchy dictates the informal style should be used. The book Using Korean[1] gives a detailed explanation of how formal speech indicates social distance more than simple politeness: > [존댓말] indicates a psychological distance between the speaker and the hearer... a couple in a romantic relationship who normally use an intimate casu…

That isn't about the social hierarchy, it's about the switch. If the couple would always use 존댓말 - which is not the norm nowadays but still a large enough minority that it's not weird - then obviously it'd be a switch to 반말 that would be shocking; in fact it would sound even worse to suddenly do so during a fight.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#336

Post by jjani »

Tarq0n wrote: post #26
null_deref wrote: post #13

The fact that all Koreans that were born in the same year become of a legal age to drink on the same day, probably creates some cool memories if you drink responsibly

Korea has a binge drinking culture where adolescents frequently peer pressure each other to drink more.

Alcohol consumption in Korea among young adults has cratered over the last 10 years.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#338

Post by jjani »

fxtentacle wrote: post #229
joshdavham wrote: post #211

How does this generally work with romantic relationships? Do people usually only start relationships if they are of the same age?

Typically the girl will pretend the guy to be older, if that isn't the case. That's why girls in movies and K-Pop groups always shout "Oppa!". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwmSjveL3Lc And you might remember the Oppa that is Gangnam Style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

My entire social circle is Korean and I've never seen a same-age couple (or one where the girl is older) use 오빠.

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#339

Post by xenadu02 »

rawgabbit wrote: post #239
xenadu02 wrote: post #210

In the USA as a low-level employee address the company CEO as "heya phil, hows it going?". Then address your friend with "Hello Mr. Smith". In most cases you won't get a positive reaction out of either one of those (yes exceptions exist). How about this: address your husband/wife as "Mr/Mrs ", especially after a fight. Similarly when the kids have been doing something or you are frustrated with your partner say " you…

I am not sure about that. I am a low level employee and I address the CEO and the occasional board member I meet on a first name basis. I grew up in Texas with its culture of sir and ma’am. After leaving the military, I make it a point to address everyone on a first name basis. Doctor Dan. Father Frank. Nurse Nancy. On the other hand, old habits are hard to shake. When someone is extra nice to me, I often address the…

I put "exceptions exist" in my original post because I knew the pedants would jump on me with their individual anecdotes :)

The trouble with informal systems (which is how I personally classify English) is that practices and expectations vary a lot across every context you can imagine. It can vary between regions. Between demographic groups (eg age). On and on.

I suppose that isn't a surprise. Language is always evolving. Perhaps we are still in a transition phase (in US English) and haven't really settled on a new set of rules yet. See what some other replies have noted about using formal addresses vs first names in business scenarios.

FWIW this is hardly the first time. At one point ge (pronounced yee) was the informal pronoun, you the formal one. Saying "you" to your mates or lover would be extremely rude, implying distance. But you might use it if you were mad at them. But then it became a fad (probably among the kids) to use the formal pronoun. That eventually led to the loss of the informal pronoun entirely. I like to imagine kids and teens running around addressing everyone as "your majesty" ironically - because you can't call them out for being polite and formal even if that polite formality was opposite in intention. Being a smartass is a time-honored tradition :)

Re: Why Koreans ask what year you were born

#340

Post by xenadu02 »

yongjik wrote: post #243
xenadu02 wrote: post #210

In the USA as a low-level employee address the company CEO as "heya phil, hows it going?". Then address your friend with "Hello Mr. Smith". In most cases you won't get a positive reaction out of either one of those (yes exceptions exist). How about this: address your husband/wife as "Mr/Mrs ", especially after a fight. Similarly when the kids have been doing something or you are frustrated with your partner say " you…

According to a popular quote, "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey, not in what they may convey." You can convey relative social position in English, if you want to. You don't have to, if you don't want to. Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb. In English, you can't offend a reasonable person…

> Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb.

Sure, by the currently recorded official rules of the grammar.

If young Koreans just stop doing it then it will disappear within a decade or two - something only crusty old people bother with. Not that I have any say in such things.

I find the process fascinating though. I like to imagine what English was like when grammatical cases were being dropped from the language. Who decided to drop them and why? Kids being funny? People from different regions having difficulty understanding accents or vowel changes? What would someone at age 50, having used cases their entire life, think about everyone from London or everyone under 20 (or whatever cohort popularized it) when they just said all the words "wrong"? And when chided for speaking incorrectly just shrugged their shoulders and continued doing it?

On the other hand despite everyone agreeing that English spelling royally sucks... no one cares to make major changes to it. Even when writing informally in text messages or whatever. We all just keep going along with the system.

I also wonder how much computers are affecting us. Auto-correction may end up killing some forms of change to language over time. If GUIs and better input methods hadn't been invented so quickly would latin-based languages drop diacritics or consolidate some letter forms? Would languages like Japanese or Chinese have adopted Korean-like writing systems for convenience? Who knows. English dropped some letters because printing press letter sets came from Europe and didn't have those oddball letters. Who knows what technology might have triggered or prevented.

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