Korean English Language Analysis

For decades, borrowed words or loanwords have become a significant part of the vocabulary of various languages from all around the world. In South Korea, Konglish, which is the use of English words written in Korean alphabet and used in Korean context, is a typical example for this phenomenon.

Korean is a phonetic language, which has its own alphabet called Hangul. After years of colonial and development, Korea has not only exchanged and absorbed the culture and language of its neighbors such as China and Japan, it is also greatly influenced by Western culture, especially The United States. This has led to the appearance of Konglish in the modern language system of the South Korean.

Not only does Konglish appear in daily conversation, but

This definition is also applied for non-English words in South Korea which are considered to be English. For instance, these Konglish words can have different meanings from their original English words, or they can be created by blending Korean and English words together. (CUI, 2012) The primary purpose in the use of these words is to fill in the lexical gaps in the language system by “borrowing” English words then nativizaing them into the Korean language. Words like Konglish are known under the name “Borrowed words”; however, there is no language that “borrows” a word from another one and intends to return the word after that. In general, when a language adopts new words, they do not maintain the words’ forms but change them in order to fit their official phonological system. For this reason, native English speakers may find it difficult to recognize the English loanwords because the words no longer look or sound like

However, pseudo-anglicisms occur not only in South Korea but in some other countries, mostly non-native English speaking countries, such as Singapore with Singlish, Thailand with Tinglish, China with Chinglish, etc… In Japan, there is a specific name for this linguistic term, which is Wasei–eigo. With the aim to rush towards globalization and new technological tools, Japan “borrowed” English words and directly put them into Japanese context. Because of this reckless borrowing, mistakes made during the translating process were unavoidable. (Yoneoka, 2014) This somehow explains the reason why Konglish is considered as pseudo-anglicisms. English words, as a lender, were translated into Japanese, and then translated one more time into Korean.