4 ms·

The article title is misleading. From the actual content of the article, there's some differences in accent (and maybe sentence structure?), which can lead to s

The article title is misleading. From the actual content of the article, there's some differences in accent (and maybe sentence structure?), which can lead to social issues for defectors, but the real issue seems to be vocabulary. So really it's no different from American English vs British English, except the North Koreans have been cut off from contact with the South.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
I agree, I graduated from the Korean Basic Course at DLI, and from what I remember, the main differences between North and South are not that insurmountable from a language perspective. Not having foreign loan words and using more pure Korean (as opposed to Sino Korean) words are the biggest differences. Certainly doesn't make them unintelligible to each other.
bane 11y ago
Right. Linguistic unification in the peninsula happened long before the war. Though there are still regional dialects and accents, the North-South split was far less divisive in language terms than this article assumes and has only had a couple generations to occur. Some interesting things that have happened since the war: - Korean national identity movements have been strong in both countries. In the North, an effort towards language "purity" has changed some of the vocabulary and eliminated Chinese characters from written communication. In terms of vocabulary, loan-words from other languages were replaced with "pure" Korean words. For example, South Koreans use "computer" (컴퓨터), while North Koreans have used (걔산기) (Gyaesongi) which means something else (though they've started to use 콤퓨터, an almost homophone for the the South Korean word and loaned from English). The article gives another great example with "donut". In the South, a preference to eliminate Chinese writing as a practical matter of preference has happened as well (these days it's pretty uncommon to see outside of maybe newspapers, people just can't be bothered to remember all of the characters), but knowledge of Chinese characters is still highly prized as a matter of scholarship and education. But the South also has more quickly incorporated loan words from various countries and you'll find loads of English and English-like loan words (sometimes filtered through neighboring Japan or China) ending up in the language and written in Hangul all over the place. French is also common, but usually written in Latin characters for commerce reasons. A recent cooking show on South Korean TV involves teams of two cooks preparing traditional foods, and one of the teams is from the North. There's no trouble communicating with the Northerners, though my wife lets out chuckles on occasion as they let slip stereotypical sounding communist slogans from time to time as they face difficult cooking challenges - "the North has nothing but strength!" as they work a noodle press by hand.
- asanagi 11y ago
  >North Koreans have used (걔산기) (Gyaesongi) Which sounds exactly like Japanese 計算機 (Keisanki) meaning calculator, so why bother eliminating the Chinese writing if you are going to leave the Chinese loaned vocabulary in? Now you're just left with a huge swath of the vocabulary where the roots have become indistinct and impermeable since you eliminated the orthographic clues from the writing. Replacing it with English loanwords seems doubly hare-brained since there's no context for association to learn them with! All this angst among the Eastern Asian nations over language-historical events that happened a thousand years ago. I bet the Chinese feel real dumb now that they obliterated their own orthographic heritage just in time for computers to come in and make mastery of the written character redundant. You don't see us fretting over whether we should eliminate the Greek roots or Phoenician lettering from English.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
  > There's no trouble communicating with the Northerners, though my wife lets out chuckles on occasion as they let slip stereotypical sounding communist slogans from time to time as they face difficult cooking challenges - "the North has nothing but strength!" as they work a noodle press by hand. Oh my god... that's hilarious to me somehow, and I don't have any connection to Korea. Is there a website somewhere that I could learn a few of these? I'd like to incorporate them into my repetoire.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Here's one list: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31446387 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31446387 But I'd love to hear things that people actually say.
  - bane 11y ago
    Here's some https://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=7661 https://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=...
getsat 11y ago
Maybe it's more specific... like a person from the "southern" USA meeting someone from Wales? They'd have quite a hard time understanding each other.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  There's more to it than that. Some English dialects/accents are historically associated with lower-class people, or people perceived to be stupider/lazier/etc. Which creates all sorts of impressions on another person from the instant you open your mouth. Many southern US accents have these kinds of connotations, for example, to such an extent that A) a lot of people won't take you seriously if you have such an accent and B) I'm glad mine got drilled out of me as a side effect of correcting for a lisp when I was a child.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  Are you serious? I'm pretty sure someone from South Carolina would be able to understand the average Welshperson (or anyone in the UK or Ireland)
  - eitally 11y ago
    You're not correct. There are accents strong enough in both SC and the UK to befuddle the other. Heck, even within SC it'd be hard for some northern transplants to understand rural drawls, and within the UK it's not unknown for Londoners to wonder at Glaswegians (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Tj7eezFJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Tj7eezFJ8).
  - engi_nerd 11y ago
    I don't know about that. I had difficulty understanding people from different parts of my own home state (Kentucky). I grew up in the Louisville area, and had difficulty understanding people from the eastern part of the state. I have also had severe difficulty understanding some of my wife's family, who are from Maine. And now I work with many people from the UK. I tend to find that if the person is from the south, I have few problems understanding them. The further north someone is from, the more difficulty I have with them. Some of my Scottish coworkers are, for me, almost impossible to understand.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago

I agree, I graduated from the Korean Basic Course at DLI, and from what I remember, the main differences between North and South are not that insurmountable from a language perspective. Not having foreign loan words and using more pure Korean (as opposed to Sino Korean) words are the biggest differences. Certainly doesn't make them unintelligible to each other.

bane 11y ago

Right. Linguistic unification in the peninsula happened long before the war. Though there are still regional dialects and accents, the North-South split was far less divisive in language terms than this article assumes and has only had a couple generations to occur. Some interesting things that have happened since the war: - Korean national identity movements have been strong in both countries. In the North, an effort towards language "purity" has changed some of the vocabulary and eliminated Chinese characters from written communication. In terms of vocabulary, loan-words from other languages were replaced with "pure" Korean words. For example, South Koreans use "computer" (컴퓨터), while North Koreans have used (걔산기) (Gyaesongi) which means something else (though they've started to use 콤퓨터, an almost homophone for the the South Korean word and loaned from English). The article gives another great example with "donut". In the South, a preference to eliminate Chinese writing as a practical matter of preference has happened as well (these days it's pretty uncommon to see outside of maybe newspapers, people just can't be bothered to remember all of the characters), but knowledge of Chinese characters is still highly prized as a matter of scholarship and education. But the South also has more quickly incorporated loan words from various countries and you'll find loads of English and English-like loan words (sometimes filtered through neighboring Japan or China) ending up in the language and written in Hangul all over the place. French is also common, but usually written in Latin characters for commerce reasons. A recent cooking show on South Korean TV involves teams of two cooks preparing traditional foods, and one of the teams is from the North. There's no trouble communicating with the Northerners, though my wife lets out chuckles on occasion as they let slip stereotypical sounding communist slogans from time to time as they face difficult cooking challenges - "the North has nothing but strength!" as they work a noodle press by hand.

asanagi 11y ago
>North Koreans have used (걔산기) (Gyaesongi) Which sounds exactly like Japanese 計算機 (Keisanki) meaning calculator, so why bother eliminating the Chinese writing if you are going to leave the Chinese loaned vocabulary in? Now you're just left with a huge swath of the vocabulary where the roots have become indistinct and impermeable since you eliminated the orthographic clues from the writing. Replacing it with English loanwords seems doubly hare-brained since there's no context for association to learn them with! All this angst among the Eastern Asian nations over language-historical events that happened a thousand years ago. I bet the Chinese feel real dumb now that they obliterated their own orthographic heritage just in time for computers to come in and make mastery of the written character redundant. You don't see us fretting over whether we should eliminate the Greek roots or Phoenician lettering from English.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
> There's no trouble communicating with the Northerners, though my wife lets out chuckles on occasion as they let slip stereotypical sounding communist slogans from time to time as they face difficult cooking challenges - "the North has nothing but strength!" as they work a noodle press by hand. Oh my god... that's hilarious to me somehow, and I don't have any connection to Korea. Is there a website somewhere that I could learn a few of these? I'd like to incorporate them into my repetoire.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Here's one list: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31446387 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31446387 But I'd love to hear things that people actually say.
- bane 11y ago
  Here's some https://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=7661 https://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=...

getsat 11y ago

Maybe it's more specific... like a person from the "southern" USA meeting someone from Wales? They'd have quite a hard time understanding each other.

ubernostrum 11y ago
There's more to it than that. Some English dialects/accents are historically associated with lower-class people, or people perceived to be stupider/lazier/etc. Which creates all sorts of impressions on another person from the instant you open your mouth. Many southern US accents have these kinds of connotations, for example, to such an extent that A) a lot of people won't take you seriously if you have such an accent and B) I'm glad mine got drilled out of me as a side effect of correcting for a lisp when I was a child.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
Are you serious? I'm pretty sure someone from South Carolina would be able to understand the average Welshperson (or anyone in the UK or Ireland)
- eitally 11y ago
  You're not correct. There are accents strong enough in both SC and the UK to befuddle the other. Heck, even within SC it'd be hard for some northern transplants to understand rural drawls, and within the UK it's not unknown for Londoners to wonder at Glaswegians (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Tj7eezFJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Tj7eezFJ8).
- engi_nerd 11y ago
  I don't know about that. I had difficulty understanding people from different parts of my own home state (Kentucky). I grew up in the Louisville area, and had difficulty understanding people from the eastern part of the state. I have also had severe difficulty understanding some of my wife's family, who are from Maine. And now I work with many people from the UK. I tend to find that if the person is from the south, I have few problems understanding them. The further north someone is from, the more difficulty I have with them. Some of my Scottish coworkers are, for me, almost impossible to understand.