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By Scott Shepherd
The hottest topic for the past month has obviously been the addictive Netflix series, “Squid Game.” Many have noted that the English subtitles changed the meaning, which is perhaps true but rather harsh on the translators. The nuances of shifts in honorifics and the forms of address can hardly come across properly in that little caption box at the bottom of our screens. I do think, though, that the word “oppa” could have simply been transliterated, rather than translated to “babe.” After all, Psy taught the West that word almost a decade ago.
Outside the world of Netflix, the advent of Hangeul Day has itself inspired plenty of news. Appropriately enough for the season, there have been a number of rather predictable odes to the writing system. It's clear that many Koreans are rightly proud of their language and the script used to express it. Indeed, the government funds a whole museum in Seoul dedicated to the writing system.
Alongside the articles praising Hangeul ― in fact, sometimes in the very same piece ― we've also seen the usual complaints about the abuse of the Korean language, the incorporation of English loan words, the decay of modern life, the general depravity of young people. Teenagers are using slang. We must stop them! Young people are adopting English words ― and Koreanizing the pronunciation and meaning. Somebody do something! What would King Sejong think?
Complaints about the degradation of a language are nothing new, nor are they restricted to this peninsula. Jonathan Swift complained about the dire state of the English language a good three centuries ago, and he was hardly the first to do so. It's an ancient phenomenon. Any day now, an archaeologist will unearth pictograms scraped onto the side of a rock, complaining about the unnecessary linguistic changes and ugly graphic innovations made by the upstart Egyptians or Babylonians.
This kind of thing will continue as long as language exists. Such complaints, however, misunderstand the way language works. Too often people (including school teachers, it must be said) approach both spoken and written language with a kind of top-down, prescriptive approach. They see language as static, and labor under the misconception that those rules which are so rigidly enforced in the classroom are in fact immutable rules of nature, rather than the arbitrary constructs that a society agrees on at any given time. They are wrong. Language is fluid, ever changing, ever in flux.
Of course, fears about the influence of the English language on Korean are founded in reality. There are dozens of loan words from English in daily use here. Some feel that the purity of the Korean language should not be sullied by outside influences, and certainly not by English.
That's generally the approach taken by our neighbors to the North. North Korea famously “protects” itself from the corrupting influence of English into the Korean language spoken there. Across the border you won't hear of “notebook” (meaning a laptop computer) or “radio” or any of the other words that South Koreans have incorporated into their language. Rather, the North invents its own “pure” Korean words to represent the same things. Sure, this protects the language from outside influences, but even in North Korea the language is not staying still.
The fact is that languages evolve naturally through use; inventive, creative people innovate linguistically all the time. It is inevitable that this process will naturally include the incorporation of words from other languages. To attempt to stop this process by force is little more than tyranny.
Indeed, to return to Squid Game, the very name of the series is itself a form of Konglish: the Korean title is “Ojing-eo Geim:” the first is a “real” Korean word and the second comes from English. Are we meant to retitle the series for the sake of protecting the language?
And there's yet more language news: while the dictionary ― the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to be precise ― may alas be a less trendy topic of conversation than “Squid Game,” it is no less glamorous in my eyes, especially after the decision to include in their latest edition twenty-six words derived from Korean. Of the words included, my favorite is certainly “fighting,” an interjection used to express support ― notably heard in Korea's Olympics archery team, though used in daily life too. It's a great example of the interrelatedness of the modern world: this word, as with several others, moved from English to Korean and back to English again.
It's important to remember, however, that the OED's inclusion of these words does not suddenly turn these words into English. All it's doing is acknowledging something that is already there. That is to say, the OED isn't adding words to the English language; it is merely recognizing the ones that exist. That's all a dictionary can ever do.
Admittedly, the fact that Oxford is such a respected institution confers a great deal of weight to its decision. But I repeat: the OED only adds a word that it deems already to exist. It's not like some committee sitting around a great oak table in the Bodleian Library has the final say over the way we speak. If there is a word that is widely used but not recorded in the dictionary, it is not any less of a word for that.
This is really the point I'm trying to make. Language doesn't belong to anyone ― and this fact is just as true for Korean as it is for English. The way we express ourselves should not be constrained by some grumpy old people who hate innovation. Language is democratic, anarchical, free. It thrives on the interchange of words and ideas.
People, when they hear what they perceive as crimes against the Korean language, often complain that King Sejong would be scandalized. To this claim, I have four things to note. The first is a matter of pedantry, in that Sejong introduced a script to facilitate the writing of a language that already existed. He didn't invent the Korean language itself.
My second point is that Korean has already changed beyond recognition from the time of King Sejong. How many modern people can actually read those early texts in Hangeul? The use of words and the forms of the letters have changed over time, and this change is natural and right. For those who want to cease all change in the language, I suggest they spend a good while looking up all the Korean characters that we no longer use.
Thirdly, King Sejong himself was a great innovator. That's what makes him so beloved. We cannot let his memory be used to stifle the language he did so much to develop and promote.
And lastly, I say again: language belongs to the people, not to dictionary writers or grammar snobs or teachers or academics or self-appointed experts ― and certainly not to kings.
Dr. Scott Shepherd is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.