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A comment on Lost in translation: The linguistic challenges facing N. Korean defectors (2025). Parent comment

Re:Lost in translation: The linguistic challenges facing N. ... by thaumasiotes on Monday May 04, 2026 @02:39AM (#48005384)
> In addition to pure Korean words, there's a surfeit of Sino-Korean (Chinese-derived), or Hanja words. Both of these are beautiful, and then the English loanwords stick out like a sore thumb.

Any chance the English loanwords stick out to you and the Chinese ones don't because you can recognize English words but not Chinese words?

I can recognize many Sino-Korean words and zero Korean words, so I tend to think of the Sino-Korean words as sticking out.

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Re:Lost in translation: The linguistic challenges facing N. ... by GreenDolphinSys on Monday May 04, 2026 @11:54AM (#48010319)
The Sino-Korean words stand out, but in a beautiful sense to my ears/eyes. It helps that they're generally short at 2 syllables and are represented nicely with the Hangeul script. Given that they make up about 57% of the Korean language [0], they're unavoidable.

English/German loanwords just stick out due to there being fewer of them, and they look atrocious in Hangeul, like little dirt islands in a sea of pure Korean and Sino-Korean words.

Since I study Hanja I imagine Sino-Korean words stick out a bit more for me, but I think anyone who's studied Korean for a while can get a sense of the two major groups. They just sound very different.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Korean_vocabulary

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