2.4 Abbreviations and Recent Borrowings — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the common clipped forms — 알바 , 셀카 , 먹방 , 치맥 — and say what each is short for. Name the four patterns by which Korean shortens and welds: clipping, blending two words' first syllables, mixing a native element with an English one, and initialism. Guess the meaning of a shortened word you have not met, from its parts. Say why this lesson stops where it does, and how to tell a word that will last from one that will not. Prerequisites : 2.3, which showed you that a borrowed word means what Korean means by it. You also want lesson 2.2 Loanwords for the spelling, because several of these forms only make sense once you can see the blocks they were cut from. Korean shortens aggressively, and it does it by a small number of regular operations. That regularity is the useful part: once you know the operations you can often unpack a word you have never seen, which is a skill worth more than the individual words. This lesson gives the operations, and it gives the words that dictionaries have already accepted. How the spelling works Four patterns account for almost every shortened form you will meet. Clipping. Cut the tail off and keep the front, at a block boundary. 아르바이트 becomes 알바 — and notice what happened: the second block's vowel went too, so that the ㄹ could close the first block as a 받침 . That is characteristic. Korean does not simply truncate; it recompresses the result into as few blocks as the syllable rules allow. Blending. Take the first block of each of two words and join them. 셀프 plus 카메라 gives 셀카 , a selfie. 치킨 plus 맥주 gives 치맥 , fried chicken with beer — and the second element there is native-Korean rather than English, which brings us to the third pattern. Mixing. One element English, one element Korean, welded without any marker. 먹방 is the verb stem for "eat" plus the Sino-Korean element for "broadcast": an eating show. 소개팅 , from lesson 2.3, is the Sino-Korean for "introduction" plus the tail of 미팅 . These have no English source as wholes, and an English speaker who tries to translate them back gets nothing. Initialism. Read out the English letters, written in Hangul: 티브이 for TV, 피시 for PC, 에스엔에스 for SNS, which is how Korean names social media. The last of those is longer than the thing it abbreviates, which is a good reminder that these are Korean words rather than abbreviations in the English sense. Pattern Example What was cut or joined Clipping 알바 from 아르바이트 ; the front kept and recompressed into two blocks Clipping 에어컨 from air conditioner; the tail dropped at a block boundary Blending 셀카 셀프 plus 카메라 , first block of each Blending 치맥 치킨 plus 맥주 , one English and one native Mixing 먹방 the stem of 먹다 plus 방송 ; no English original at all Initialism 티브이 the letters T and V spelled out in Hangul One structural point worth stating. Because the operations cut at block boundaries and then recompress, a shortened form is often two blocks long whatever it came from. If you meet an unfamiliar two-block word that is not in your dictionary and does not look Sino-Korean, a blend is a reasonable first guess, and the first blocks of two longer words are what to look for. Word list Every word here is recorded in Korean dictionaries. That is the selection criterion, and it is deliberate: the syllabus for this course says that new coinages have a short life, so a course that chased them would need rewriting every year. What follows has settled. Word Meaning Notes 알바 ko alba a part-time job; a part-time worker Note for English speakers Clipped from 아르바이트 . Also a verb with 하다 : to work part-time. Far commoner than the full form. 셀카 ko selka a selfie Note for English speakers 셀프 plus 카메라 . Coined in Korean before the English word existed, so it is not a borrowing of "selfie". 먹방 ko an eating show Note for English speakers Native stem plus Sino-Korean element. Borrowed into English as "mukbang", so this one travelled the other way. 치맥 ko chimaek fried chicken with beer Note for English speakers A meal and a social occasion, not just two foods. The kind of compound that names a practice. 에어컨 ko air conditioner Note for English speakers From lesson 2.3. Included here because it is the clearest case of clipping at a block boundary. 리모컨 ko remote control Note for English speakers The same operation on two English words: first blocks of each, then recompressed. 노트북 ko noteubuk a laptop Note for English speakers A full compound rather than a clipping, but narrowed in meaning — see lesson 2.3. 티브이 ko television, TV Note for English speakers The letters spelled out. Commoner in speech than 텔레비전 . 피시 ko pisi a PC, a desktop computer Note for English speakers Also the first element of 피시방 , an internet café, which is 피시 plus the element for "room". 에스엔에스 ko social media Note for English speakers Five blocks to abbreviate three letters. Korean does not use "social media" as a phrase. 아이디 ko aidi a username, a login Note for English speakers The letters I and D. Not an identity document, which is a different word. 이메일 ko imeil email Note for English speakers Often shortened further to 메일 , which then means email and not post. 택배 ko taekbae a parcel delivery service Note for English speakers Sino-Korean, not a loanword, despite looking short and modern. A useful reminder that brevity is not evidence of English. 방 ko bang room; a shop of a certain kind Note for English speakers The second element of 피시방 and 노래방 . Native Korean, and productive: it turns a thing into a place where you do it. 노래방 ko noraebang a karaoke room Note for English speakers Native throughout: the word for "song" plus 방 . The English word for the same thing came from Japanese, not Korean. Two words there are worth a second look because they cut against the lesson. 택배 is short and modern-sounding and is Sino-Korean; 노래방 is a compound with no English in it at all. Shortness does not mean English, and a word you can almost read does not mean you have read it. When to trust a shortened word A learner meeting Kore