#124. 불 -- The Korean dollar (Hanja 5)

Being a hobbyist blogger and also a perfectionist, sometimes it becomes really hard to focus on writing a post. On one hand, I really love blogging and want to be writing a post every day, but on the other hand, I should really focus on my career and work on my projects. Of course, I end up being overwhelmed and usually end up not accomplishing either of these.

Anyway, I'm trying to push a project to its end and ran into several snags, and I was mostly obsessing over those for the past couple of weeks (still not resolved). As writing a blog post and doing sufficient research for these posts takes up an entire evening of maybe 6 hours, I have been too intimidated to start writing a new post. But I don't want to put off posting forever, and here's a quick post.

In Czech Republic, there is a town named Jáchymov. Pre-WWII, the town was occupied by mostly German speakers (after 1945, the German population was driven away), and it had the German name of Joachimsthal. Going nuts on etymology today, Joachim is the father of the Virgin Mary (this makes him the grandfather of Jesus!) and "thal" in German means "valley."

Joachimsthal in the 19th century.

Nowadays, Jáchymov is a spa town, thanks to the radioactive thermal springs near the former Uranium mines. Even prior to the mining of Uranium (which is no longer done, since 1964), Joachimsthal had its fame as the silver mining town since the early 1500s.

Silver mined from this town was used to make currency for the Kingdom of Bohemia, of which Joachimsthal was a part of. This currency was called "Joachimsthaler" (a thing from Joachim's valley). Soon, many other silver mining towns were producing their own "thalers," and coins became known as "thalers." The thaler was used all throughout Europe for about four hundred years since its conception in the early 1500s. Of course, as you might be able to guess from here, this is the origin of our word "dollar."

Here is one of the earliest Joachimsthalers, in which Joachim is pictured on the front.

However, the Spanish Empire, instead of using the German thaler, made their own currency called "Peso de Ocho" (piece of eight, the eight comes from the fact that one peso de ocho was worth eight Spanish reales). One peso de ocho corresponded roughly to one German thaler, as they were both silver coins of similar size. Many people believe that the shorthand for "peso de ocho," written as pˢ, is what gives rise to our symbol for the dollar sign "$".

Weirdly enough, the story does not end here. If you have interacted with Koreans of any age, you might have noticed that Koreans rarely use the word "dollar (달러)" in their conversations. Instead, you will hear confusing expressions such as:

"야, 저 카페는 커피 한잔에 2불밖에 안해!" (Hey, that cafe sells coffees at 2 dollars!)

Even the young Koreans (myself included) often substitute the word "불" for "달러," and the reason for this is somewhat interesting. The Hanja for negation of verbs is the following:

This Hanja is called 아닐 불, which means that it is pronounced as "불" and means "아닐 (not)."

Perhaps you can guess where I am going with this already -- this Hanja looks a lot like the dollar sign "$" if you squint your eyes. So instead of calling the foreign currency "dollar," which is admittedly very different from the Korean phonics, the Koreans decided that they would use the more familiar word "불," and it stuck to this date. Maybe because of its predominant usage to denote the foreign currency, this Hanja is used almost nowhere else (yet every Korean knows this Hanja!)

It is difficult to find out when this usage started, or whether it was actually the Koreans who started this (it could very well be the Chinese, for example, and the Koreans could have just followed suit), but this usage is interesting to me for many reasons.

First, this usage feels incredibly old-fashioned -- even in the 90s, it was common to see Hanja characters in newspapers and literature to clarify certain words, but this has gradually fallen out of fashion nowadays. The fact that the Koreans are voluntarily bringing Hanja back to everyday conversation almost feels anachronistic, although the usage is so widespread.

Secondly, I feel that substituting the foreign word "달러" for the familiar word "불" shows the Koreans' aversion to change (to be fair, many nations and cultures dislike change; I'm not trying to single out Korea here, just that the Koreans are one of them!) and their struggle to fit in something they have never seen before into their world views. To me, this fits in with the foreign policies of the late Joseon dynasty, where the monarchs tried to shut the entire country against the foreign explorers, for the fear of the unknown.

This is 흥선대원군, the father of the last king of Joseon. Instead of his very young son, he ruled Joseon for many years. There are so many stories to tell on this guy, and I hope I'll eventually return to him one day!

In any case, I love it when I see a recognizable piece of history in our everyday language, and I like to think that this bizarre mutation of the word "달러" into "불" counts as one of these instances!

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#113. 선폭풍, 후폭풍 -- When your relationship comes to an end (Hanja 4)

Note: this is a post about Hanja; if you are confused about the notation, I encourage to check out my first Hanja post, where my notation for Hanja is explained in more detail.

Have you ever thought about what steps you would take if a nuclear bomb were to hit your city? Having lived in the country with possibly the most active nuclear threat in the world, I definitely have.

You should be inside, if at all possible, because it seems that the majority of the nuclear fallout can be blocked easily by any physical barrier. As long as you're far enough from the explosion, being in a secure indoors location is your best bet to survival (and simple acts such as removing the outer layer of clothing or taking a shower can reduce your exposure to nuclear fallout.)

However, if you cannot get inside in time (you are likely to have about ten minutes to prepare), then you should duck and cover (to protect yourself from soon-to-be-flying debris, the heat, and the fallout), and open your mouth so that your eardrums don't burst from pressure. This is exactly as Bert the Turtle from the Cold War Era tells you:

The important thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to get up immediately after having survived the initial blast; when a nuclear bomb explodes, it will create a vacuum at the centre of the explosion (as it pushes out everything when it explodes), which means that after the initial blast, things will get sucked back into the centre of explosion to create equilibrium. So you should expect a second blast to follow soon after the first blast, in the opposite direction of the initial blast, and stay protected until this second blast happens.

This second blast is called the "reverse blast" in English, and "후폭풍" in Korean. The word "후폭풍" is made up of two parts: "후" which is Hanja meaning "back, late, or behind," and "폭풍" meaning "storm." So, "후폭풍" literally means "after-storm" or "second (later) storm." 

Here is the Hanja for "후": you pronounce this hanja as "후", but its meaning is "뒤," or "behind" in English. The numbers show you the order in which to write this hanja.

The Hanja 뒤 후 is used in many everyday words, such as 후진 (driving in reverse, i.e. driving towards the back); 오후 (afternoon); 후년 (next year); 후퇴 (retreat); 후사 (heir); 방과후 (after school); and 후기 (an after-story, which is a detailed account of your experience).

This word is, of course, a proper word that you can find in a Korean dictionary; and given that nuclear bombs do not explode very frequently, this word is used mostly as a metaphor. For example, the government may implement a higher minimum wage (just happened in Korea as of January 2018; now the minimum wage is 7530 Korean won, about $7.50 USD, up from 6470 Korean won, about $6.50 USD), and as a result, many people may lose their jobs, or small businesses may have to close as they cannot afford to hire workers anymore (there are signs of these, although the total effect remains to be seen).

A newspaper might decide to report on the aftermath of the steep minimum wage hike, by saying:

"최저임금 인상의 후폭풍이 우려됩니다." (The reverse-blast of the minimum-wage hike could become a worry.)

However, the Korean internet users found another clever way to use this word in a more everyday scenario. Consider the following breakup scenario, which many of us have must have experienced to some degree.

A declares that they no longer want to be with B; B gets upset and cries, and blows up A's phone with texts and missed calls. After a few whirlwind days of emotionally charged texts and phone calls involving pleading and begging, followed by anger and resentment, B finally accepts the breakup. B goes through many months of erasing and forgetting the memories of A.

Just about when B decides that the memories of A are no longer the cause of acute heartache, B's phone rings. It's A, asking: "How are you doing?" A regrets having left B, and would do anything to be back with B. Now it is A who is blowing up B's phone, begging for a second chance.

Aside from the role that one plays in this scenario (I have certainly been both A and B!) this is a familiar story to many people who have experienced breakups.

The Koreans are no exceptions to this rule. What's interesting is that they have extra vocabulary that doesn't seem to exist in the English language, to describe various parts of breaking up.

The word "후폭풍" describes the whirlwind of texts and phone calls that follow the breakup several months later, usually by the person who did the breakup, who realized that they made a terrible mistake of letting the love of their lives go. After the initial begging and pleading by B (which often have the intensity of the figurative nuclear bomb!), A returns the begging and pleading (also equally intense, just in the opposite direction), which matches exactly the nuclear blast scenario.

Many people who were dumped secretly (or not-so-secretly) hope that their ex will soon realize that they made a mistake. So they end up hoping for a 후폭풍. They may ask their friends on tips for making this happen, by saying:

"후폭풍이 오게하려면 어떻게 해야하지?" (What do I have to do to make the reverse-blast come?)

And they may end up laughing at their ex, when the reverse blast comes after they have moved on:

"헤어진지 일년이 다 됐는데 이제 후폭풍이 오면 어쩌라는거야 ㅋㅋ" (It's been a year since the breakup; what am I supposed to do with a reverse-blast now? lol)

When this word became standard usage on the Korean internet, people noticed the fact that there are, in fact, two "blasts" to a typical breakup. The first blast, of course, is when B has not yet come to terms with the fact that they will no longer be together. While there was no particular word that described this in the dictionary, the Koreans noticed that the Hanja "뒤 후" has a clear antonym, also in Hanja: the appropriate Hanja would have been "먼저 선," that is, the pronunciation is "선," and the meaning is "먼저" -- "first" or "before" in English.

There are many everyday words that use "먼저 선" as well: 선생 (teacher; as "생" is Hanja for "life," the Korean word for "teacher" denotes a person who lived first); 선배 (sunbae, or your seniors. "배" means "to learn," so these people are the ones who learned before you); 선대 or 선조 (ancestors); 선약 (prior appointment); 선입견 (prejudice, which are notions that are conceived prior to experience).

Using this Hanja, the Koreans started calling the initial blast of emotions following a declaration of breakup a "선폭풍," or the "initial blast." While it is not used as frequently, you can use this word to say things like:

"한바탕 선폭풍을 겪고나니 오히려 후련해요." (I feel like a huge weight has been lifted, now that I've gone through the initial blast.)

 or

"난 선폭풍때문에 힘든데 그새끼는 벌써 새 여자친구가 생겼더라." (I'm still struggling from the initial blast, but that bastard already has a new girlfriend.)

 Both of these words are widely accepted within the younger Koreans, and the nuance is extremely neutral. You can use these words without worrying about offending, while showing off your mastery of Korean slang!

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#104. A trilingual Korean joke (Hanja 3)

I saw the following photo (or 짤, if you are fluent in Korean internet language) while browsing a Korean website. The poster of this image claims that this is a useful image to download onto your phone, and send it to whoever you are texting at an appropriate moment. Can you guess when you are supposed to send this photo? (answer below the image)

The answer is that you send this photo when someone is making excuses. To understand why, you need to be trilingual, amazingly.

The word "핑계" matches up with the background photo, which depicts a pink rooster. The letter "핑" comes from the English word "pink (핑크 in Korean)," and just taking the first letter from it. And the letter "계" comes from the Hanja meaning "chicken." As far as I am aware, the letter "계" does not refer to either the male rooster or the female hen.

The full name of this Hanja is 닭 계. For an explanation of how Hanja works, see my first post on it!

This Hanja appears often enough in the Korean language that the Koreans would relate the letter "계" to a chicken; I am not sure if I would have recognized this Hanja if someone just showed it to me, however. Some Korean words that use this Hanja letter 닭 계 include:

- 계란 (literally, an egg of a chicken -- so it would be wrong to use this word for an ostrich egg, for example!)

- 삼계탕 (Samgyetang, a Korean chicken stew, where you boil a whole chicken with various roots believed to be very good for your health)

- 군계일학 (one crane among a group of chickens; this word is used to denote someone who is way above everyone else in a group)

So, a "핑계" could mean a pink chicken, because of this clever wordplay using Hanja. Of course, this is just slang, and a fairly minor one at that, almost like an English pun. The prevalent meaning of "핑계" that you can find in a dictionary is "excuses."

The next animal is fairly self-explanatory: a "돼지" is a pig. In this case, however, the Koreans noticed that "돼지" sounds almost like "대지," which is difficult to translate alone in English. The point of this substitution is that the above phrase becomes "핑계 대지 마," which means "don't make excuses." The word "대지," coming from the verb "대다 (to give, tell, or apply things such as excuses)," roughly corresponds to "make" in the above sentence.

And the final animal, which is a horse, comes with a single letter "마." This is another Hanja!

This Hanja, which you would learn sometime in elementary school in Korea, has the full name of 말 마. So it means a horse (말), but it would be read as the letter "마" in Korean. Some Korean words that include this Hanja are:

- 마굿간: a stable (for horses)

- 출마: to leave on a horse; however, nowadays, it means to become a candidate for an election, as all government officials going to work would have been riding their horses back in the olden days.

- 애마: beloved horse (along with the Hanja 사랑 애, meaning love); however, nowadays, this is a slang referring to your car. This slang has been used across all generations!

Anyway, putting all of these three photos together, we get:

"핑계 돼지 마" (pink chicken, pig, horse),

  which sounds nearly identical to

"핑계 대지 마" (don't make any excuses).

So, by the virtue of the fact that most Koreans will understand this short photo that incorporates all three languages (Korean, English, and Chinese/Hanja), the above photo becomes a witty internet .jpg file to use among the Koreans! Having spent a lot of my life in notoriously monolingual countries, I am occasionally blown away by just how non-monolingual the Koreans can be!

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