I'm a bilingual person, I am inherently interested in differences among distinct languages. The languages I speak fluently are Korean and English, for I had lived in Korea for 14 years before I moved to the United States 3 years ago. It might digress a little bit, but just like Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, I like the line of thought flowing as free as a flying bird. So let's begin my line of thought. Since I had lived for 14 years in Korea, my brain is basically wired in Korean way. However, last 3 years' rich exposure to English, I can now consider myself fluent in both languages, although my English would not be equivalent to that of a native English speaker. First of all, the two languages, Korean and English, are so different both in grammar and in word origins that you cannot perform literal translation between the two languages. For example, to describe the weather, English speakers would say, "It is hot," whereas Korean speakers would say, "날씨가 덥다," or "The weather is hot." However the translation I just performed for the simple sentence, "It is hot," is not even literal itself. To dissect the Korean sentence "날씨가 덥다," I can divide it into grammatical parts to compare them directly to their counterparts in the English sentence, "It is hot." 날씨-가 + 덥-다 (nal-ssi)-(ga) + (dub)-(daa) It + is + hot S + V Writing the sentences down this way we can now scrutinize each parts.
The subject (S) for Korean is "날씨" which is "weather" in Korean and pronounced nal-ssi. The subject for English is "it" which is a pronoun that refers to "weather." Here, one difference between the two arises: English customarily say "it" instead of "weather" when describing the weather, while Korean simply say what the actual subject is, explicitly. This difference illustrate the differences between the preferred phrases among languages. You might have realized that there is additional -가 to the Korean word "날씨" in the sentence. But there is nothing attached to "it" in English. Let me tell you something first, the "-가" is not the verb of the sentence in English grammatical sense, but it kind of is a verb. Adding "-가" to the subject of the sentence clarifies that the weather is the thing that's the doing the verb or that's being described. Since it serves to clarify, the "-가" can be omitted without causing much ambiguity. For example, you can say "날씨 덥다" instead of "날씨가 덥다." But the thing is, Korean language has very intricate system due to which the absence of the simple "-가" causes a change in connotation. For example, the shorter "날씨 덥다" sounds more informal than the longer "날씨가 덥다," which feels like a statement of fact. Since you cannot possibly translate such intricacy, Korean to English translation is inherently insufficient and incomplete. The two are so alien to each other. The verb part is also interesting and, to English speakers, exotic. English utilizes the verb "is" and "hot" to simply construct the equation "weather=hot." Korean does the same thing a little differently. The adjective (the counterpart for "hot") "덥다" has two important parts, "덥" and "다." The former contains the meaning "hot." Then, what does "다" do? It conveys the tone and formality of the statement. There are a myriad of tones and formalities that can be explicitly expressed in a Korean sentence and here are some examples utilizing the original sentence "날씨가 덥다": 날씨가 덥다: "Weather is hot"; a statement of fact; informative. 날씨가 덥네: "Weather is hot"; a statement of fact, conveying an inference that the weather is not the one that's desired; less formal than the first. 날씨가 덥구나: 날씨가 덥다네: a little old fashioned-way; in the syntax of older Korean generations; informal 날씨가 덥군요: formal, but not too formal to be detached from the listener 날씨가 더워요: formal but at the same time a little playful and friendly; can be in a complaining tone as well 날씨가 덥데요: "데" part conveys a meaning that it is an information from somebody else not by the speaker himself. So a good translation would be "The weather is said to be hot." 날씨가 덥소: A very dainty saying; not necessarily formal; this syntax is usually used between older married couples. 날씨가 더워: "It is hot!" kind of feeling is conveyed; very informal so such sentence would be used between very close friends or siblings. 날씨가 덥답니다: Similar to "날씨가 덥데요" but a little more formal and polite tone; still implies that the information is not first-hand. There are many more others and making quesitons, changing formality and others are done by "conjugating" the connecting words which are called "접사" in Korean. I will further write on this subject if I got some more time in the future. I'm still a high school student, you know? All blog posts are copyrighted under the Copyright Act.
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