Crossing Divides: Two Koreas divided by a fractured language

[soryang]

Crossing Divides: Two Koreas divided by a fractured language

By BBC Monitoring
The world through its media
8 March 2019

North Korea's closed society means its language has changed little since the post-WW2 division of the peninsula. Meanwhile, the southern version has developed rapidly due to exposure to outside culture and technology...

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The South acquired a hybrid "Konglish" US-inspired vocabulary, adopting many English words, such as "juseu" (juice) and "two-piece" (two-piece outfit).

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A vast undertaking to codify a unified vocabulary is the Gyeoremal Keunsajeon (grand dictionary of the national language), an inter-Korean project that began in 2005.

According to South Korean lexicographer Han Yong-woon, who is part of the Gyeoremal team, the dictionary will compile words from existing dictionaries across the two Koreas and add newer words and expressions.

"We plan to collect about 210,000 words. And then we will collect new words and expressions that are being used but not in dictionaries. That would be about 100,000," Han told the BBC.

The article presents common but interesting examples of language differences based upon culture, political perspective, and political isolation in the case of North Korea.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47440041?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cnx753jej1xt/south-korea&link_location=live-reporting-story

The proliferation of new words in Hangul in South Korea is a daily occurrence, and while it might be correctly described as "development" compared to the stagnation of the isolated and ideological north, it is also a problem, which no one appears to want to regulate or standardize. Every day in South Korea it seems the media, commercial and technological interests, academics and young people coin new words, some contractions, some slang, some technical, some mostly borrowed from English or other languages, that defy efforts even by native speakers to understand fully communications content and meaning in ordinary media. For North Korean defectors and other learners particularly foreign students of the language and culture, a 200,000 word vocabulary is entirely too much. While it seems chic and erudite to make up new expressions, even when borrowed directly from another tongue commonly English, the words are often not comprehended aurally because of their different pronunciation.

I'm not a linguist. Perhaps a linguist or someone else here can share their insight or view concerning this situation. I have been dealing with this challenge for years.