I mean Seoul as in the city name

korean language vocubalory sangat limited one. all direct translation

50-60% of vocab borrowed from Chinese mah haha

mandarin was created by heavily borrowing hokkien and language of the north(hakka one of them).

BTW, this Dongdaemun station signboard wth that awek...The Chinese word vocab 100% copied by Korean...i.e in Mandarin = Tong Da Men and in Korean- Dong Dae Mun. - Direct translation = "East Big gate"


This post has been edited by stimix: Dec 15 2011, 09:39 PM

Great Eastern Gate.

hokkien is what?

Yes exactly. There are 4 great walled city gates in Seoul prior to Japanese occupation in early 1900

The East great gate is the only remained and the South one i.e Namdaemun or "Nan Da Men got burnt down years ago and still under renovation when I was there in Dec last year

even borrow from english. damn funny i tell you.

Tiong Dua Mun

Tong Tua Mui

I dont care who borrow who.

I just dont like languages that makes life hard for learners. And yes. it includes jap, chinese, korean, and taiwanese and hongkongese.

Japanese is fine, cuz at least they got anime and doujin to back them up. But if not, English is god of all language. Why? Simply because english is the most flexible language in the world.

Aiggoooo.. Korean is one of the easiest pronouciation lah and even less than 26 alphabets in English. Japanese very susah bcos mixed wth their 40++ hiragana & vocab still in Traditional chinese/kanji..confusing lorThis post has been edited by stimix: Dec 15 2011, 09:46 PM

I got to know 2 Koreans during my college days. They told me their names in their birth certs have chinese characters.

Dunno how true is that lol.

Yes it's true. All Korean name have official Hanja or traditional Chinese wan

For eg..Lee Dae Hae Korean 변다혜 Hanja 卞多惠

English has a lot of grammers.... Many learn English for years still can't get the grammer 100% correct.

A big part of hokkien language is lost because of deliberate cultural cleansing by gengis khan and his geng.go ask ur grandmother or grandfather. They know the truth. Last time nobody speaks mandarin. Mandarin are aliens to them. That is why until today, you see many etnic groups (tibetan, taiwanese,oversea chinese, all southern tibes) dont want to be part of china because they made promise with hokkien to be part of china, not with mandarin speaking chinese.Cantonese joins china only because of economic benefits or political constraints.

This post has been edited by tankerbell12345: Dec 15 2011, 09:59 PM

Hmm I've always thought Mandarin was based on Beijing language. Now I know it was a bahasa rojak (like Urdu language).
But why do you claim old Mandarin is Hokkien? Was Hokkien the main language of China back then? I want to know its connection with the writing. Japan, for example, borrowed during Tang and Song Dynansty, but there are also words from Wu origin.

In Japanese, it's Toudaimon. Japanese people who don't know about S.Korea will think that it refers to the gate in front of Tokyo University.

And I hate english for exactly that: lack of rigidity. You must remember all verb conjugations.

I think lately PRC is starting to revive the dialects back, with announcements in certain buildings spoken in local dialect.

Is not having a unifying language a problem to India? If not, then maybe PRC can follow India and allow each region have their own official languages.

Do not mess around wth Chinese ancient history-lah.

Mandarin is Northern Chinese language and it was true that when Yuan Dynasty by Kublai Khan (Not Genghis Klan) established his new capital in current Beijing (Beside Forbidden City - Now Beihai Park), they staeted standardising the Northern dialect and even when Yuan Dynasty fall to the Southern Najing based Ming Dynasty that also moved to Beijing during early 1400, They also using Mandarin as Lingua Franca. Thereafter wehn the Ming lost to Qing Dynasty of the Manchu, they also adopted Mandarin instead of their own Manchurian languarge haha..Thereafter..Mandarin started to cover Southern states...liao..