this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
1003 points (96.3% liked)

tumblr

3480 readers
2 users here now

Welcome to /c/tumblr, a place for all your tumblr screenshots and news.

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Must be tumblr related. This one is kind of a given.

  4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.

  5. No unnecessary negativity. Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean that you need to spend the entire comment section complaining about said thing. Just downvote and move on.


Sister Communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, in Korea, if you are a boy and have an older sister, you have to call her "nuna". Your older brother "hyeong". If you are a girl, your older sister is "onni" and your older brother is "oppa" (which also carries the unfortunate sexual connotation like calling someone "daddy" in English.) Thankfully at least all younger siblings are "dongsaeng"s. No wonder shit gets translated like this.

Ahh yeah, you also have to use these terms with your friends that are older and younger than you. If any Korean tells you someone is their sister or brother and it seems unlikely, it's because they mean that they are their older or younger friends, but the only person that Koreans actually call "friend" (chingu) are people the same age as them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've always struggled explaining this to people. I was taken aback for a long time in that one of the first questions upon meeting someone new was how old I was. I didn't understand that it's embedded within the language to establish this.

I read an interesting linguistics essay once that asserted nobody is fluent in Korean because the vocabulary changes as you age. I don't agree with the thesis, but found it intriguing nonetheless.

(Also, I was there in the nineties. I've heard that agashi has since become a word one doesn't want to use. When and how did that happen?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hahaha! "Agashi" is fine if you're not being creepy about it.