Hanja 2

At long last it's time to follow up on my post from way back when about the use of Chinese characters (hanja 한자 漢字) in Korean writing. Those of you who have been patiently (or impatiently--how should I know?) waiting need wait no longer.

1. The Puzzle

I ended that post with this photo and the questions below it:


See the two Chinese characters to the right of the (British) English words "Way Out"? Are they writing Korean or Chinese? Or something else?

At the top of the sign it says in Korean naga-neun got, literally 'place for going out', i.e. 'exit'. On the lower right are two Chinese characters, 出口, that any Chinese speaker would recognize immediately. In Mandarin they are pronounced chūkǒu, writing the word meaning 'exit'. So at first glance I thought that this was a trilingual sign: Korean, English, Chinese.

As it turns out, however, the two Chinese characters can also be read in Korean as chulgu 출구, which is a Sino-Korean word meaning 'exit'.

So it is also possible that this is a bilingual sign, English and Korean, on which are two different Korean words for 'exit', each written in a different script.

On the face of it, it would seem more plausible for this to be a trilingual sign. After all, there are lots of Chinese tourists and residents in Seoul who would be well served by signs with Chinese on them. And furthermore, why would the Koreans need to put two different Korean words for 'exit' on the same sign, and write one of them in Chinese characters, which are increasingly unfamiliar to many Koreans?

Setting aside plausibility considerations, however, there is no linguistic way to determine whether the Chinese characters on this sign are writing Korean or Chinese. There is insufficient context to decide the question. A Chinese tourist would certainly think it is writing Chinese (and perhaps breathe a sigh of relief).* I have no idea what the average Korean would say if pressed on the question.

But we do have another means of settling the question. If we assume that all of the subway signage works in the same way, then we can keep looking at other subway signs until we find one that allows us to determine unambiguously if Korean or Chinese is being written. For example, if we could find a sign that has Chinese characters that write a common Chinese word, but which do not write a possible Sino-Korean word, then this would demonstrate that the sign is in fact written in Chinese. Or, if we found a sign that had an entire phrase on it (instead of just a single word), the grammatical structure would give the underlying language away.

2. The Clues

Put on your linguistic detective beanie cap! Let's take a look at some other subway signs and see what we, as brilliant linguistic detectives, can determine.

Here's a sign at one of the stations on Line #4 of the subway system, indicating some of the stops that you can reach by boarding a train on the platform to the left. You'll notice the same pattern as on the "Way Out" sign: Korean (written in hangeul) on top, English** on the bottom left, and Chinese characters on the bottom right.


But look at it more carefully. Go on, click on it to open a larger version of the picture, and study it good.

Did you find it? Did you spot the clue?

I'll wait another minute while you look at it one more time. There is something fishy about the Chinese characters writing one of the place names.

Okay, hopefully you've spotted it by now. It's the Miasamgeori stop. The hangeul is 미아삼거리. The Chinese characters are 彌阿삼거리. But wait a minute -- let's look at those again.

미아삼거리
彌阿삼거리

Those last three things aren't Chinese characters! They're hangeul--written exactly the same as the last three syllables above them. No way could that be the Chinese language, which is never written with the Korean alphabet.

As it turns out, most Korean place names are Sino-Korean, and these can be written with Chinese characters. But some Korean place names are, in whole or in part, native Korean words. The native Korean parts can't be written with Chinese characters. They have to be written in hangeul. (Geori is the native Korean word for 'road'. Samgeori means 'three-way intersection'.)***

[An aside: Philologists and epigraphers often face similar questions when studying newly discovered ancient texts. They may recognize the writing system--the Brahmi script, say--but still have to puzzle out what language is being written with it.]

3. The Solution

There you have it: proof that what is being written in Chinese characters is the Korean language, not the Chinese language.

[An aside again: Suppose, just suppose, that you wanted to write this place name in Chinese, not Korean. How could it be done? Well, you'd have two options. One, transliterate the pronunciation of the Korean samgeori using Chinese characters, just as the pronunciation has been transliterated into English on the lower left. Two, translate the meaning of the Korean using Chinese words. Since I don't want to leave you in suspense, I went and found a Chinese-language map of the Seoul subway system on the web. The stop is named 彌阿三岔路口 Mǐāsānchàlùkǒu. Sānchàlùkǒu is the Chinese word for 'three-way intersection'. So this is a translation, rather than a transliteration, into Chinese.]

Now you should be able to spot a second clue on this same sign. The second clue is simpler, but possibly harder to notice. Take another look.

Did you find it? It's the last stop listed on the sign. There are NO Sino-Korean elements in this place name (gogae means 'ridge'; I don't know what the dang part is). So there was no point writing the name again on the lower-right: it would have looked exactly the same, all in hangeul.

Once you realize that the signs have no Chinese on them, just Korean written twice (once all in hangeul, as Koreans normally write it; once with all Sino-Korean words written in Chinese characters and the rest in hangeul), then you see evidence of it everywhere.

Consider this neighborhood map. All the subway stations have them -- they are a great way to orient yourself and figure out where you should exit the station to get to where you want to go.


It's got dozens of place names on it. Here's a close-up (from a different neighborhood map than the one pictures above):


The part in parentheses says Gu Peuraja 'Turtle Plaza'. Peuraja, of course, is a borrowing from English 'plaza'. Below it you see a translation into English: "Gu Plaza".**** Then you see below that Korean written in Chinese characters. But peuraja, of course, is not Sino-Korean, so it appears again in hangeul as 프라자.

One more sign:


This sign is for the East Seoul Bus Terminal. (For some reason the English says "Dongseoul"--dong being Sino-Korean for 'east'-- instead of "East Seoul".) Seoul is one of the only city names (perhaps THE only city name?) in Korea that is not Sino-Korean. So at the bottom it stays in hangeul. The Korean word for 'bus terminal' is teomineol 터미널, an English borrowing. So it too stays in hangeul at the bottom. Only dong, 'east', can be written with a Chinese character: 東.

Based on linguistic evidence, we've determined that the subway signs are bilingual, not trilingual. But this raises a perplexing non-linguistic question. Why? Why write Korean twice on the same sign, using a writing system that is bordering on the obsolete for most Korean speakers?

I can only speculate. I think that it was done for Japanese and Chinese tourists. True, the words on the signs don't necessarily always make sense to Japanese and Chinese speakers.† And true, sometimes there is hangeul mixed in with the characters, or there are no characters at all. But on the whole, the signs are still very useful for such tourists. They are easier to recognize, understand, and remember than the pure hangeul or romanized forms. And in many cases they end up being identical to written Japanese or Chinese words.

Why not go all the way then, and just translate everything into Chinese or Japanese, as they've done with English? Two reasons I can think of. One, doing it this way allows a single written form to do double-duty for Chinese and Japanese speakers. Second, the signs can be made by Korean speakers--no need to hire Chinese and Japanese translators--without error.


*Would you believe that I'm still oversimplifying things? Well, I am. There are two forms of the Chinese character script, usually termed "traditional" and "simplified". The so-called simplified forms were promulgated by the Communist government of mainland China in the 1950s and 1960s in an effort to make the characters easier to learn and thus promote literacy. The traditional forms continued to be used in Taiwan and Hong Kong -- and in Korea when writing Sino-Korean. In the case of 出口，the simplified and traditional forms are exactly the same. But on other subway signs, it's clear that only traditional forms are being used. Some might be unfamiliar to travelers from mainland China. That alone doesn't, however, indicate whether what is being written is Chinese or Korean. The Korean sign-makers might have chosen to write Chinese using traditional characters. Return to main text.

**This isn't actually English, of course. These being place names, there is no English to be had. This is just a Romanized form of the Korean names. It's as much French as it is English, and more Korean than either of those. But I'll refer to it as English for simplicity. (Apologies to all non-English speakers whose writing system uses the Roman alphabet.) Return to main text.

***Yes, I'm afraid so. I've been caught oversimplifying again. In fact, the sam of samgeori, which means "three", is Sino-Korean. It could have been written with the Chinese character 三. Why wasn't it? I'm not sure, but I think it's because that if the place name were written as 彌阿三거리 it would be natural when reading it to group the Chinese characters together and misread the place name as Miasam Road instead of as Mia Three-way Intersection. By putting the sam in hangeul, the wordhood of samgeori is made more apparent. Perhaps a Korean speaker could comment on this. Return to main text.

****Oh ho, so it was English after all! (See footnote **.) Return to main text.

†Case in point: If you look again at the picture at the top of this post, you'll notice a smaller sign in the background reading "Toilet". The Chinese characters on the lower right, 化粧室, do not write a normal word for 'bathroom' in Chinese. Return to main text.