Well, these days Koreans usually say 치즈, which is just a transliteration of the English word "cheese," but the Sino-Korean word for "cheese" is 건락 (乾酪), which literally means "dried (乾) milk (酪)." The "락 (酪) in 건락 is the same character used in 낙농 (酪農), which means "dairy (酪) farming (農)." When 락 comes at the beginning of a word, the ㄹ changes to ㄴ.
Why am I writing about this? Because I found a mistake in my 1995 edition of "Dong-A's Prime Korean-English Dictionary." The mistake is as follows:
The word 타락 has two meanings in my dictionary. One meaning is "to fall" or "to go astray," and the other is "cow's milk." The Chinese characters for the "to fall" 타락 are 墮落, and the Chinese characters for the "cow's milk" 타락 are 駝酪, which literally means "camel's (駝) milk (酪)," but my dictionary mistakenly uses the "to fall" Chinese characters for both "to fall" and "cow's milk," an unforgiveable mistake.
I wonder if I can get a refund on my nearly 24-year-old dictionary. It would be great if I could because it is falling apart.
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