What's the difference between 여쭈다 and 여쭙다?

ANSWER: Their spellings?

I am somewhat confused by my dictionaries' definitions of 여쭈다 and 여쭙다.

묻다 and 여쭈다 are both verbs that can mean "to ask," but 여쭈다 is supposedly the more polite verb that is used when speaking to or about older people or superiors. And 여쭈다 can also mean "to tell" or "to inform, which means that 여쭈다 can mean both "to ask" and "to tell."

여쭙다 is another polite verb that means "to tell" or "to inform," but not "to ask." However, my Korean-Korean dictionary says that 여쭙다 is the polite form of 여쭈다, which suggests that 여쭈다 is polite when it means "to ask," but not polite when it means "to tell."

Is that not confusing?

Also, there is the question of form. In other words, both 여쭈다 and 여쭙다 can have the same form in certain instances. For example, under 여쭙다, my Korean-English dictionary translates 전날 여쭌 대로 as "as I told you the other day," but couldn't it also translate as "as I asked you the other day"?

So, what's going on with 여쭈다 and 여쭙다? I get the feeling that 여쭈다 and 여쭙다 are just different spellings of the same word.

From "Dong-a's Prime Korean-English Dictionary" (1998)

From "Dong-a's Korean-Korean Dictionary (1992)

What does 무동을 타다 mean?

ANSWER: to ride on someone's shoulders.

목말을 타다 means "to ride on another person's shoulders," such as when a young child rides on his or her father's shoulders while they are walking down the street or in a park. 목말 literally means "neck (목) horse (말)." But there is another Korean expression that also means "to ride on another person's shoulders." It is 무동을 타다, which literally translates as "to ride a dancing boy (무동 舞童)."

In old Korea, young boys used to entertain crowds by singing and dancing while either standing or sitting on the shoulders of older men. If they stood on the person's shoulders, the expression was 무동을 서다. If they sat on the person's shoulders, the expression was 무동을 타다. But neither expression makes sense to me.

서다 is an intransitive verb that means "to stand," and an intransitive verb does not take a direct object, so "a dancing boy stands" (무동이 서다) makes sense, but "to stand a dancing boy" (무동을 서다) does not make sense. If one wanted to say "stand up a dancing boy," wouldn't one normally say, "무동을 세우다?" since 세우다 is a transitive verb that can take direct objects?

I wonder if the Korean language has always had different forms for transitive verbs and intransitive verbs, or is the different forms a relatively recent development? Wouldn't a person need only to see or hear an object maker (을/를) or a subject maker (이/가) to determine if 서다 means "to stand" or "to stand (someone) up"?

타다 (to ride), on the other hand, is a transitive verb, which means it takes an object, so 무동을 타다 makes sense grammatically, but its meaning does not make sense since it suggests the adult is riding on the shoulders of the dancing boy, not vice versa. If you wanted to say "give the dancing boy a ride," then you would have to say 무동을 태우다. In other words, 타다 means "to ride," and 태우다 means "to give a ride."

So, the fact that 무동을 타다 means "to ride on another person's shoulders" suggests that Koreans in the past used one form, 타다, to mean both "to ride" and "to give a ride."

The following Korean video explains 무동을 태우다, but it does not mention 무동을 타다, which I suspect was the way Koreans originally said it.

Which is correct: 맨날 or 만날?

ANSWER: 만날

When I was in Korea, I often used 맨날 for "always," but today I learned that the correct word is 만날, which is synonymous with 매일 (每日). And I think most of my Korean friends pronounced it 맨날, too.

Dong-a's Prime Korean-English Dictionary (1998)

What does the 네 in 동네 mean?

동네 can translate as "neighborhood" or "village," but until this morning I had always thought 동네 was a pure Korean word. It's not.

The 동 in 동네 is the Chinese character 洞 (동), which can already translate as "neighborhood" or "village," so what does the 네 mean?

네 is a pure Korean suffix that can mean either "a group of people," as in 그네 (those people) or 이네 (these people); or can mean "a family" or "household," as in 철수네 (the family of Cheol-su). So, the word 동네 literally means "the people or households of a neighborhood or village."

Koreans might not understand you if you said 동(洞) by itself to mean "neighborhood" or "village," but they would definitely understand you if you said 동네.

Other Words with 네

• 댁네 (宅네) literally means "house person" (집사람) and is an old way of referring to another person's wife.
• 늙으신네 is a polite way of referring to "old people" (늙은이).
• 어르신네 is the polite way to refer to another person's father, the father's friends, or to adults (어른) in general.
• 아낙네 literally means "inside (아낙) people (네)" and is a generally way of referring to the women of another person's household.
• 우리네 means "we" and is used to refer to yourself and the people around you or the people in your group.

Dong-a's Prime Korean-English Dictionary (1998)

What's the difference between 떨다 and 털다?

ANSWER: One means "to shake," and the other means "to shake off" or "to shake out."

In Korean, how do you say, "Flick ashes from a cigarette"? Is it A or B?

A: 담뱃재를 떨다.
B: 담뱃재를 털다.

My dictionary lists both, but I have read that the correct answer is A, which is why Koreans refer to an "ashtray" as a 재떨이, not a 재털이. 재 is the Korean word for "ash"; 떨 comes from 떨다, which means "to shake off" or "to flick off"; and 이 is a suffix that means "thing," so 재떨이 literally translates as "a thing for flicking off ashes."

This morning I came across the following Korean sentence and suddenly became interested in the Korean verb 떨다.

"가족들이 모여 대추를 떨다."

Does the above sentence translate as A) "Families gathered to shake off jujubes" or B) "Families gathered to shake jujubes"? A jujube is a fruit that is sometimes referred to as "a Chinese date." Of course, translation A makes more sense than B. In other words, the families gathered together to shake or strike jujube trees to cause the jujubes to fall to the ground, after which they could more easily gather them.

According to THIS KOREAN ARTICLE, 털다 means "to shake," and 떨다 means "to shake off," so you would "shake a jujube tree (대추나무를 털다) in order to "shake off jujubes" (대추를 떨다). Likewise, you would "shake your clothes" (옷을 털다) in order to "shake off the dust on the clothes" (옷에 묻은 먼지를 떨다). In other words, if the object of the sentence is the thing that is being shook, you use 털다, but if the object is the thing that is being shook off, you use 떨다.

The word 은행 can mean either "bank" or "ginkgo nut." 은행를 떨다 translates as "shake off ginkgo nuts," but the idiom 은행를 털다, which literally means "to shake a bank," translates as "to rob a bank." In other words, you shake the bank in order to get the money in the bank to fall out of it, as you would do with a piggy bank.

What does 냉탕 (冷湯) mean?

ANSWER: cold boiling water

I like the guy (이수열, Lee Su-yeol) in the video below. His books on the Korean language are interesting. He was an elementary, middle school, and high school teacher for 47 years, but now he is 92 years old and spends much of his time correcting the Korean grammar and language usage mistakes of Korean reporters and government officials.

Every morning he goes to the newsstand, buys newspapers, and reads through them, correcting the mistakes he finds. He then mails his corrections to the reporters at the newspapers, who return letters of appreciation. In other words, he is still a teacher, but now he is teaching Korean reporters how to use the Korean language correctly.

I remember one of the things he pointed out in one of his books was how silly the words 온탕 (溫湯) and 냉탕 (冷湯) are. If you go to a Korean bathhouse, you will usually find a pool of hot water (온탕) and a pool of cold water (냉탕), which Koreans bathe in for supposedly health reasons. However, the word 탕 (湯) means "boiling" or "boiling water," so 온탕 literally means "hot boiling water" (Duh!), and 냉탕 literally means "cold boiling water." So, 목욕탕, the Korean word for a public bathhouse, literally means "hot-water bath." 목욕 means "bath," and 탕 means "hot water."

Instead of 온탕 and 냉탕, Mr. Lee suggests the phrases "따뜻한 물" (hot water) and "찬 물" (cold water), respectively.

How many Koreans these days have memorized the "Thousand Character Classic" (千字文 천자문)?

ANSWER: Probably not too many, but many used to memorize it, or at least try to.

It is not known for sure when the "Thousand Character Classic" (千字文 천자문) was written, but it is believed to have been written at least 1,500 years ago. It was written as a text to teach reading in China, which means it was written to teach people to read Chinese writing. It was written as a poem that students were often expected to memorize. To help remember the poem, it was often sung. All the 1,000 characters of the poem are different. In other words, no character (word) is used more than once.

My ex-Korean wife once told me that her uncle had taught her to read the "Thousand Character Classic" when she was a little girl. Her father and uncles were supposedly "yangban" from the Kumgang Mountain (금강산) region before the Korean war. It may have been a chore for her at time, but she remembered being excited one day when she rode the tram in downtown Seoul with her uncle and recognized on the shop signboards many of the Chinese characters they had been studying. The trams stopped operating in Seoul in 1968.

The following video is of a Korean man and his Korean female pupil singing the "Thousand Character Classic," one version with the character pronunciations and their individual meanings (훈독) and one version with just the pronunciations (음독). The man also translates each 4-character sentence into Korean (해설). If you would like an English translation with Chinese pronunciations, there is one I really like HERE.