Reading this article, I found myself agreeing with more of it than I expected, even as a Korean-language speaker.
There are words that are used differently in North Korea and South Korea, but even within South Korean Korean, the sentence endings, vocabulary, and phrasing you should use can change a lot depending on the situation. The basic structure may be similar, but small differences matter.
Vocabulary changes depending on context, relationship, social distance, age, and whether the situation is public or private. North Korean speech is often more direct, but in South Korea, especially in more formal or higher-status social settings, speaking that directly can make a person sound crude or unsophisticated. Formal South Korean speech is often based on cushioning expressions. So even with the same Korean writing system, the rules for using sentences differ slightly.
This is something I feel even more strongly as a non-Western speaker participating on HN. If I do not use AI translation, many of my expressions become awkward. But after asking about it, I understand that even if the original Korean text was written without AI, using AI translation alone may cause the English version to be treated as Gen AI, which means I cannot really submit my blog posts.
So, reluctantly, I write my English comments by carefully combining machine translation, the English I have learned, and manual correction. Reading this article made me worry about how low-quality or awkward my comments may appear on HN.
It doesn't make a convincing case to me. The differences cited seem no more, perhaps less than the differences between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish which are, at least officially, distinct languages not dialects but are nonetheless largely mutually intelligible for many native speakers.
And I'll bet that "Modern slang expressions — enthusiastically adopted by younger generations" is also difficult for elderly South Koreans; just as teenage British slang is foreign to this seventy year old Briton.
I suspect that a kind of class distinction and lack of shared recent history is behind most of the difficulty in socialisation rather then the language itself.
Exposure is also a path to more mutual intelligibility, even if the differences persist. You're more likely to understand a dialect that isn't yours if you've heard it before, or even better, heard it often. So while I don't know much about Korea, I suspect more contact between north and south would also bridge the gaps.
Yeah, but I will point out that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are also countries with incredibly similar political cultures, economic systems, societal norms, cultural values, and so on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the culture shock between DPRK and SK is much bigger after 70 years of tyranny and oppression.
I would have loved to read the version of the article that dove deeper and was not touched by LLM, even if it meant less clear English from the (presumably Korean) author.
Eh, Spanish has the same issues across the pond and everyone adapts quickly.
Móvil/Celular -cell phone-
Camarero/Mesero -waiter-
Tiroteo/Balacera -shooting-
Nevera/Heladera -freezer-
Cacahuete/Maní -peanut-
Coche/Carro -car- (In Iberian Spanish carro it's a old carriage)
Ordenador/Computadora (Computador was used in Ib. Spa. long ago maybe in 1960's and 1970's). And -computación (computing) it's used on formal, academical contexts, such as papers for the university.
Of course a formally written book will be understood everywhere, and the older, the better.
A few years back I analyzed how (informal, social media) written Spanish differs from place to place and (re-)discovered that the vireynados were a thing a while back :)
Reading this article, I found myself agreeing with more of it than I expected, even as a Korean-language speaker.
There are words that are used differently in North Korea and South Korea, but even within South Korean Korean, the sentence endings, vocabulary, and phrasing you should use can change a lot depending on the situation. The basic structure may be similar, but small differences matter.
Vocabulary changes depending on context, relationship, social distance, age, and whether the situation is public or private. North Korean speech is often more direct, but in South Korea, especially in more formal or higher-status social settings, speaking that directly can make a person sound crude or unsophisticated. Formal South Korean speech is often based on cushioning expressions. So even with the same Korean writing system, the rules for using sentences differ slightly.
This is something I feel even more strongly as a non-Western speaker participating on HN. If I do not use AI translation, many of my expressions become awkward. But after asking about it, I understand that even if the original Korean text was written without AI, using AI translation alone may cause the English version to be treated as Gen AI, which means I cannot really submit my blog posts.
So, reluctantly, I write my English comments by carefully combining machine translation, the English I have learned, and manual correction. Reading this article made me worry about how low-quality or awkward my comments may appear on HN.
Counter signalling is a powerful thing; I think your comment will be appreciated because it is clearly written by a human
thanks!
Machine translations are so easy to spot for exactly the same reasons you point out.
Machine English is generally much more off-putting than English with a few mistakes, so I don’t think you need to be so nervous.
It doesn't make a convincing case to me. The differences cited seem no more, perhaps less than the differences between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish which are, at least officially, distinct languages not dialects but are nonetheless largely mutually intelligible for many native speakers.
And I'll bet that "Modern slang expressions — enthusiastically adopted by younger generations" is also difficult for elderly South Koreans; just as teenage British slang is foreign to this seventy year old Briton.
I suspect that a kind of class distinction and lack of shared recent history is behind most of the difficulty in socialisation rather then the language itself.
Exposure is also a path to more mutual intelligibility, even if the differences persist. You're more likely to understand a dialect that isn't yours if you've heard it before, or even better, heard it often. So while I don't know much about Korea, I suspect more contact between north and south would also bridge the gaps.
Yeah, but I will point out that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are also countries with incredibly similar political cultures, economic systems, societal norms, cultural values, and so on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the culture shock between DPRK and SK is much bigger after 70 years of tyranny and oppression.
As a wise man once said, the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has an army and an navy
I would have loved to read the version of the article that dove deeper and was not touched by LLM, even if it meant less clear English from the (presumably Korean) author.
Eh, Spanish has the same issues across the pond and everyone adapts quickly.
Móvil/Celular -cell phone-
Camarero/Mesero -waiter-
Tiroteo/Balacera -shooting-
Nevera/Heladera -freezer-
Cacahuete/Maní -peanut-
Coche/Carro -car- (In Iberian Spanish carro it's a old carriage)
Ordenador/Computadora (Computador was used in Ib. Spa. long ago maybe in 1960's and 1970's). And -computación (computing) it's used on formal, academical contexts, such as papers for the university.
Of course a formally written book will be understood everywhere, and the older, the better.
Sure, US vs. UK English has this as well, in things like "fanny", "boot", "chip", etc.
But a key difference here is that NK and SK are separated by a fence, not by 2,000 miles of ocean.
British English is quickly becoming Americanized… (at least according to my results a few years back https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00781v1)
A few years back I analyzed how (informal, social media) written Spanish differs from place to place and (re-)discovered that the vireynados were a thing a while back :)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
You forgot the best one:
"Coger" in Spain means "to grab", in LATAM it means "to have sex" xD
Similarly, I’ve been told that “te quiero mucho” can mean very different things depending on where you are
There is lots of exposure to these differences: songs, books, TV, Internet posts, etc. that isn't necessarily there for North Korean.