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A Linguistic Defense for Konglish

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2016, (60), pp.149-173
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : December 17, 2015
  • Accepted : January 28, 2016

KANG， YONGSOON 1

1성균관대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to review what is called ‘Konglish’ from the linguistic point view. Konglish is a term which refers to both Korean style English pronunciation and expressions. English pronunciation by Korean learners is influenced by Korean in three levels: segmental, syllabic, and phonological. Korean style pronunciation can be justified in many ways. First, it is the result of linguistically natural process. Second, there are so many different dialects of English in the world including American and British English, which are quite different from each other. Third, there are more cases of interaction between non-native speakers of English, in which English is used as a means of communication. Many English expressions used in Korea are only understood by Koreans, not by English native speakers. They are criticized by many authorities in Korea for their ‘corrupting’ Korean and for being an object of ridicule in English-speaking society. But this sort of semantic expansion and error is also frequently found in their use of native language implying that it is a natural characteristics of a language use. Besides, as was the case of sino-Koreans in Korea, many words from English, whether they are ‘true’ or ‘false’, will replace current Korean words later and as a result will be part of Korean lexicon in the future. All of this is a reflection of our everyday use of language and of the expansion of Korean lexicon, which will be accelerated in the future. Despite the many efforts of many purists or school grammarians a language will change continuously with the introduction of new vocabulary and the vanishment of rarely-used expressions.

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