Old Norse into English into American English into Korean: some remarkable connections between modern Danish and Korean

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A first glance Korean and Danish seem to be seemingly far apart each other in every linguistic aspect, from the grammar over pronunciation to the written language, not to mention the elaborated polite-conjugations we find in Korean compared to the Danes’ habit of saying ‘you’ (‘du’) to just about everyone. However, both languages have, from the latter half of the 20th century to nowadays, received an enormous amount of loan words from English-American. If we look in to that, going all the way back to the Viking era in Scandinavia, when it was the Vikings lending out to the English (knife, guest, gift), we even find some rare and astonishing connections between Korean and Danish. In this article we go on a walk about Seoul in South Korea, exploiting the city a as linguistic space, looking at stores, shops, cafés, billboards, signs, and more on, chasing Old Norse that has made it all the way from the Viking age, over England and USA to Asia and Korea.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of the Scandinavian Society of Korea (스칸디나비아 연구)
Volume29
Issue number29
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Specific Languages

Free keywords

  • Konglish
  • Old Norse
  • Danish
  • Language history
  • word loans
  • city scape
  • linguistic space

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