Robert Z Christensen

Affiliering (affiliation): Lunds universitet/Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, SWE/KOR

Abstract:

Do not make fun of Konglish!

Some remarkable connections between modern Danish and Korean

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. In Koreans case Konglish is often used as an overall term for broken, misunderstood, or bad English, as we sometimes see it described among scholars (e. g. Lawrence 2012; Hadikin, 2014). Examples are  아이쇼핑 (aisyoping) for “window shopping” and service 서비스, even romanized as ‘seobiseu’, for on the house/free of charge. But, If we go all the way back to the Viking era in Scandinavia, when it was the Vikings lending out to the English (knife, guest, gift), we also find some rare and astonishing connections between Korean and Danish. In this presentation, we walk about Seoul in South Korea, exploiting the city as linguistic space, looking at stores, shops, cafés, billboards, signs, and more, chasing Old Norse that has made it all the way from the Viking age, over England and USA to Asia and Korea.

Om (about):

Docent, ph.d., mag.art
Associate professor, Lunds Universitet, Sverige
Professor, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea
스칸디나비아 학과 교수

CSS member

Publications: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/robert-zola-christensen/publications/