Wait, is he your brother or your boyfriend?
Published: 21 Apr. 2013, 21:08
It is often difficult for foreigners to learn forms of address in Korean.
In Korea, it seems very rare to hear your first name called by others because Koreans mostly address each other by their positions, titles or other terms.
It is even OK to address a random male in accordance with his appearance. Taking a male stranger’s looks into consideration, females tend to choose either oppa or ajoshi.
A younger-looking man would be called oppa, while ajoshi (a middle-aged man) is for those with an older-looking face or an unfashionable style.
In terms of kinship, the terminology is unbelievably complicated.
To address each relative properly, one needs to distinguish between your father’s younger brother and older brother to mother’s brother and a husband of your mother’s sister, while only one word can cover all of these people in English: uncle.
Before you memorize all those tricky kinship terms, here are more practical terms used in our everyday lives in modern Korean society.
Q. A married couple calls each other mom and dad?
A.The most common affectionate name for a married couple to call each other is yeobo, which is equivalent to sweetheart or honey. If a couple has a child, they address each other in another way, especially when they are with others, including elders. If the child’s name is John, a wife would call her husband “John’s dad” or just “dad” and vice versa with a husband (he would call his wife “John’s mom”). Sometimes, grandparents call their son or daughter by their grandchild’s name, and guiltless grandchildren are often left panicking when they hear their names called.
Koreans are usually not comfortable with expressing their affections toward their loved ones in public, so calling each other by a term of endearment is often embarrassing or awkward. It might also have something to do with parenting practices in Korea where parents never separate themselves from their kids after they are born; children are given a higher priority than the parents and the concept of family is highly valued.
Whatever reason lies behind this custom, that someone can be called dad not only by his child can be a headache for foreigners when learning Korean.
Unnie for ladies vs. aunt for gentlemen
In a dictionary, unnie is defined as what girls call their older sisters. But it is also an all-round form of address for female customers in the service industry. If a female customer is shopping at a department store or getting her hair done at a beauty parlor, she simply calls a female clerk or a hair dresser unnie and starts telling what she wants, regardless of any age difference or kinship ties.
Saying unnie is more effective than the customary yeogiyo to break any tension and narrow the psychological distance between the speakers. But obviously, guys can’t call each other unnie.
Korean men, especially male office workers, often dash to a bar after a stressful day at work, where they are finally able to release their stress over a bottle or two of soju. The small sit-down restaurants or pubs businessmen frequent are mostly run by middle-aged or older women, but the loyal customers tend not to call owners or servers ajumma. Instead, they call them mother or aunt.
It can be politeness seeking a side dish on the house or a larger portion of the food they ordered, or perhaps they are just missing a deceased mother, but the relationship between a mother and a son is obviously regarded as more affectionate and intimate than the relationship between an owner and a customer. Aunt used in this social context means mother’s sister, or immo. Interestingly, the word referring to a sister of one’s father (gomo) is hardly said even though it also is aunt when translated into English.
My older brother and boyfriend, oppa
A girl calls her older brother oppa, but it does not take long to notice that 99 percent of Korean girls call their older male friends the same thing. In addition, they call their boyfriends oppa as well. It seems like the younger generation doesn’t mind using this one term for a variety of relationships.
In this light, hyung, or a boy’s older brother, can refer to both his actual older brother and his older male friend. There’s even an honorific form of this word, hyung-nim. Nim is a suffix attached to the end of various proper nouns including kinship terms and job titles to make them honorific in order to show more respect. Hyungnim, however, contains a negative underlying connotation as gangsters call their boss hyungnim!
As Confucianism is still regarded as a core societal value, addressing people properly is a very important and sensitive issue in modern Korean culture. With various kinship terms expressing respect as well as the speaker’s relationship to the subject, the Korean language can seem hard to master.
But if you remember the sociological terms described here and apply the appropriate one at the appropriate time, it is only a matter of time before you are impressing everyone!
By Michelle Kang contributing writer [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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