The state of Korea has been on the rise due to the Seoul Olympic and dramas like “Winter Sonata” and “Dae Jang Geum” and the recent Korean Wave led by K-pop. In sync with this mood, the number of foreigners who want to learn Korean is increasi...
The state of Korea has been on the rise due to the Seoul Olympic and dramas like “Winter Sonata” and “Dae Jang Geum” and the recent Korean Wave led by K-pop. In sync with this mood, the number of foreigners who want to learn Korean is increasing. In order to help them learn Korean more effectively, this study compared Korean idioms with English idioms in the book of 『Mother’s stake I』 by Park Wan-suh. In this book, some historical situations such as the colonization of Korea by Japan, comfort women and the Korean War are also described, so learners can feel sympathy for the adversity and pain Koreans went through.
It is difficult to guess the meanings of idioms by only inferring those of the combined words because the idioms consist of more than two vocabularies and tend to make totally different meanings. Also, as idioms contain the value and spirit of the people who use the language, it is very important to have a systemized approach to learning them. Literature in which many Koreans’ lives are described is useful materials for the learners to improve their language skills with high interest.
The main purpose of this study is to help English speakers who are learning Korean better understand Korean idioms. To achieve this, the Korean idioms in 『Mother’s stake I』 were compared to English idioms and analyzed.
The first type is concerned with English idioms vs. Korean idioms. The idioms from both languages have the same idiomatic meanings, so there won’t be any problems understanding the meanings. Also, it was found by comparing two languages that though both Korean idioms and English idioms have differences in structures, they have a lot of similarities in morphological and syntactic features as well as in meanings. The idioms in the first type are 20 all together, among which 17 idioms(85%) have words derived from body and body-related vocabularies.
The second type dealt with English non-idioms (non-idiomatical expressions) vs. Korean idioms. Those are the same in meanings but it would be a little more difficult to understand than the first type. That’s because they are idioms in Korean, but they are not idioms in English. Korean idioms in the second type are 43 in total, among which 29 idioms(67.4%) have words derived from body and body-related vocabularies. It is found that the Korean idioms in the book of 『Mother’s stake I』 have a high rate of words derived from body and body-related vocabularies.
The third type is 270 English idioms vs. Korean non-idioms. In this type, there are 163 phrasal verbs(59%) and phrasal idioms(28%).
This study focused on contrastive analysis of Korean and English idioms shown in 『Mother’s stake I』. It is expected that this could help benefit English speakers who wish to learn Korean by studying Korean idioms in Korean literature.
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