Dynamic stew
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A Korean restaurateur, trying to make his menu more accessible for foreign customers, came up with bewildering English translations of some dishes.
1. 동태 찌게 [dong’tae jjigae: dynamic stew]
dongtae 동태(凍太) or "frozen pollack" (a kind of fish) was misinterpreted as the homonym 動態 and translated as "dynamic"; “jjigae” means a hot pot.
2. yuk'hoe 육회(肉膾) or "minced raw beef" was treated as the homonym 六回 and translated as "six times"
3. gom 곰 ("a thick broth made of cooked meat") + tang 탕 (汤) or "soup" (i.e., "broth-soup", a beef soup that has been boiled for a long time [usually more than 3-4 hours] and served with rice) became "bear thang", because gom is homophonous (okay, homographic) with the Korean word for "bear" (there is no Chinese character for this morpheme)
Summary notes on gom 곰:
a. a Korean verb that means "to boil for a long time"
b. a Korean noun meaning "bear"; if they used the Sinitic morpheme xióng 熊, it would be pronounced "ung" in Korean, but the Korean word 곰 gom is preferred
In chart form:
| Korean dishes | meaning | Romanization * | Homonym | Google Translate 10/24/2013 | Mistranslation (menu) |
| 동태 (凍太) | Frozen pollack | dong-tae (RR) tongt’ae (MR) |
動態: (the enemy’s) movement | Dynamics | Dynamics |
| 동태(凍太) 찌개 | Frozen pollack stew | dong-tae-jji-gae (RR) tongt’ae tchigae (MR) |
Dynamic stew | Dynamic stew | |
| 육회 (肉膾) | Korean-style raw beef | yu-koe (RR) yukhoe (MR) |
六 (six) 回 (times) |
sashimi | Six times |
| 곰탕 | Beef-bone soup | gom-tang (RR) komt’ang (MR) |
곰 gom = bear 탕 tang = soup |
Oxtail soup | Bear thang (typo of tang) |
*Romanization: Revised Romanization of Korean (RR), McCune-Reischauer (MR)
The above are examples of faulty English translations of Korean dishes. It seems that restaurant owners favor Google Translate to create English versions of menu items, resulting in weird translations such as 동태찌개 as "dynamic stew". Although Google Translate often offers grouped synonyms and prioritization by frequency, it does not reliably do this to every word in Korean. "동태," for example, yields only one translation, "dynamics", in Google Translate. The South Korean government wants to clarify errors in English-language descriptions of Korean dishes and is currently working on a uniform standard for the wording of Korean dishes to facilitate the globalization of Korean food.
[Hat tip Hiroshi Kumamoto; thanks to Haewon Cho, Bill Hannas, Daniel Sou, and Minju Choi]
dw said,
October 24, 2013 @ 9:19 pm
Do you mean pollock rather than "pollack"?
dw said,
October 24, 2013 @ 9:21 pm
Ignore my earlier comment: I see now that "pollack" is an alternative spelling.
JS said,
October 24, 2013 @ 9:33 pm
Interesting — I'm thinking gom is xióng 熊; it's just a really old piece of shared vocabulary. Newer OC reconstructions give things like *wum; adding the "uvular" suggests ~*ɢʷum. I'm confident there is more where this came from… gotta learn more Korean to find it, though.
Faldone said,
October 25, 2013 @ 6:24 am
Nemmine bears. Where did thang come from?
Victor Mair said,
October 25, 2013 @ 7:31 am
Daniel Sou reminds me that yok-hoe 肉膾 is not just "raw meat," but "fresh-sliced raw beef." You can imagine sashimi not with fish but with beef.
GeorgeW said,
October 25, 2013 @ 7:40 am
'Bear thang' sounds like something one might hear from a hunter in Tennessee.
Ellen K. said,
October 25, 2013 @ 8:46 am
Faldone, if you look in the chart, it indicates "(typo of tang)".
I was wondering too at first, since "thang" is a word, but not one that would be in any translating dictionary.
Although that still leaves the question of why they didn't translate "tang".
Victor Mair said,
October 25, 2013 @ 8:51 am
@Faldone
As pointed out in the chart, "thang" is a typo for "tang", which is, I think, just straight and simple Sino-Korean vocab. What JS is talking about with gom and the Old Sinitic forms of xióng 熊 is something much deeper.
I've sent this to Juha Janhunen in hopes that he might weigh in on the old Eurasian words for "bear" as he once did for those meaning "horse". But he might be off in Inner Asia somewhere tracking bear myths, images, and words, so we may have to wait awhile for an answer.
Erica said,
October 25, 2013 @ 9:14 am
If the intention is to popularize Korean food in the global market, I think their current technique is working, at least on me. I know I would order the heck out of something called Dynamic Stew.
James Forrest said,
October 25, 2013 @ 9:58 am
The spelling of thang for 탕 probably reflects an attempt to represent the fortis aspirated 't' sound in Korean which is written in some earlier romanization systems as th (and similarly we also have ph and kh) to distinguish them from the lax p, t and k spoken with with very minimal aspiration. In McCune-Reischauer this aspiration is indicated as p' t' k', but in the Revised Romanization system adopted by the Korean Governmnet since 2000 these are written simply as p, t and k.
Victor Mair said,
October 25, 2013 @ 10:30 am
From Juha Janhunen:
Yes, well, my idea of Korean gom [kom] is that it is a borrowing from Para-Japonic and represents the same word as regular Japanese kuma 'bear'. The original form may also be reconstructed as *kuma. (I know of arguments presented against this reconstruction, but I do not think they are valid.) I cannot see how this item could be in any regular way be connected with any early form of Chinese xiong.
JS said,
October 25, 2013 @ 10:41 am
^
I find Janhunen's comments interesting as, whatever we might suppose regarding the cause for the resemblance, *ɢʷum is certainly phonologically close to /kom/ and still closer to the Middle Korean kwom cited at Axel Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, p. 542 — where, it turns out, the author has already noted the similarity between these two as well as a number of other area 'bear' words, largely TB items but also PMonic *kmum 'Himalayan black bear'.
julie lee said,
October 25, 2013 @ 10:59 am
곰탕gom thang (literally "broth-soup") , "bear soup" on the menu, I believe comes from the Chinese words/characters羹湯geng tang (literally "broth soup"). Geng羹 is broth or soup and tang湯 is also broth or soup, and each can be stand-alone words. 羹湯 geng tang also appears together (in my Mac dictionary) , meaning, I believe, "broth-soup" or "soup". The more common word for soup in Mandarin is 湯 tang. My own impression is that 羹geng (gom곰 in Korean) is more archaic. One does see it a lot in classical Chinese.
julie lee said,
October 25, 2013 @ 11:07 am
p.s.
I wonder if 羹geng "broth, soup" in Mandarin (gen in some topolects) is pronounced gom or gum (like English gum) in Cantonese or some other Chinese topolects.
Jongseong Park said,
October 25, 2013 @ 11:17 am
To clarify, 곰 gom [ɡ̊oːm] is both the noun for "broth" and the verbal noun "boiling" coming from the verb 고다 goda [ɡ̊oːda]. It's somewhat misleading to say it's a verb and leave it at that.
곰 gom in the sense of "broth" is rarely used on its own and usually only appears in compounds such as 곰탕 gomtang [ɡ̊oːmtʰaŋ] or 곰국 gomguk [ɡ̊oːmkuk] (탕 tang and 국 guk both mean "soup"). So this word may be less familiar to Koreans, but it has the same relationship to the verb 고다 goda as the much more familiar common nouns 꿈 kkum [kum] "dream", 삶 sam [z̥aːm] "life", 잠 jam [ʥ̥am] "sleep", 춤 chum [ʨʰum] "dance", and 기쁨 gippeum [ɡ̊ippɯm] "gladness" have with the verbs or adjectives 꾸다 kkuda [kuda] "to dream", 살다 salda [z̥aːlda] "to live", 자다 jada [ʥ̥ada] "to sleep", 추다 chuda [ʨʰuda] "to dance", and 기쁘다 gippeuda [ɡ̊ippɯda] "to be glad".
On the subject of the homonym 곰 gom [ɡ̊oːm] "bear", it is already attested in the current spelling in Seokbo sangjeol (釋譜詳節; 석보상절), 1447, one of the first works written in the Korean alphabet. The Japanese クマ/くま kuma is no doubt a cognate. The Old Chinese reconstruction *wum ~ *ɢʷum is certainly intriguing. Note that the Sino-Korean reading for 熊 is ung [uŋ], reflecting -ŋ in Middle Chinese. So if there is a connection between Chinese 熊 and Korean 곰 gom, then it must be very old, predating the establishment of Sino-Korean readings connected to the large-scale adoption of Classical Chinese as the literary language during the late Three Kingdoms / Unified Silla period. I've seen a similar suggestion that the Korean word for "wind", baram [b̥aɾam], is from Old Chinese 風 *priəm, though I'm completely out of my depth when it comes to evaluating such claims.
Jongseong Park said,
October 25, 2013 @ 11:35 am
I didn't see julie lee's comments before posting mine, but as I explained 곰 gom is transparently connected to the verb 고다 goda "to boil", deriving from earlier forms 고으다 goeuda or 고오다 gooda, so I really doubt any connection to Chinese 羹.
I have never seen this character before, but apparently the Sino-Korean reading of 羹 is 갱 gaeng [ɡ̊ɛːŋ] and it is a special term for soups used in ancestor worship rituals. 羹 is *kˁraŋ in Old Chinese in the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction. No reason to suppose a connection with 곰 gom.
탕 tang [tʰaːŋ] on the other hand is definitely a Sino-Korean word, 湯.
Jongseong Park said,
October 25, 2013 @ 11:40 am
JS: …still closer to the Middle Korean kwom cited at Axel Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, p. 542…
Note that kwom is simply 곰 rendered in the Yale romanization for Middle Korean, where the vowel ㅗ is written wo to distinguish it from the now obsolete vowel ㆍ, which is simply written o. The w doesn't correspond to an actual glide.
Jongseong Park said,
October 25, 2013 @ 12:00 pm
I found some assertions that the Old Korean form of 곰 gom "bear" was 고마 goma. One evidence is that the native name of the early capital of Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, is given as 固麻, which is 고마 goma in Sino-Korean. This capital is better known as 熊津 웅진 ungjin, which seems to be a translation of a native name like 고마나루 goma naru "bear crossing".
It does look to me like 고마 goma is a plausible early form for Middle Korean 곰 gom and Japanese kuma. The extra vowel at the end does move it further from the Chinese 熊, though. Not sure what this means…
JS said,
October 25, 2013 @ 2:08 pm
Thanks, Jongseong Park… do you happen to know if Middle Korean "wo" vs. "o" can be confidently associated with phonological values? And would hypothetical goma > gom be illustrative of a regular sound change?
The names of the Baekje capital are fascinating… you find the same phenomenon within China due to early interactions with non-Sinitic indigenous languages.
JS said,
October 25, 2013 @ 2:11 pm
Another question — do you know what sources are around that might facilitate the study specifically of the native Korean vocabulary stratum?
Jongseong Park said,
October 25, 2013 @ 3:11 pm
JS: do you happen to know if Middle Korean "wo" vs. "o" can be confidently associated with phonological values?
I'm not sure what you're asking, but to reiterate, wo is just the Yale romanization for the vowel ㅗ ([o] in modern Korean) in Middle Korean contexts where it needs to be distinguished from the vowel ㆍ, which is written o. The value of ㆍ may have been something like [ɒ] (which it still represents in the Jeju dialect), though that's a speculation and opinions differ wildly since this phoneme was lost by the 19th century.
The w in Yale romanization does not correspond to an actual glide [w] but just came about because Korean has more basic vowels than there are vowel letters in the Roman alphabet. Similarly, Yale romanization uses wu to represent ㅜ [u] and u to represent ㅡ [ɯ]. In the Korean alphabet as originally created, the basic vowels were presumably ㅣ, ㅡ, ㆍ, ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ, ㅜ, corresponding to Yale i, u, o, a, e, wo, wu (the actual Middle Korean sound values are a matter of huge speculation).
All these still represent basic vowels in Modern Korean, minus ㆍ which was lost, and former diphthongs ㅐ, ㅔ, ㅚ, ㅟ (ay, ey, oy, wi in Yale) also smoothed to become monophthongs. However, ㅚ, ㅟ are glide-vowel combinations for most Koreans nowadays. So for most Koreans the vowel inventory consists of ㅣ, ㅡ, ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ, ㅜ, ㅐ, ㅔ, except that ㅐ and ㅔ are merged for most speakers so that it's a 7-vowel system.
From the invention of the Korean alphabet onwards, we can simply look at how the vowels are written. We know there was a vowel written ㅗ wo and a vowel written ㆍ o. The former is still used and pronounced [o]. The latter gradually merged with different vowels and was lost by the 19th century. But presumably they represented two separate vowel phonemes in Middle Korean. Does this answer your question?
Jongseong Park said,
October 25, 2013 @ 3:21 pm
JS: And would hypothetical goma > gom be illustrative of a regular sound change?
I don't know of any regular sound changes established for Old Korean to Middle Korean, since the sources for the former are so scarce. I would just think goma > gom would be a simple example of apocope.
Another question — do you know what sources are around that might facilitate the study specifically of the native Korean vocabulary stratum?
The basic resource I check first is the Pyojun Gugeo Daesajeon, the online dictionary of Korean maintained by the National Institute of the Korean Language. For lots of native Korean words it gives the forms attested in Middle Korean and Early Modern Korean sources. It's only in Korean though.
Victor Mair said,
October 25, 2013 @ 6:32 pm
From an anonymous colleague:
If you want to go way out on a limb, there is modern Tibetan དོམ༌ (tom) meaning "bear". The vowel and final work nicely but the initial consonant is a stretch.
Victor Mair said,
October 25, 2013 @ 8:25 pm
From Neil Kubler:
Penghu (Pescadores) Southern Min for 'bear' is — depending on the island and subdialect — either [him] or [kim], which is phonetically not so very far from "gom".
julie lee said,
October 25, 2013 @ 10:27 pm
@Jongseong Park,
Thanks for the information on 곰 gom and the Sino-Korean reading of 羹 as gaeng。
Victor Mair said,
October 26, 2013 @ 7:18 am
From Alexander Vovin:
Sorry, very briefly: in my current thinking, OJ kuma LL 'bear' can possibly go to pre-PJ *guma, with a low initial pitch reflecting either a long vowel (a la Martin 1987) or a voiced obstruent, as I have suggested before. MK :kwom with a rising pitch reflects earlier PK disyllabic structure *komV LH. Contrary to what I said in my 2010 book, Korean word is probably borrowed from Japonic, and not vice versa. OC *gwəm is probably also a Japonic loan, but the argument why it is so, is complex — I am cc'ing this to my student Lin Chihkai, who will be able to tell you more, because eventually it is his idea (with which I personally ciompletely agree).
On the case of MK porom LL 'wind', it cannot possible be a nominalization in -m from MK :pwur- R 'to blow': neither the accent not the vocalism match. It is indeed tempting to compare it with OC *pram 'wind', but this might be just a chance resemblance, unless some similar parallels between OC and Koreanic are discovered.
My two cents,
SAsha
Coby Lubliner said,
October 26, 2013 @ 1:45 pm
VM: "You can imagine sashimi not with fish but with beef."
Isn't it called carpaccio?
Eorrfu said,
October 26, 2013 @ 10:40 pm
Like Coby I would call raw, thinly sliced beef, carpaccio. Popularized in Venice in the 50's and named for the painter who was known for using red. Culinarily it seems to be a fusion of crude and other forms of the dish we call tartare considering the types of spices traditionally used. In American culinary circles carpaccio has come to mean any very thinly sliced food.
JS said,
October 27, 2013 @ 1:10 am
Thanks so much Jongseong Park for the very thorough answers, and to Prof. Vovin for the comments on the PK>MK change, etc.
Kuiwon said,
October 27, 2013 @ 9:20 am
The conversation here is fascinating. Do you know of any other non-Sino-Korean Korean words (i.e., "pure" Korean) that originate from older pronunciations of Chinese characters? I know "Kimchi" is from 沈菜.
Jongseong Park said,
October 27, 2013 @ 2:42 pm
Kuiwon: Do you know of any other non-Sino-Korean Korean words (i.e., "pure" Korean) that originate from older pronunciations of Chinese characters? I know "Kimchi" is from 沈菜.
There are plenty of such cases, though "kimchi" is a somewhat murky example. It is first attested as 딤ᄎᆡ timchoy and then a bit later as 팀ᄎᆡ thimchoy in 16th century texts (using the Yale romanization here since it is Middle Korean, with o representing the archaic vowel ㆍ). The theory is that these represented the then-current Sino-Korean pronunciation of 沈菜, which must be a local coinage since it was not used in this sense outside of Korea.
The trouble is, 沈 is known to have been read as 팀 thim, but the reading 딤 tim is not attested for this character.
In any case, it appears that both 딤ᄎᆡ timchoy and 팀ᄎᆡ thimchoy were in use in Middle Korean. Then, identified with the Sino-Korean word 沈菜, 팀ᄎᆡ thimchoy followed the regular development into Modern Korean 침채 chimchay [ʨʰimʨʰɛ], which is apparently an obscure term used in ancestor worship rituals (so obscure that it doesn't appear in most dictionaries). But the form 딤ᄎᆡ timchoy became 짐ᄎᆡ cimchoy, then 짐츼 cimchuy, then Modern 김치 kimchi.
How to explain this? If the form 딤ᄎᆡ timchoy ever corresponded to the Sino-Korean word 沈菜 (it has been suggested that 딤 tim was an older reading of 沈, otherwise unattested), it may have been decoupled from the regular development of Sino-Korean pronunciation because it was no longer felt to be Sino-Korean, and was free to follow its own phonetic development. An alternative view is that 딤ᄎᆡ timchoy was the original Korean word, and the form 팀ᄎᆡ thimchoy came about because it was reinterpreted as the Sino-Korean 沈菜. What seems clear is that the original term for 김치 kimchi was associated with the Sino-Korean 沈菜 from early on, but it doesn't seem conclusive to me that 沈菜 is indeed the origin of the word.
Jongseong Park said,
October 27, 2013 @ 3:59 pm
To list just a few Korean words that are no longer Sino-Korean but derive from earlier Sino-Korean words (I'm switching back to Revised Romanization since these are all Modern Korean):
감자 gamja < 甘藷 감저 gamjeo "potato"
겨자 gyeoja < 芥子 개자 gaeja "mustard greens"
과녁 gwanyeok < 貫革 관혁 gwanhyeok "target"
성냥 seongnyang < 石硫黃 석류황 seongnyuhwang "match" (as in "matchstick")
지렁이 jireong-i < 地龍+이 지룡이 jiryong-i "worm"
짐승 jimseung < 衆生 중생 jungsaeng "beast"
천둥 cheondung < 天動 천동 cheondong "thunder"
To confuse matters, there are cases where Sino-Korean terms were created to write native Korean words:
설합 seolhap 舌盒 < 서랍 seorap "drawer"
Even the notorious example of 내일 naeil 來日 meaning "tomorrow" could be the result of writing a native Korean word with a form like 낼 nael as a Sino-Korean word based on folk etymology. It would explain why only Korean uses 來日 to mean "tomorrow" and not 明日 or 明天.
The existence of this latter category of words (native Korean words re-analyzed as Sino-Korean words due to folk etymology or simply to borrow into Classical Chinese) is why the etymology of kimchi is so difficult to decide in my view.
The examples I listed above derive from earlier Sino-Korean pronunciations. There are also direct loans from Sinitic languages, that is, words that derive from contemporary pronunciations in China, not the Sino-Korean readings of Chinese characters. The word for "brush", 붓 but, is an example. The Chinese character 筆 is 필 pil in Sino-Korean, but 붓 but seems to be from a Chinese pronunciation of 筆 that preserves the original -t ending (which regularly corresponds to -l in Sino-Korean).
The word for "Chinese cabbage", the most common ingredient for kimchi, is 배추 baechu. This was attested in 16th century Middle Korean as ᄇᆡᄎᆡ (Yale: poychoy), which probably is a loanword from Chinese deriving from a Chinese pronunciation of 白菜. In Sino-Korean, 白菜 would be read as baekchae.
붓 but "brush" and 배추 baechu "Chinese cabbage" are examples of loans from Sinitic languages that postdate the establishment of Sino-Korean pronunciation. If 곰 gom "bear" does indeed derive ultimately from Old Chinese 熊, or 바람 baram "wind" from Old Chinese 風, then that would predate the establishment of Sino-Korean pronunciation itself.
Victor Mair said,
October 27, 2013 @ 5:55 pm
From Bob Ramsey:
I've just now taken a quick look at the comments. Some are pertinent, some less so; it seems that people have figured out and agreed that gomtang has nothing to do with 'bear', but the comments went off on that tangent anyway, maybe for good reason, since the word is so interesting. However, I find the comments by my friends Juha Janhunen and Sasha Vovin puzzling; they seem to have fixated on the a priori assumption that since Japanese and Korean are not related, 'bear' must be a loanword. I'm an agnostic concerning the issue of genetic affinity, but Koreans have been in contact with bears since, well, as far we can tell, the beginning of time, so why should the word necessarily be a loan? And there is absolutely no connection of this native word to Chinese xiong; some have really gotten off on the wrong track there!
My only other comment, at least for now, is that Jongseong Park is on the right track in talking about that Paekche (or Baekje) place name. The toponym 'Bear Crossing' is in fact attested in Hangul in the 'Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven' 3:15 (written in 1445 and published in 1447) as kwoma nolo (I've transcribed it in Martin's RGK romanization here—the ROK government's RR is pretty much useless for historical linguistic purposes!), with the tones marked there as LHLL. The Middle Korean form kwom, marked as having a long, rising tone, is clearly a contraction of kwoma. Finally, the vowel length heard in today's standard Korean shows that this modern word is a regular reflex of those earlier forms.
JS said,
October 28, 2013 @ 12:24 am
I wanted to draw attention as well to our a priori assumption of borrowing to account for this piece of shared vocabulary in J+K, but Bob Ramsey has done so just above. However, we might also avoid the assumption that pre-Sino-Korean Chinese-Korean connections (however few or many such words there may be and whether or not 'bear' is an example) need necessarily be due to borrowing from early Chinese into proto-Korean and not vice-versa (if one is even comfortable with the idea of a neat distinction between borrowed and inherited vocabulary). So — is it the impression that others are presuming a Chin>Kor borrowing direction that lead Ramsey & Janhunen to reject out of hand any possibility of a connection to xiong?
JS said,
October 28, 2013 @ 12:56 am
@Jongseong Park
沈 wrote two distinct (though perhaps related?) Middle Chinese words in -im, one a noun meaning a liquid of some kind with an aspirated palatal affricate initial, one a verb 'soak, sink' with a voiced retroflex stop — which looks like the more likely member of a hypothetical collocation 沈菜. Don't know if this sheds any light on the t/th mixture in Korean… though if not, there is no shortage of candidates for a Chinese -m word with the appropriate semantics (sound symbolism is in play here), including 瀸 and 浸 (Schuessler has LHan tsiam and tsim respectively)…
Jongseong Park said,
October 28, 2013 @ 4:58 am
JS, 沈 has two readings in Modern Korean. By far the most common is 침 chim [ʨʰim], used in the sense of "sink" or "soak". The much rarer reading is 심 sim [ɕiːm], glossed as a surname or the name of a state during the Zhou Dynasty and the Spring and Autumn period. The other Middle Chinese meaning you refer to, a noun describing some kind of a liquid, would be written as 瀋 in Sino-Korean and read 심 sim [ɕim], I think.
As mentioned, the reading 침 chim would have been 팀 tim (Yale: thim) in Middle Korean, which looks consistent with the fact that 沈 had a stop initial in the sense "sink" or "soak" in Middle Chinese.
I know basically nothing about the correspondence of initials in Middle Chinese and Sino-Korean, so I can't speculate about whether 딤 dim (Yale: tim) could also have been a reading for 沈 or similar characters. 浸 has the reading 침 chim [ʨʰiːm] in Sino-Korean and is the more usual character in the sense "soak". 瀸 apparently has the reading 첨 cheom [ʨʰʌm], but is extremely rare—the Pyojun Gugeo Daesajeon lists no words in Modern Korean at least that use this character.
KWillets said,
October 28, 2013 @ 4:26 pm
dic.naver.com (a widely-used online Korean dictionary) gets 100% of these correct. I just used it last night for another word/idiom that GT didn't have at all.