[KS] word origins

[jrpking]

Morgan Clippinger wrote: 

> But how did the -ing suffix slip in there?  One  possibility is that this is a shortened form of the expression "fighting spirit" (jeontu jeongsin), which I find in Yi Hui-seung's Kugo taesajon (1961, I think.).  Maybe close, but probably no cigar.

Just for fun, I checked a couple dictionaries at home here. [all forms in Yale].

For what it???s worth, Yi Congkuk (1936: Moten Cosen oylay.e sacen/The new dictionary of foreign words in modern Korean by J. C. Lee) lists phaithing suphilith[u] ???fighting spirit???, citing the Mayil Sinpo and Tonga Ilpo, but no *phaithing or *hwaithing as a cheer. Still, I suspect it was around already in colonial times as hwaithing ??? anybody know when it started getting used in Japan?

The Kwuklip Kwuke Yenkwuwen???s _Phyocwun kwuke taysacen_ lists phaithing, not *hwaithing, and says it is to be ???swunhwa???-ed (purified) as ???him nayca,??? without indicating any citations from texts (as it often does for other words). 

Like Gary Rector/Yu, I???ve heard hwaithing a lot, but usually from older speakers, and phaithing from younger speakers, and also assume it came via Japanese, then got more ???Koreanized??? with the ???ph??? for English ???f??? strategy in more recent times. I am also assuming that the dictionary cited above avoided a separate entry for *hwaithing out of an anti-Japanese aesthetic that eschews /hw-/ for foreign ???f??? as a loanword adaptation strategy in favor of /ph/, in much the same way that a few months ago on Korean TV (KBS, I think, though EBS also has a long-running series of spots like this) one of the verbal hygienic spots on how to speak better Korean (for Koreans, that is) showed some soccer players attacking the goal with the striker shouting to his teammate on the wing ???seynthaling, seynthaling!??? (i.e., Center the ball!) What was wrong with this picture? I eagerly awaited a new pure-Korean neologism. The obliging commentator chided: ???In our language, unlike Japanese, /a/ is distinguished from /e/ -- the correct pronunciation is ???seynth_e_ling.??? 

So watch your ???a???s and ???e???s (not your "p"s and "q"s...) when taking a sywus, phaysu or a khonakhik (oops ??? khon_e_khik -- that one was also mentioned on the same spot; so is it opaheytukhik or op_e_heytukhik for the one Pele was so good at?), or you???ll be committing a linguistic phawul and might draw a verbal hygienic yeyllokhatu (???Naisu!???). 

Post-colonial, anti-Japanese linguistic aesthetics run deep, and in effect run interference for (sorry for the sports metaphor overkill) other, equally invasive elements, or elements that, technically speaking anyway, ought to excite just as much purist sentiment, but don???t in the ongoing effort to purge Japanese ???ccikkeki???. Up north, they probably use (or at least promote) kawunteychaki or the like. 

Happy holidays, 


---
Ross King
Associate Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia
and 
Dean, Korean Language Village, Concordia Language Villages