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  • Essay / The Influence of the English Language on the Korean Language

    In today's Korean society, there have been many controversies regarding the influence of the English language on the Korean language. There has been a lot of contact between the two languages ​​as they encompass English-sized Korean and deal with bilingual creativity involving Korean-English mixing. South Koreans now tend to use certain words or expressions that may sound like Korean but sound distinctly English. These words or expressions are a hybrid of two languages ​​called “Konglish”. The rise of this phenomenon has become serious and has spread within Korean society to the point that people believe in the loss of the mother tongue. The Konglish phenomenon has impacted Korean society by degrading the culture of native speakers and forcing the English language to become a dominant force within society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay To begin with, after the dominance of the English language in Korean society, growing tensions arose over whether this was necessary for the English language. blend into the Korean language. According to Ran Park, a graphic designer, she mentioned that upon returning to her hometown, she noticed a change in her local language. The hybrid of English and Korean was used and she said "people started using the words as if they were Korean." The importance of this statement is to show how important a person's culture is in society, while mixing their universal language with the local language can break the sentence or words. However, the involvement of the English language has created some borrowings into the Korean language, which ultimately caused translation errors as well as fabricated sentences that incorporate English words but are not easily understood by native English speakers. Konglish loanwords such as "hand phone" come from "cellphone", which suggests that Konglish leads to confusion between English and Korean. Apart from this, the rise of the English phenomenon has led to a question among the youth regarding the importance of English education. Since the English language is universal, Korean society believes that it is necessary for the teaching of English to be compulsory in schools. South Korea recently banned the teaching of English to first and second graders because they are not yet able to understand a new language. Recent statistics show that Korean proficiency declines when exposed to English at a very young age. With this in mind, it gives society the impression that the government is trying to ban excessive use of English because they want to prioritize learning Hangul. Not to mention that due to the inequality between the rich and the poor in South Korea, it makes sense that the wealthier would have access to English education. This would eventually lead society to a great division between those who know English best and those who do not. Meanwhile, the Korean language follows strict rules, especially those of the highly phonetic Korean alphabet called "Hangul". Konglish has a negative effect on Hangul because it destroys the traditional values ​​of a South Korean and people did not realize this phenomenon leading to the loss of the native language. Due to Korea's long history of Japanese colonization, South Koreans are very proud of their culture and language and refuse to repeat what happened in the past when they were stripped of their citizenship. From another..