DETAILS OF A LANGUAGE

Some details of a language - you don't get them till you are either deeply rooted in this new idiom, or until you're able to compare it to another language that share the same idiomatic and cultural origin. 

Recently I started studying Korean. I know, I should study Chinese, I'm going to China, my degree is in Chinese bla bla bla. But I'm so fascinated by Korean. Plus, it's reverse side than Chinese: Chinese starts easy, as sounds and grammar are not so different from European languages; but man, how hard it gets after, when thousands of characters get in the way?

Korean, reverse: totally nonsense grammar (for us) and weird sound differences (for us). At least they have their own alphabet - which makes kind of sense, and after a while you listen and listen and listen and - guess what? listen, then this weirdo starts to make sense. They both need, anyway, some serious hard study, with at least 2 years of efforts to get to a fluent level of speaking. 

So, thanks to the fact that I'm ages away from such a accomplishment, my head started to make some fun connections and reasoning...which ain't probably right, and a more proficient or a native speaker would just kill me for such shameful comparisons. Still, HA. They're fun. Let's start with the only note my limited Korean vocabulary allowed me:

사람  -  사랑 

Yeah, basically the same thing. Just a tiny geometric difference, the first chose a square, the second was more likely in a circle mood. The former means people (saram) and the latter, ladies and gentlemen, love (sarang). I got sooo excited when I saw this, not-so-quietly hoping that the difference could reflect my philosophy: people are there to be loved, and to love themselves. A person was born to do this, and love has a indissoluble bond with the true nature of mankind. It can be deep deep inside but, unless you're Voldemort, always there is. It's such an hippie concept, I'm pleased with myself for having noticed it (pat-pat).

Also, thanks to Lee Jae-ha (Lee Seung-gi) for sowing the idea lol.

Chinese? Well, I could name a dozen examples. But let's just start with the funnier one...

机

Ji, literally meaning machine. The fun about this word (which nowadays acts more as a suffix) is that transforms every other word into a modern term. Example: poor Chinese farmers, once upon a time used to wash their clothes by hand at the Yangtze river shores: they used to xiyi (洗衣), wash clothes. Adding the infamous ji, you get a washing machine (洗衣机). Birds fly; luckily an airplane ain't a mechanical bird (鸟机) like they're called in most of Cast-away-style movies, but it's simply a flying machine (飞机). Even funnier, if you add chang (field) to the flying machine, what could you get? The only place where these huge things like to rest and meet: the airport (飞机场). Receiving+Sounds+Machine (收音机) makes a radio, as well as Record+Sound+Machine (录音机)... yeah, a tape-recorder.  

So, everything+机 becomes the definition for modern stuff. The ones that still make me laugh my ass off are the Hand-Machine (手机) and the Ear-machine (耳机)... or else called, mobile phone and headphones. I'm seriously in love with Mandarin.