Korean numerals

Last updated

The Korean language has two regularly used sets of numerals: a native Korean system and Sino-Korean system. The native Korean number system is used for general counting, like counting up to 99. It is also used to count people, hours, objects, ages, and more. Sino-Korean numbers on the other hand are used for purposes such as dates, money, minutes, addresses, phone numbers, and numbers above 99.

Contents

Construction

For both native and Sino- Korean numerals, the teens (11 through 19) are represented by a combination of tens and the ones places. For instance, 15 would be sib-o (십오; 十五), but not usually il-sib-o in the Sino-Korean system, and yeol-daseot (열다섯) in native Korean. Twenty through ninety are likewise represented in this place-holding manner in the Sino-Korean system, while Native Korean has its own unique set of words, as can be seen in the chart below. The grouping of large numbers in Korean follows the Chinese tradition of myriads (10000) rather than thousands (1000). The Sino-Korean system is nearly entirely based on the Chinese numerals.

The distinction between the two numeral systems is very important. Everything that can be counted will use one of the two systems, but seldom both. Sino-Korean words are sometimes used to mark ordinal usage: yeol beon (열 번) means "ten times" while sip beon (십번; 十番) means "number ten."

When denoting the age of a person, one will usually use sal () for the native Korean numerals, and se (세; 歲) for Sino-Korean. For example, seumul-daseot sal (스물다섯 살) and i-sib-o se (이십오 세; 二十五 歲) both mean 'twenty-five-year-old'. See also East Asian age reckoning.

The Sino-Korean numerals are used to denote the minute of time. For example, sam-sib-o bun (삼십오 분; 三十五 分) means "__:35" or "thirty-five minutes." The native Korean numerals are used for the hours in the 12-hour system and for the hours 0:00 to 12:00 in the 24-hour system. The hours 13:00 to 24:00 in the 24-hour system are denoted using both the native Korean numerals and the Sino-Korean numerals. For example, se si (세 시) means '03:00' or '3:00 a.m./p.m.' and sip-chil si (십칠 시; 十七 時) or yeol-ilgop si (열일곱 시) means '17:00'.

Some of the native numbers take a different form in front of measure words:

NumberNative Korean cardinalsAttributive forms of native Korean cardinals
Hangul McCune–Reischauer Revised Hangul McCune–Reischauer Revised
1 하나hanahan
2 tuldultudu
3 setse
4 netne
20 스물sŭmulseumul스무sŭmuseumu

The descriptive forms for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 20 are formed by "dropping the last letter" from the original native cardinal, so to speak. Examples:

Something similar also occurs in some Sino-Korean cardinals:

The cardinals for three and four have alternative forms in front of some measure words:

Korean has several words formed with two or three consecutive numbers. Some of them have irregular or alternative forms.

As for counting days in native Korean, another set of unique words are used:

The native Korean saheul (사흘; three days) is often misunderstood as the Sino-Korean sail (사일; 四日; four days) due to similar sounds. The two words are different in origin and have different meanings.

Cardinal numerals

Number Sino-Korean cardinals Native Korean cardinals
Hanja Hangul Romanization Hangul Romanization
0 [1] /, / yeong, ryeong / gong
1 il하나hana
2 idul
3 samset
4 sanet
5 o다섯daseot
6 , yuk, ryuk여섯yeoseot
7 chil일곱ilgop
8 pal여덟yeodeol
9 gu아홉ahop
10 sipyeol
11 十一십일sip-il열하나yeol-hana
12 十二십이sip-i열둘yeol-dul
13 十三십삼sip-sam열셋yeol-set
14 十四십사sip-sa열넷yeol-net
15 十五십오sip-o열다섯yeol-daseot
16 十六십육, 십륙sim-nyuk, sip-ryuk [note 1] 열여섯yeol-yeoseot
17 十七십칠sip-chil열일곱yeol-ilgop
18 十八십팔sip-pal열여덟yeol-yeodeol
19 十九십구sip-gu열아홉yeol-ahop
20 二十이십i-sip스물seumul
30 三十삼십sam-sip서른seoreun
40 四十사십sa-sip마흔maheun
50 五十오십o-sipswin
60 六十육십, 륙십yuk-sip, ryuk-sip예순yesun
70 七十칠십chil-sip일흔ilheun
80 八十팔십pal-sip여든yeodeun
90 九十구십gu-sip아흔aheun
100 baek [note 2] on
1,000 cheon즈믄 [note 2] jeumeun
10,000 man [note 2] gol
100,000,000 eok
1012jo
1016gyeong
1020hae
1024 [note 3] ja
1028 [note 3] yang
1032 [note 3] gu
1036 [note 3] gan
1040 [note 3] jeong
1044 [note 3] jae
1048 [note 3] geuk
1052 or 1056恒河沙항하사 [note 4] hanghasa
1056 or 1064阿僧祇아승기 [note 4] aseunggi
1060 or 1072那由他나유타 [note 4] nayuta
1064 or 1080不可思議불가사의 [note 4] bulgasaui
1068 or 1088無量大數무량대수 [note 4] muryangdaesu

Larger numbers

In numbers above 10, elements are combined from largest to smallest, and zeros are implied. Hanja and Hangul numerals are both multiplicative additive rather than positional; to write the number 20 you get the character for two (二/ 이) and then the character for ten (十/십) to get two tens or twenty (二十/이십).

Pronunciation

The initial consonants of measure words and numbers following the native cardinals 여덟 ("eight", only when the is not pronounced) and ("ten") become tensed consonants when possible. Thus for example:

Several numerals have long vowels, namely (two), (three) and (four), but these become short when combined with other numerals / nouns (such as in twelve, thirteen, fourteen and so on).

The usual liaison and consonant-tensing rules apply, so for example, 예순여섯yesun-yeoseot (sixty-six) is pronounced like [예순녀섣] (yesun-nyeoseot) and 칠십chil-sip (seventy) is pronounced like [칠씹]chil-ssip.

Constant suffixes used in Sino-Korean ordinal numerals

Beon (번; 番), ho (호; 號), cha (차; 次), and hoe (회; 回) are always used with Sino-Korean or Arabic ordinal numerals. For example, Yihoseon (이호선; 二號線) is Line Number Two in a metropolitan subway system. Samsipchilbeongukdo (37번국도; 37番國道) is highway number 37. They cannot be used interchangeably.

906호 (號) is 'Apt #906' in a mailing address. 906 without ho () is not used in spoken Korean to imply apartment number or office suite number. The special prefix je (제; 第) is usually used in combination with suffixes to designate a specific event in sequential things such as the Olympics.

Substitution for disambiguation

In commerce or the financial sector, some hanja for each Sino-Korean numbers are replaced by alternative ones to prevent ambiguity or retouching.

EnglishHangulRegular hanjaFinancial hanja
one [2]
two [3]
three [4]
four
five [5]
six, [6]
seven [7]
eight [8]
nine [9]
ten [10]
hundred [11]
thousand, [12] [13]

For verbally communicating number sequences such as phone numbers, ID numbers, etc., especially over the phone, native Korean numbers for 1 and 2 are sometimes substituted for the Sino-Korean numbers. For example, o-o-o hana-dul-hana-dul (오오오 하나둘하나둘) instead of o-o-o il-i-il-i (오오오 일이일이) for '555-1212', or sa-o-i-hana (사-오-이-하나) instead of sa-o-i-il (사-오-이-일) for '4521', because of the potential confusion between the two similar-sounding Sino-Korean numbers.

For the same reason, military transmissions are known to use mixed native Korean and Sino-Korean numerals:

gong

하나 둘

hana dul

sam

net

o

여섯

yeoseot

칠 팔

chil pal

아홉

ahop

하나 둘여섯칠 팔아홉

gonghana dulsamnetoyeoseotchil palahop

Notes

Related Research Articles

Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote numbers in written Chinese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean language</span> Language spoken in Korea

Korean is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the national language of both North Korea and South Korea.

2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and the only even prime number.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanja</span> Chinese characters used in Korean writing

Hanja, alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean name</span>

Korean names are names that place their origin in, or are used in, Korea. A Korean name in the modern era typically consists of a surname followed by a given name, with no middle names. A number of Korean terms for names exist. For full names, seongmyeong, seongham, or ireum (이름) are commonly used. When a Korean name is written in Hangul, there is no space between the surname and the given name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McCune–Reischauer</span> Korean language romanization system

McCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean-language romanization systems. It was created in 1937 and the ALA-LC variant based on it is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America.

Sino-Koreanvocabulary or Hanja-eo refers to Korean words of Chinese origin. Sino-Korean vocabulary includes words borrowed directly from Chinese, as well as new Korean words created from Chinese characters, and words borrowed from Sino-Japanese vocabulary. Many of these terms were borrowed during the height of Chinese-language literature on Korean culture. Subsequently, many of these words have also been truncated or altered for the Korean language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean calendar</span> Traditional lunisolar calendar

The traditional Korean calendar or Dangun calendar is a lunisolar calendar. Dates are calculated from Korea's meridian, and observances and festivals are based in Korean culture.

The Korean language uses special measure or counting words for specific objects and events. These suffixes are called subullyusa in Korean. They are similar to the ones employed in the Chinese and the Japanese languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Asian age reckoning</span> Traditional age reckoning in East Asia

Traditional East Asian age reckoning covers a group of related methods for reckoning human ages practiced in the East Asian cultural sphere, where age is the number of calendar years in which a person has been alive; it starts at 1 at birth and increases at each New Year. Ages calculated this way are always 1 or 2 years greater than ages that start with 0 at birth and increase at each birthday. Historical records from China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam have usually been based on these methods, whose specific details have varied over time and by place. The South Korean government switched to the international system on June 28, 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tetraphobia</span> Avoidance of the number four in many East Asian nations

Tetraphobia is the practice of avoiding instances of the digit 4. It is a superstition most common in East Asian nations and is associated with death.

Sino-Xenic vocabularies are large-scale and systematic borrowings of the Chinese lexicon into the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, none of which are genetically related to Chinese. The resulting Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese vocabularies now make up a large part of the lexicons of these languages. The pronunciation systems for these vocabularies originated from conscious attempts to consistently approximate the original Chinese sounds while reading Classical Chinese. They are used alongside modern varieties of Chinese in historical Chinese phonology, particularly the reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese. Some other languages, such as Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai languages, also contain large numbers of Chinese loanwords but without the systematic correspondences that characterize Sino-Xenic vocabularies.

A collateral adjective is an adjective that is identified with a particular noun in meaning, but that is not derived from that noun. For example, the word bovine is considered the adjectival equivalent for the noun cattle, but it is derived from a different word, which happens to be the Latin word for "cattle". Similarly, lunar serves as an adjective to describe attributes of the Moon; Moon comes from Old English mōna "moon" and lunar from Latin luna "moon". The adjective thermal and the noun heat have a similar semantic relationship. As in these examples, collateral adjectives in English very often derive from the Latin or Greek translations of the corresponding nouns. In some cases both the noun and the adjective are borrowed, but from different languages, such as the noun air and the adjective aerial. The term "collateral" refers to these two sides of the relationship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean mixed script</span> Writing using Hangul and Hanja

Korean mixed script is a form of writing the Korean language that uses a mixture of the Korean alphabet or hangul and hanja, the Korean name for Chinese characters. The distribution on how to write words usually follows that all native Korean words, including suffixes, particles, and honorific markers are generally written in hangul and never in hanja. Sino-Korean vocabulary or hanja-eo, either words borrowed from Chinese or created from Sino-Korean roots, were generally always written in hanja, although very rare or complex characters were often substituted with hangul. Although the Korean alphabet was introduced and taught to people beginning in 1446, most literature until the early twentieth century was written in literary Chinese known as hanmun.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese family of scripts</span> Writing systems descended from oracle bone script

The Chinese family of scripts includes writing systems used to write various East Asian languages, that ultimately descend from the oracle bone script invented in the Yellow River valley during the Shang dynasty. These include written Chinese itself, as well as adaptations of it for other languages, such as Japanese kanji, Korean hanja, Vietnamese chữ Hán and chữ Nôm, Zhuang sawndip, and Bai bowen. More divergent are the Tangut script, Khitan large script, Khitan small script and its offspring, the Jurchen script, as well as the Yi script, Sui script, and Geba syllabary, which were inspired by written Chinese but not descended directly from it. While written Chinese and many of its descendant scripts are logographic, others are phonetic, including the kana, Nüshu, and Lisu syllabaries, as well as the bopomofo semi-syllabary.

The Pyeongan dialect, alternatively Northwestern Korean, is the Korean dialect of the Northwestern Korean Peninsula and neighboring parts of China. According to North Korea, it is the base of the country's standard Korean, however some South Korean researchers have claimed that the Gyeonggi dialect is the foundation of standard Korean in both the North and the South.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cia-Cia language</span> Austronesian language spoken on Buton island, Indonesia

Cia-Cia, also known as Buton or Butonese, is an Austronesian language spoken principally around the city of Baubau on the southern tip of Buton island, off the southeast coast of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. It is written using the Latin and Hangul scripts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korea Communications Standards Commission</span> Government agency

The Korea Communications Standards Commission is an institution of the South Korean government that regulates communications including film, television, radio, and internet.

Historically Vietnamese has two sets of numbers: one is etymologically native Vietnamese; the other uses Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. In the modern language the native Vietnamese vocabulary is used for both everyday counting and mathematical purposes. The Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary is used only in fixed expressions or in Sino-Vietnamese words, in a similar way that Latin and Greek numerals are used in modern English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comparison of Japanese and Korean</span> Linguistic comparison

The geographically proximate languages of Japanese and Korean share considerable similarity in syntactic and morphological typology while having a small number of lexical resemblances. Observing the said similarities and probable history of Korean influence on Japanese culture, linguists have formulated different theories proposing a genetic relationship between them, though these studies either lack conclusive evidence or were subsets of theories that have largely been discredited. There has been new research which has revived the possibility of a genealogical link, such as the Transeurasian hypothesis by Robbeets et al., supported by computational linguistics and archaeological evidence, but this view has received significant criticism as well.

References

See also