Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Korean Text Message (SMS) Slang

I taught a couple of my students some English SMS (text message) abbreviations the other day - btw, idk, brb, ttyl, etc. - and they in return they taught me a little bit about the art of the Korean text message. Many of these I knew already, but I did pick up a few new tricks.

Some of these are common in spoken language as well, but this is primarily a list of slang expressions used in chat rooms and text messages.

If you know of any more, please add them in the comments!

ㅎㅎ 
ㅋㅋㅋ 
ㅋㄷㅋㄷ 
Laughing

ㄷㄷㄷ  
Trembling from fear, maybe the sound of teeth chattering (deu-deu-deu). [from 덜덜]

ㅂㅂ
Bye-bye.

ㅇㅋ
OK

ㅇㅇ
Yes / I understand / I agree / Shut up  (ng ng)

ㄴㄴ
No no.

ㅎㅇ
Hi. Short for 하이.


This can be used as a middle finger.

ㄱ ㅅ
Thanks (short for 감사합니다).

ㄱㅊ
It's OK (short for 괸찮아).

쩐다
Expression of anger, excitement, happiness, or any intense emotion. Kind of like "damn!", though it's not a bad word.


Teacher (short for 선생님).




Korean Emoticons
(Used often by girls in particular)

^^
Happy face. By far the most common Korean emoticon in existence.

ㅠㅠ or ㅠ.ㅠ
Sad / Crying face. Perhaps a close second to ^^. Korean girls are very dramatic.

OTL
This is an entire crying person, who is so distraught he's on his hands and knees.

ㅡ ㅡ
Angry face.

ㅇㅅㅇ
Cute face.

(ㅡ_ㅡ)Zzzz
Sleeping.

This funny clip from 거침없이 하이킥 (High Kick) explains a few more in detail.

9 comments :

  1. I'm officially a fan of "OTL". My students are slowly starting to make more sense.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I remember reading a couple years ago about "martian language" in China and Taiwan. In Taiwan they even tried to put it on the college entrance exams! They usually used "orz" instead of OTL, I think. Some of them were jokes using hanzi shapes, like 囧 (jiong) which looks like a distressed face. And some were phonetic jokes, like "3Q" means thank you, where 3 is pronounced "san". Fun stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  3. i actually think "orz" is better, or cuter anyway, which i think is usually the point.

    ReplyDelete
  4. EPIC! 고마워

    ReplyDelete
  5. I reposted this post with a link back: http://ellacino.blogspot.com/2011/02/korean-text-message-slang.html

    I hope you don't mind :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous8:39 PM

    and
    열공=열심히 공부
    엥!! kinda shocked..like pardon..what did you just said!
    왜케=왜 이렇게
    ㅊㄱ=축하해
    아점 = 아침 +점심...
    수포자 =수학포기자 ...someone who gave up studying math lol
    생파 =생일 파티...
    헐== they use that a lot ..it doesnt have a meaning..they use it when hear something shocking ir nonsense..or amazing !!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...