I have found a really excellent example of one of the things I find so amazing and fabulous about the Korean Language. I’ve been watching a TV drama called “커피프린스 1호점” (from 2009), and there’s a scene where the characters are eating together while playing intensely with language as they try top each other’s insults.
They make each other’s names into verbs, they make them into adjectives, they make them into adverbs. Korean syntax is extremely flexible in its ability to make new vocabulary, and also in its ability to change any given part of speech into another part of speech through the use of endings and particles of various kinds. It’s highly systematic, driven by complex rules, yet it’s also mind-bogglingly creative. Really, it’s exactly my kind of thing. Korean rocks!
Here is a youtube clip of the scene that I like so much. Ignore the romantic song at the start, and focus on the scene from minute ~2:30 up to about minute ~3:30, and watch the characters as they talk to each other. The subtitling only weakly begins to capture the amazing things that are done first to Eun-chan’s name, and then to Han-kyul’s.
[UPDATE: the video was removed from youtube, and since I was stupid and didn’t record the Episode number, it’s nearly impossible for me to relocate this clip. Regrettable.]
