[Update 2014-07-28: my friend Peter gave some useful insight, and I figured out more, because of it. The correct form is 참나, not 첨나 – my transcription is either an error or a legitimate dialectical variant. See comments below.]
My coworkers use and expression sometimes which I was trying to figure out, yesterday. It’s a kind of interjection following a declarative sentence. It is the term “첨나” [cheom-na]. I understand the pragmatics of it pretty well, I think: it seems to mean “How dare he/she/you?”
For example, Ken says (in Korean), “Jeong-yeol [a seventh-grader] is taller than me! 첨나! [how dare he?!]” Or [on e.g. a TV show] something like, “My girlfriend was looking at that other man… 첨나 [how dare she]!”
But not a single one of my coworkers could “explain” this expression. What I mean by that is that I want to understand the syntax/semantics/etymology. Where did it come from? Aren’t they curious? Is it a verbal particle? It seems to be some sort of verbal contraction, as best I can guess. Or is it a noun particle? It sounds vaguely Chinese, but these types of slang expressions are rarely Chinese – most Korean slang comes from native Korean vocabulary or from more recent Japanese or English borrowings. No one knows. No one is curious to know. 첨나! [how dare they?]
Anyway, I want to figure it out. If anyone reading this blog is knowledgeable about Korean and able to “explain” it, I’d love to know. I drew a complete blank on my internet searches – which are admittedly imcompetent in the area of Korean language studies.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]