The entry for 곤란 in the National Institute of Korean Language's Korean-English Learners' Dictionary has 困難▽ listed for the Hanja. Is this a bug/error in the dictionary or does it actually mean something in Korean?
asked Feb 3, 2017 at 9:09
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1 Answer
It's not an error. From the preface of the dictionary:
(1)
한자의 원래 음과 한글 표기로 제시되는 음이 다른 경우에는 해당 한자 오른쪽에 '▽' 기호로 표시하였다. 그러나 사이시옷이 첨가된 형태나 어문 규정의 차이로 달리 표기한 북한어에는 표시하지 않았다.
<예>
시월01 (十▽月) , 찻-잔 (茶盞), 페경지(廢耕地)
Roughly translated, it says:
When the original sound of the hanja and the sound that is expressed using Hangul does not match, the '▽' symbol is used to mark such cases. However, forms with 사이시옷 and North Korean words which follow different set of orthography rules are not marked.
These irregularities are due to historical sound changes.
Some other important dictionary symbols:
▼is used to mark that the word in the original language is nonexistent.-(a hyphen) is used at the border of morphemes in compound words. You should never put a space instead of the hyphen when using that word.^is used when spacing is optional.
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In other words, read the manual :) Thanks! Is this a common character used in dictionaries or just this one? Commented Feb 3, 2017 at 9:24
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Just to confirm my understanding... when a sound is not possible in Hangul, the ▽ is used to express that in writing, but how is it said? Or, is it simply not said since it is no possible to use it?– AmaceliaCommented Feb 3, 2017 at 18:23
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I’m just curious… from what angle do Koreans consider the pronunciation “deviant”? Many characters have multiple pronunciations, sometimes because the Chinese had multiple pronunciations, and sometimes because of semi-regular sound changes within Korean. Both 리 and 이 are considered canonical readings of 李 even though the latter is a phonological change. Based on Chinese rime dictionaries, only 리 would be correct.– Kevin LiCommented Feb 25, 2017 at 10:27
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In the majority of the words marked with ▽, I noticed that the change seems to be from ㄴ to ㄹ where the original Chinese also had a dental nasal initial (ㄴ). The more common ㄹ to ㄴ change is ignored.– Kevin LiCommented Feb 25, 2017 at 10:44
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@KevinLi Word-initial ㄹ changing into ㄴ, and 리 changing into 이 is a super regular sound change with no exceptions(it's not considered historical), so I guess that's why they're not marked. ㄴ to ㄹ change is much more rare, so they're marked to avoid confusion. Commented Feb 25, 2017 at 12:04