Simple question about an old song. Does 'Gee' in the 소녀시대 song of the same name have any meaning in Korean? If not, is it a non-lexical vocable or just a borrowing of the slightly dated English interjection 'Gee'?
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1Maybe I am wrong, but native speaker's point of view, It means nothing.– Jin LimCommented Jul 2, 2020 at 22:54
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3 Answers
'지' doesn't have any meaning in Korean. What the writer intended to mean with '지' could only be guessed:
- It could be derived from '지지':
어린아이의 말로, 더러운 것을 이르는 말. '그건 지지니까 만지지 마.'
When a little baby tries to touch or eat a dirty thing, mom says "지지. 안돼요". Here, '지지' means
an unclean or unsanitary thing
Among young people, it is used when they refuse to do something they consider dirty or they are not willing to do. For example:
A: 우리 키스할까? B: 지지. 안돼.
A: Shall we kiss? B: (Literally) No, it's impossible (as if kissing were unsanitary) It is really difficult to explain the nuance.
It could stand for 'Girl(s)' or 'Girls' Generation'.
It literally means 'gee (interjection that you mentioned)'. It is anybody's guess. But since Girls' Generation is quite popular in the world, we can't rule out the possibility that 'gee' was intended to mean
(informal, chiefly North American) A mild expression, typically of surprise, enthusiasm, or sympathy
[네이버 국어사전, Oxford Online Dictionary]
According to wikipedia and this website, the title is supposed to be an exclamation of surprise, an expression similar to “Oh my gosh”, or more similarly, "Gee!" in English.
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Great links to support your answer.– user7Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 19:54
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@Rathony, Thanks. :) Reading this post meta.korean.stackexchange.com/questions/50/…, I decided to become active here.– SoudabehCommented Jul 8, 2016 at 19:56
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I agree with most of the top answer's comments, and would also like to add the following.
In South Korea, video games culture is very strong. They are top of the world in various games including League of Legends (LOL) and StarCraft Brood War (BW, or SCBW).
In video games, the term "GG" is short for "good game", and is usually mentioned by the loser after a match, to concede defeat and to show sportsmanship by saying it was a good game, before bowing out and exiting the game.
In Korea I suppose the strong gaming culture influenced the younger generation to use the word "GG" or the Korean character equivalent "지지", to mean no.
In my country "GG" is also used to refer to a failure or a bad outcome too.
For example, "GG dude, the teacher just shortened the assignment deadline by 3days."
Hope this adds context to the younger generation/gaming slang.