kujo wrote:For the Korean aficionado in the forum.
I guess that would be me? ... Anyway, not sure where you found that quote from, but "oppa" does not mean "big brother". Just older (actual) brother or any older person with whom a girl or younger woman is close enough (whom she could call, say, to get a ride home after getting drunk at a restaurant). It's important to remember that it is a word used ONLY by females. In fact in schools and colleges, girls who are close enough as friends with senior male students to say go and have a group lunch together, would call any senior student "oppa". It doesn't have any such bad connotation as sugar daddy or anything...
The equivalent of "bro" (or an actual brother), used only by boys or men and not by any females, is "hyeong" (written as "hyung" by some who don't follow the official ministry-approved romanication, but the vowel "eo" is of the same sound as the Bengali "a" that sounds closer to "o" but not "o").
There is also a word for "big brother" which is "keun hyoeng", where the vowel "eu" is exactly the same vowel that would be added at the end when a tamilian or malayali says "thamizh", as pure dravidian words do not end in consonants.
The "n" added at the end of the word "oppa" is a subject particle showing that "oppa" is the subject of the sentence. Subject particles do not exist in Indian languages, if I am not mistaken (though we sometimes say stuff like "nan vandu" in tamil or "mei to" in hindi to stress the subject and essentially to convey something like "as for me" or "as far as I am concerened").
PSY didn't complete the sentence, but everybody takes it as he is saying "This oppa has kangnam style". In the subject-object-verb system of Korean, Japanese and Indian languages, he would need the verb at the end. The simplest form that does not require also an object-particle added to "style", would have been "Oppan Gangnam Style iya", where the ending verb "iya" is the same as the "hay" in Hindi ("This oppa IS gangnam style"
).
But, had he completed the sentence, the song would not be even half as popular around the world, because a Korean's tongue simply cannot avoid making the "l" sound at the end into an "r" sound when followed by a vowel. That means you would hear "oppan gangnam stayiriya" - which does not make sense, and there would be no chance for the song to get popular abroad. I know PSY couldn't have thought of it because Koreans are just not aware (to a man!) of that detail about their tongues. So he got lucky.
Oh by the way, the starting "g" in the place name "gangnam" is the same "k" as in dravidian languages. A little softer than the samskrutam and hindi "k", may be. Exactly the same sound as in the placename "kannoor" in Kerala. The korean ministry chose the "g" sound to prevent people using the English "k" which is a noticeably harder sound than how Indians pronouce it (which was the reason why the Biritish did not use K to write Kolkatta when they heard the pace name). Gangnam is the south side of Seoul which has the the highest land prices and the most expensive highrise apartments.
Ok, just to bore the heck out of you, that is the full linguistic analysis of just the first line of "Oppan Gangnam Style". You asked for it, kujo
Jay
