Once as an activity for practice, Vivian listed out some 줄임말 (abbreviations) in Korean and asked me to guess their actual meaning or what they are short for. I knew some of them from the variety shows I'm watching, but it was also hard for me to guess if I've never seen the word before. Some of them are short for a whole sentence, while some of them are just short for two words. It was a fun activity that we both liked, so I thought it would be an interesting topic for cultural posts as well.
It is commonly mistaken that 줄임말 in Korean was invented lately when teenagers are just too lazy to type. However, in the 90s when 삐삐 (pager) was largely used, there were a lot of abbreviations in numbers for people to communicate conveniently. For example, 58486 is short for 오빠 사랑해 (I love you) because the pronunciation of the numbers is similar to that of the sentence. Another example would be 20000. When it is pronounced as "twenty thousand", it is similar to that of 비안 (sorry). There are hundreds of number abbreviations like these back then and I found it so interesting.
Now, the 줄임말 are mostly in words. They are updated very fast since people keep creating and spreading the new ones, so it does not necessarily mean you are trendy even if you use 줄임말. For instance, a very commonly seen one is called 청바지, which means "jeans" itself. But is also short for the sentence "청춘은 바로 지금", which is saying "our youth is now!" This sentence is a 건배사 that are words or sentences people say before taking a shot together. But now, this abbreviation and the 건배사 are relatively outdated. Young people tend to use more words like "인싸" (insider of a group), "아아" (iced americano) and even something like "ㅇㅇ" (ok, yes) in their daily life. Some abbreviations started out as something only young people would use, but then gradually became daily expressions, such as 심쿵 (my heart just skipped a beat), 남사친 (boy-friend), and TMI (too much information).
Sources:
삐삐 숫자 암호해석 : 네이버 블로그 (naver.com)
재미있는 건배사줄임말 우.아.미~ : 네이버 블로그 (naver.com)
줄임말 50개, 당신은 몇 문제 맞힐 수 있나요? - 머니투데이 (mt.co.kr)
[#기출문제] "친추? 친구 추행?!" 와썹맨 빼고 ALL 정답 가능한! 신조어_난이도 하 | #놀라운토요일 #Diggle - YouTube
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