K is for Korean

[muckefuck]

Korean-English dictionary. Martin, Samuel E. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1967

I found this entry hard to write in the same way that you might find it hard to compose an encomium for one of your best friends. It's quite possible that I've logged more time with this one dictionary than most of my others combined. (The nearest contenders would likely be my Oxford-Duden and my Enciclopèdia Catalana Diccionari català-anglès.)

Not this particular copy, of course. For years before that happy day when I stumbled upon it in the Hyde Park Powell's, I had an intimate relationship with the copy in the UoC East Asian Library. monshu can tell you just how intimate: I sleep with my most beloved books. Sometimes, they are the last thing I hold before I fall asleep and the first thing I reach for when I awake in the morning.

How do you spend countless hours of your spare time with a dictionary? I'm the wrong person to answer this question, because of course my answer is How do you not? I've had to ban myself from opening any of them after 10 p.m. on a school night because otherwise I'm doomed. It goes like this: You look up a word you're curious about, and it makes you think of another word. Are they related? Look at the etymologies and find out! Wait, how would I say that in this other language? That's another dictionary, another ten minutes. Before you know it, this treasure hunt has kept you up past midnight.

After forty years, Martin's work can't help but be a bit dated, but I still haven't found a more comprehensive work for translating Korean into English. Among its most useful features are indications of vowel length (phonemic, but not shown in the script), cross references for all common conjugated forms, and complete lists of the Hanja corresponding to any given syllable. Among its disappointments are a scattershot approach to etymology and archaicisms.

Mere cavils, of course, when you consider what is packed into those 1,920 pages. Most of the Korean literature I own is equally dated, so as long as Ch'ae Man-shik and Hwang Sun-wŏn don't get too heavily into dialectal spellings, I'm good. Not that I really read much Korean these days, but it's comforting to know I could. Even now, despite all the online resources available, Martin is my final authority when I'm baffled by some twisted bit of grammar.

Since I picked up his Reference grammar of Korean, it's no longer the only book of his on my shelves, but it will always be "Martin" to me. Old friends earn their affectionate nicknames.

Comments

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I deserve that, whatever it is :-)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Relax and vide supra.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

BTW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X76ZIGQgBWg