A Chinese proverb

[profiterole_reads]

I encountered the Korean expression 새옹지마 (Sae Ong Ji Ma / The irony of fate, A blessing in disguise).

It baffled me, so I looked up its etymology and discovered that it was a Chinese proverb, that had not been translated, but simply transcribed into hangul: 塞翁失馬 (Sài Wēng Shī Mǎ / The old man on the frontier lost his horse). You can read the whole parable on Wikipedia to understand why it means "A silver lining".

Comments

[grayswandir]

Thanks for the link, this was really interesting!

[profiterole_reads]

You're welcome. :-)

[donutsweeper]

Ooh interesting, thanks for linking!

[profiterole_reads]

You're welcome. ^_^

[scytale]

Awww, this is a great story! thank you for linking! ;D

[profiterole_reads]

You're welcome.

[trobadora]

I've seen this one before; it's delightful. :D

Fascinating that it got borrowed into Korean without translation!

[profiterole_reads]

I think it's my first time encountering a full Chinese sentence (verb included, not just a compound noun) made into a Korean word. Though I assume it's not the only one.

[nnozomi]

Neat! Thank you for the link. Kind of a good-news/bad-news story!
(Now I'm getting curious about whether "translated" or "transcribed" or both apply for Chinese characters given Japanese or Korean readings; unanswerable, maybe).

[profiterole_reads]

Well, afaik, kanji have a Japanese reading (that would fit the "translated" category) and a Chinese reading (that would fit the "transcribed" category, with possible additional evolutions along the centuries).

Korean is the language I know the most, but I haven't reached the level where hanja are taught, so all I can say is that it probably depends if the words have Sino-Korean origins or Native Korean origins.