[Korean Culture & Language] Squid Game/Southern dialect

 


Hello, this is Uptempo Marketers!

As a Korean, one of the first thoughts I had watching Squid Game was, “Seong Gi-hun’s mom is a Gyeongsang-do person.” Gyeongsang-do is a province sitting on the southeast corner of our peninsula. All my life I’ve lived in and around Seoul, far away from Gyeongsang-do. But as a Korean, I just knew she was from there; it was obvious as soon as I heard her say “gaga.” Yes. Gaga. As in “Lady Gaga.”


source: netflix.com


Gyeongsang-do people say “gaga” a lot. It’s one of the first things Gi-hun’s mom said in the very first scene of episode one.

For example, she said it when she told Gi-hun to buy his daughter dinner:

“Don’t forget and at least get her dinner”

“까먹지 말고 이따가 가가 저녁이라도 사멕이라”

“Kkamukji margo iddaga gaga jeonyeok-irado sa-megira


So what, you ask? Just stay with me, because it’s about to get interesting.

“Ga” is such a flexible word in Gyeongsang-do that you can say full sentences just by saying “ga.”


Consider the following:

“Gaga gaga?”

“가가 가가?”

This means, “Is that person the one we’re talking about?”


Intonation is important. For both gaga’s, the accent falls on the first syllable, as in “Lady Gaga.” So just say Lady Gaga’s last name two times:


“Gaga Gaga?”

And there you said it: “Is that person the one we’re talking about?”


How is this linguistically possible? In this case, “ga (가)” is being used in several ways:

① (noun) that person

② (postpositional particle) is

③ (noun) the person being mentioned

④ (question word; just a function word indicating a question is being asked)


Now apply each meaning to the 가’s one-by-one, and you get:


And oh, it gets crazier than this.

“가가 가가가?” means, “Is that person from the Ga family?”

But “가가 가가가” can also mean, “After the person took it with him/her…”

It depends on your intonation when you say it. But I won’t even bother explaining that far. All I’m saying is, every Korean person knows Gyeongsang-do people say “가” a lot. It’s common knowledge.

So if you ever hear a Korean person saying a bunch of 가’s, ask yourself this:

“가가 가가? (Is that person the Gyeongsang-do person I read about?)”



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