Last week I read Robert B. Moore's Racism in the English Language, which can be found here. One section of it goes over many uses of the words "black" and "white" to refer to negative and positive things, respectively. It's no coincidence, the use of those words in relation to race, at least in my opinion. It got me thinking about a few things about the Korean language and how certain words have two means:
- 말 can mean "horse" or "words/language/what is spoken". But there are other words for "word" and "language" and "what is spoken", depending on the situation. I wonder why these two share the same sound, the way "right" can mean "opposite of left" or "correct"
- the word for a pepper (hot pepper) is the same as the (slang?) word for a man's genitalia; presumably because...they look similar? I've looked the word up in my Korean-English dictionary and it gives a different word, but I've only ever heard it referred to the word that is a homophone for "pepper", so that's why I'm just assuming it's slang and not the official proper name
- 배 can mean belly/stomach, boat/ship, or pear. Again, I wonder why three words share the same word-sound, and I can't find it as a triple homophone in my dictionary, so I'll assume that the first two words have other technical/authentic words that are used in typical language and depending on the situation
English, for all its words and rules and loopholes, is a very lax language and not very specific compared to other languages.
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