From: drury@helix.nih.gov (Richard Drury)
Subject: Re: one to ten in korean
Organization: National Institutes of Health
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 05:23:11 GMT

In article mary@Cayman.COM (Mary Malmros) writes:
>
>[various people telling us that "hana", "dool", etc. IS "one", "two", etc.
> and that "il", "i" ISN'T "one", "two", etc. deleted]
>
>I posted about this not two months ago, but hey, this is Usenet, which
>means that if we can learn a lesson once we can by God learn it 20 or 30
>times over.  

Well, I'm certainly not going to jump up and defend the honor of 
Usenet, but I think the problem here has more to do with the 
lesson than the students.

>Korean has TWO number systems.  One is the good ol' "hana, dool" etc
>that you're used to hearing your instructor yell out at you.  My
>old Korean teacher called these "counting numbers".  The other numbers
>are "il", "i", etc.  
>
>A lot of people mistakenly equate those with the cardinal numbers (one,
>two, three) and the ordinal numbers (first, second, third) in English.
>In fact, it's not quite like that.  According to my Korean teacher, 
>both are cardinal numbers meaning "one", "two".  The best explanation my
>teacher could come up with was, "You use one kind of numbers for
>some things and the other kind for other things." ;-)  She did say
>that "hana" etc. are more often used when you are counting something,
>but other than that she didn't have a real good rule.  

The Korean language embraces two different numbering schemes
alright, but I think your understanding that both of them are 
cardinal numbering schemes is incorrect.  The cardinal numbers, ha-na,
dool, set, etc., are used for counting.  But the ordinals, il,
yi, sam, etc., are used to rank order.

>The thing that may have caused the initial confusion is that sometimes
>"il", "i" are used where we in English would say "first", "second", etc.
>For example, the names of months are "irwol", "iwol", "samwol", etc.  
>If we were to talk about months by number, we'd probably say "third
>month" rather than "three month"...but I still don't think this makes
>them into ordinal numbers, because they're also used in situations
>where we would use cardinal numbers.  

That *does* sound confusing.  In what kind of situations are the 
ordinals used cardinally?

>To further confuse matters, there is a suffix "il" that is added on 
>to the end of the "il" etc. numbers.  This suffix has the effect of
>making them into cardinal numbers.  So, "sam" is "three", "samil"
>is "third".  

I'm guessing you meant to say that the "il" suffix has the
effect of making the il, yi, sam, etc. numbers ordinal (rather
than cardinal)?  I don't think so.  "Il" is suffixed to the il,
yi, sam, etc. numbers alright, but not in order to make them
ordinal.  They are already ordinal.  The "il" suffix just raises
the number it is suffixed to by one.  Thus, "ship" (tenth) plus
"il" yields "ship-il" (eleventh), "yi-ship" (twentieth) plus
"il" yields "yi-ship-il" (twenty-first), "baik" (100th) plus "il"
yields "baik-il" (101st), etc.

>Now that we're all fatally confused, perhaps we could stop telling
>each other that "il", "i" etc aren't Korean numbers.  They are...it's
>just that TKDists are mostly used to hearing the counting numbers 
>"hana", "dool", etc.

I plead guilty to being fatally confused about many things.
Maybe even this numbers thing.  But, I am certainly not denying
that il, yi, sam, etc. are Korean numbers.  Just saying that they
are ordinal rather than cardinal ones.
--
Richard A. Drury
drury@helix.nih.gov
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts