Strateg of Connecting Loanwords to Original Words of Korean Language Learners

한국어 학습자의 원어 연계 전략

This study is for investigating strategy of associating loanwords to original words of Korean language learners. Loanwords have often been thought as easily learnable because the knowledge of the original word is assumed to be helpful in discovering the meaning. But there is much phonological, morphological and semantic transforming in accepting original words in Korean, and therefore, it is not easy to connect Korean loanwords to the original words. In this study, the awareness of loanwords and competence of associating Korean loanwords to the original words of advanced Korean language learners from China are investigated. As a result, the awareness of loanwords is remarkably lower than the awareness of non-loanwords. And, the competence of association also was very low with 17.9% of successful association. This means the learners have difficulty in inferring the meaning of loanwords by connecting that to original words.