A question

[SANUSI ALENA LEE]

I've found it interesting that in several postings it has been noted that
"gook" seems to be derived from "me gook", the Korean word for
"America(n)".  That is certainly possible, given that Koreans would
probably want to announce to each other (and acknowledge to the outsiders)
the presence of Americans (particularly in wartime), but I do wonder why
we assume that "gook" has to be a contraction of the word for "America(n)"
when perhaps in identifying themselves to Americans, Koreans used a name
that also had "gook" in it.  Given that people identifying themselves
across language boundaries often use ostensive gesturing, pointing to self
and to other while applying labels, it's at least possible that "gook" is
a contraction of the Korean word for "Korea(n)".  Surely in such
intercultural moments, "gook" must have been flying around in all sorts of
forms, not just "me gook".

I don't know any Korean at all, so this doesn't constitute a solid
argument for a different analysis so much as raise a new possibility for
investigation.  We just seem to be paying so much attention to the
(missing) "Me", and I am not yet persuaded that that is a necessary
analysis.  (This is not to deny, either, that the me-gook analysis is
the popular/current folk analysis -- I'm just wondering if we as linguists
might want to look for other possibilities.)

--Alena


On Mon, 8 Oct 2001, Valeria Incoletti wrote:

> A korean friend just laughed his head off but said it's
> true and he actually heard koreans being called Gook in the
> USA. He's not a linguist but he did confirmed it. Me-gok is
> the word for America in Korean, Gok is country and Me
> literally means Beautiful (For the ones who know Chinese,
> it's exactly the same as Meiguo) and tries to reproduce the
> sound -me- of aMErica.
>
> Valeria
>
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