About XX-ah or XX-yah

[rittoo]

I don't know how to say this since I don't speak korean, but this has been bothering me for some time. I have read texts where ppl refer to someone in third person as (e. g.) Min-ah went to university and it was very confusing to me because I was pretty sure that the -ah/-yah was something that you only add when talking to somebody directly, a korean vocative, for lack of better comparison. That's why I always feel like I can't concentrate on the content when I see somebody being talked about as -ah/yah in third person.

Am I wrong about this? Could anybody who speaks korean enlighten me? I don't know how to find something like this in the internet. My conclusion is based more on a feeling since in my mother tongue there is something quite similar - in Chinese you can also add -ah/-yah/-nah to a name or even to many other sentences, but these have all to be directed at somebody, meaning it's impossible to say "xx-ah went to university-yah" in an objective description, so I might very well be wrong.

[blackberrypie]

I'm not korean, but I attended a short korean introductory class before, and the tutor, a Korean, mentioned before that tone of voice is important in Korean language. The same word can have different meanings, it can be a question, or an answer, depending on the tone.

example: gwenchana? Answer: gwenchana...

can literally be both a question, and an answer. 

Likewise for ya / ah. It can seem offensive, and sometimes, it can even be a form of ageyo name calling.. depending on the tone of voice.

'Yah' is usually used more informally, indeed. But it can be informal, between close friends, or informal, between enemies, as a form of rudeness. So, it really depends on the tone when the words are used. Not necessarily bad.

hope that explains abit.... 

[rittoo]

@blackberrypieHi and thanks for the reply, but what I meant was actually the ah added on names. I think it's something you can only use when directly speaking to someone and not when you are talking in third person and I'm not sure if that's right.

That's why I compared it to vocative in latin, for example when you are talking to somebody who's named Titus, you say hey Tite not hey Titus because that's what you do when directly calling him, but you can't say to somebody else, Tite did XXX(insert anything), because you can only use this form when directly speaking to somebody.

And my thought is that when you are talking to somebody called Min for example, you can say, Min-ah, pass me the plate, but you can't talk to sombody else and say, I think Min-ah has something to do this evening.

[blackberrypie]

Korean is not Latin. I don't think you can compare languages like that cos they have different geography, different society, history and culture. I do find korean have many similarities to Chinese though.

Anyway, for names, if ending with vowels, Koreans tend to add suffix -yah, and -ah for consonants. But ah / yah is more informal and usually used for people with equal or lesser social status (age wise/or experience wise).

Example: Manse-yah. Sungmin-ah

Indeed, this name calling is used when talking to the person directly. And I have not seen or heard of any example where this is used otherwise. Could you provide the incident you meant in an audio/video clip? Since you said you read this, could it be a translation thing? Or is this spoken in Korean? If it's purely translation, it could just be a translation error where the translator thought 'Min-ah' is part of the person's name?

[rittoo]

@blackberrypiethat's what I meant. Actually whenever I try to look for fanfiction it's used that way... So I got confused. I know of course that latin is a completely different language from a completely different language family hehe ^^° but I didn't know how else wo express what I mean.