How does this break down? I understand 에, the location marker but I am unclear on the first part. From Papago it says it means “a window seat” but is this one unique word or is it made up of two words meaning window + seat?
Thank you!
It’s one word. Korean does this a lot because there is a huge amount of Chinese-related vocabulary. The 석 in this word is the same character as 석 in the word 좌석. Korean has lots of words made of up these Chinese-based words, and sometimes they combine with native Korean words. Since Korean does not use mixed script any longer, you won’t know if 석 means seat/a place to sit in every other context, but usually you can figure it out. In this word ( 창가석) the first and 3rd syllables technically are hanja-based, and if Korean still had mixed script, you could write the word as follows: 窓가席. So this hanja-based vocabulary can be very helpful for figuring out words, but you have to be careful because the Hangul spelling and pronunciation being the same does not always mean that it’s the same hanja character. Context successfully allows you to determine which word it is the vast majority of the time, as there usually is only 1 option that is actually appropriate.
1 Like