Korean synonyms

On too many occasions I’ve had the great feeling of finally getting a good grasp of a Korean word, thinking to myself “Yes, this I understand! I’m sure I’ll be able to use this word correctly and understand it in both written and spoken Korean! Weee!” only to discover an hour later that a completely different word has the exact same meaning. Arghhh…

For instance, I recently learned from a TTMIK news article that “prevention” is called 예방… – that is in cases where it is not called 방지. Granted, both words have 방 hinting at some degree of kinship (although this need not at all be the case for words with a common syllable, so beware), but other than that I was confused. Well, not confused exactly as I am very aware of the concept of synonyms. In fact I always loved synonyms in my native language and other languages that I master significantly better than Korean. I always thought that wise use of synonyms lends nuance, power, and sophistication to a language. But I am also of the opinion that when struggling to acquire a new language and cramming vocabulary, synonyms are a pain. To ease my frustration, I treated myself to a book about Korean synonyms from TwoChois. Nothing lightens my mood like new books (well, clothes and makeup too, but that hardly seemed justifiable in this case).

Bonus info: In Korean, synonyms are called 유의어, and it wouldn’t be right if Korean didn’t have a synonym for the word “synonym”, now would it? So of course there is a synonym for 유의어: 동의어. There! Sorry if this blog post turned out to be a rather gloomy Tuesday rant from a frustrated Korean learner. ^^