The National Academy of the Korea Language selects out “누리꾼” as a substitution of “netizen.” How many Korean will use “누리꾼” instead of “netizen”? I just believe that the verbal abuse and misuse of foreign language - especially English - would foment linguistic imperialism. Moreover, as I talked at school yesterday, mistranslation, which depends on mostly Chiness, for example, can sometimes annoy me by requiring it to be re-interpreted into real “우리말 (Korean).” That is why people would say that it’s sometimes easy to read academic texts written in English.

As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that language determines the way people think, language affects people’s ideology as well as their thought in above case. That is why people always try to find out the exact counterpart of target language in English learning. If not, I (as well as they) easily get nervous and bothered, and then cease to think. Ironically people ask, “What do you say “XXX” in Korean?” even though they know cultures are as different as languages and countries. Therefore I believe that it must be needed to substitute “우리말” for foreign words in order to enhance the way people think, even though all foreign words don’t have to have substitutions of Korean counterparts. It may be helpful to overcome cultural differences - more exactly speaking, differences of thinking.

Finally, in relation to above, I just wonder why there isn’t any Korean substitute for ‘bus’ and ‘taxi’, whereas we have one in case of bicycle, train, subway, or airplane. Nevertheless we, Korean, understand those words without any difficulties. What will happen, if such words as bus and taxi are extended suddenly and tremendously? Actually and unfortunately it happens.