Koreas’ unified women’s hockey team has exposed a key difference between South and North — their language

laporcupina:

A
dozen women’s hockey players from North Korea hit the ice for the first
time with their new South Korean teammates this week, learning to
compete as a combined squad just days before the Winter Olympics start
this month.

Practice time is just one focus. They’re also still learning to talk about the sport together.

That’s
because the shared Korean language spoken by the two nations — divided
into the communist North and the capitalist South after World War II —
has diverged in the last seven decades, just like their respective
political ideologies.

Hockey is no different.

The
Korean-speaking athletes from the South, like others in the
Western-friendly nation, use English-influenced words in their postwar
vocabulary. Those from the isolated North, however, lace up their skates
while carrying a glossary of indigenous terms.

Take the “box out,” a term used for preventing opposing players from lingering near the net for rebounds.

South
Koreans say “bagseu-aut,” a Korean-accented version of the English
words that is foreign to North Koreans. They prefer the more literal
“munbakk-eu-ro mil-eonaegi” — or, “push out the door.”

Koreas’ unified women’s hockey team has exposed a key difference between South and North — their language