Talk:곰

Old English beorn

beorn m (pl beornas)

1. (Poetic) a man, a warrior, a hero

   se beorn on waruþe scip gemette: the man found a ship on the strand. (Legend of St Andrew)

   • Note the word order of this Old English sentence.

Etymology

The original sense may have been a poetical comparison with a wild animal: it seems to be cognate with Old Norse bjǫrn ‘bear’, from Germanic *bernu-z.

• This bear-related word is synonymous to guma.
• cf. Japanese くま (kuma), Korean 곰 (gom) "bear"

--KYPark 15:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Hiberno-English gom

gom or gam

1. A silly foolish person (from the Irish gám)
   • He's a right gom!

--KYPark 08:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of bear from OE bera

From the West Germanic *beran-, from Indo-European *bher- (brown animal). Cognate with the Old High German bero (and German Bär), Middle Dutch bere (and Dutch beer), Old Norse ber (bear). A North Germanic variant, *bernu-, gave Old Norse bjǫrn (cf. Swedish björn). The Proto-Indo-European root is also the source of the Common Slavic *brlog (and thence, Russian берлога, den).

• Dutch beer : bear, boar
• Slavic *brlog : burrow, cave, den; puddle
• Latin ferus : wild
• OE byren : she-bear cf. bera he-bear
• OE byre : child, son, descendant; young man; mound
• OE byre : stall, shed, hut
• byre (a cow barn) from Old English byre, akin to Old English būr dwelling
• bower (an attractive dwelling or retreat) from Old English būr dwelling; akin to Old English & Old High German būan to dwell

Cave Bear

The Cave Bear (Ursus spelaeus) was a species of bear which lived in Europe during the Pleistocene and became extinct at the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. Both the name Cave Bear and the scientific name spelaeus derive from the fact that fossils of this species were mostly found in caves, indicating that this species spent more time in caves than the Brown Bear, which only uses caves for hibernation. --KYPark 14:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Euphemism

Due to Hunters' taboo on wildlife names

• Irish "the good calf"
• Welsh "honey-pig"
• Lith. "the licker"
• Slavic "honey-eater" - Croatian medvjed, Czech medvěd, Hungarian medve, Russian медведь (medved'), Serbian медвед (medved) --KYPark 15:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Two likely etymologies

1. Cave bear
   • 곰, 구무, 구멍
2. Black bear
   • 곰딸기, 고무딸기, 검다

Etymology

Interesting. This is probably an areal word, cognate with Japanese 熊 (くま, kuma), Chinese 熊 (xióng, OC *ɢʷlɯm) and possibly also Vietnamese gấu. Old Chinese also had another word for bears: 羆 (pí, OC *pral, "brown bear"), which looks amazingly like "bear". 60.240.101.246 11:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I noticed the similarity between 곰 (gom) and くま (kuma) and that the Sino-Korean reading of 熊 is "gom" as well. In this case the Sino-Korean reading of hanja 熊 happens to be also similar to the Japanese くま (kuma). It could be 1) a borrowing from Middle Chinese, 2) a phonetic borrowing directly from Japanese or 3) simply a coincidence. When I worked on the translations for bear I didn't add 熊 to the Korean translation as I couldn't confirm its Chinese origin. --Anatoli 11:49, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

They are definitely not loanwords from Chinese after 100 BC. 熊 goes back to -m rhyme in Old Chinese, and the sound change to -ŋ probably happened during the Warring States Period. In all dialects except for Min Nan, the character is now pronounced with -ŋ; In Xiamen however, it is still pronounced him (vernacular). Sino-Korean reading is 웅 (wung), reflecting the -ŋ in Middle Chinese. (The same sound change happened in many -m characters, for example 風 (fēng, OC *plum, cf. Korean 바람 (palam, "wind")).) Other Sino-Tibetan languages generally have -om; some dom (eg. Tibetan), some kom. 60.240.101.246 12:01, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

It may not be Middle Chinese, that was just my guessing. As with Japanese, Chinese characters arrived in Korea at different periods and in different contexts, adding to the variety of readings and meanings. There are two Sino-Korean readings - 웅 ("ung", not "wung") and 곰 ("gom"). Unihan database gives the former but the latter seems to used everywhere. I don't have a solid source, though. My Korean skills are very low, so I'll just leave it. Adding the hangeul reading to 熊 as per Unihan DB - 웅 ("ung") before 곰 ("gom"). --Anatoli 23:25, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

wung is in Yale romanisation (the most common system used in academic literature). Koreans use the 음훈 method to annotate Chinese characters, so for 熊, the definition is "곰 웅", meaning that "곰" (kom) is the native equivalent of 熊, and that 웅 (wung) is how the character should be read in Sino-Korean words (hence the Sino-Korean reading). This is very similar to the Kun-on system used in Japanese. There are strict sound correspondences between Middle Chinese pronunciations of a character and the Sino-Korean readings. In this case the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 熊 (云東三等合平, which is ɦuwŋH (Pulleyblank) or ɣǐuŋH (Wang Li)) corresponds well with the Sino-Korean reading /uŋ/ (in Chinese 熊 later underwent palatalisation to give modern /ɕi̯ʊŋ˧˥/). 60.240.101.246 01:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)