| ← 30 | 40 | 50 → |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | ||
| Native isol.: 마흔 (maheun) Native attr.: 마흔 (maheun) Sino-Korean: 사십 (sasip) Hanja: 四十 | ||
First attested in the Yongbi eocheon'ga (龍飛御天歌 / 용비어천가), 1447, as Middle Korean 마ᅀᆞᆫ〮 (Yale: màzón).
The h consonant in the modern form is unexpected, possibly influenced by Middle Korean 셜흔 (syelhun, “thirty”) (modern 서른 (seoreun)).
| Romanizations | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization? | maheun |
| Revised Romanization (translit.)? | maheun |
| McCune–Reischauer? | mahŭn |
| Yale Romanization? | mahun |
마흔 • (maheun)
In modern Korean, numbers are usually written in Arabic numerals.
The Korean language has two sets of numerals: a native set of numerals inherited from Old Korean, and a Sino-Korean set which was borrowed from Middle Chinese in the first millennium C.E.
Native classifiers take native numerals.
Some Sino-Korean classifiers take native numerals, others take Sino-Korean numerals, while yet others take both.
Recently loaned classifiers generally take Sino-Korean numerals.
For many terms, a native numeral has a quantifying sense, whereas a Sino-Korean numeral has a sense of labeling.
When used in isolation, native numerals refer to objects of that number and are used in counting and quantifying, whereas Sino-Korean numerals refer to the numbers in a more mathematical sense.
While older stages of Korean had native numerals up to the thousands, native numerals currently exist only up to ninety-nine, and Sino-Korean is used for all higher numbers. There is also a tendency—particularly among younger speakers—to uniformly use Sino-Korean numerals for the higher tens as well, so that native numerals such as 일흔 (ilheun, “seventy”) or 아흔 (aheun, “ninety”) are becoming less common.