| ← 17 | 18 | 19 → |
|---|---|---|
| Native isol.: 열여덟 (yeoryeodeol) Native attr.: 열여덟 (yeoryeodeol) Sino-Korean: 십팔 (sip'pal) Hanja: 十八 | ||
Sino-Korean word from 十八
| Romanizations | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization? | sip'pal |
| Revised Romanization (translit.)? | sibpal |
| McCune–Reischauer? | sipp'al |
| Yale Romanization? | sipphal |
This numeral is sometimes avoided or replaced by the native numeral because of its sound resemblance to 씨발 (ssibal, “fuck”).
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.