여덟

First attested in the Seokbo sangjeol (釋譜詳節 / 석보상절), 1447, as Middle Korean 여듧〮 (Yale: yètúlp). Also attested in the Beonyeok nogeoldae (飜譯老乞大 / 번역노걸대), 1517, as Middle Korean 여ᄃᆞᆲ〮 (Yale: yètólp).

Jeju ᄋᆢᄃᆞᆸ (yawdawp) demonstrates that the immediate pre-fifteenth century form was *ᄋᆢᄃᆞᆲ (*yotolp). The Seoul dialect underlying the Middle Korean corpus had a merger of ᄋᆢ (yo) and 여 (ye) which was still relatively recent by the invention of the alphabet in the 1440s. Beyond this, the ultimate reconstruction of the ancestral Koreanic root for "eight" is difficult. See a list of relevant attestations and forms in Appendix:Historical Koreanic numerals#Eight.

• (SK Standard/Seoul) IPA^(key):
• Phonetic hangul:

• In Contemporary Korean, the underlying phonemes of 여덟 is 여덜 /jʌtʌl/, without the consonant cluster implied by the orthography. Hence, it is pronounced with /l/ even when followed by a vowel-initial particle: 여덟이 is realized as 여더리 , not 여덜비 . Nonetheless, the latter pronunciation is still considered prescriptively correct, although virtually never followed in practice.

여덟 • (yeodeol)

1. (native numeral) eight

   Synonym: 팔(八) (“eight”, Sino-Korean numeral)

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.

• 개 한 마리 (gae han mari, “one dog”, native numeral)
• 나무 두 그루 (namu du geuru, “two trees”, native numeral)

Some Sino-Korean classifiers take native numerals, others take Sino-Korean numerals, while yet others take both.

• 종이 두 장(張) (jong'i du jang, “two sheets of paper”, native numeral)
• 이 분(分) (i bun, “two minutes”, Sino-Korean numeral)
• 서른/삼십 명(名) (seoreun/samsip myeong, “thirty people”, both sets possible)

Recently loaned classifiers generally take Sino-Korean numerals.

• 일 킬로미터 (il killomiteo, “one kilometer”, Sino-Korean numeral)

For many terms, a native numeral has a quantifying sense, whereas a Sino-Korean numeral has a sense of labeling.

• 세 반(班) (se ban, “three school classes”, native numeral)
• 삼 반(班) (sam ban, “Class Number Three”, Sino-Korean numeral)

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.

• 하나만 더 주세요 (hana-man deo juse-yo, “Could you give me just one more, please”, native numeral)
• 일 더하기 일은? (il deohagi ir-eun?, “What's one plus one?”, Sino-Korean numeral)

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.