# 정물



## ThomasK

I have been thinking about paintings that are called "nature morte" or "still-life" in some languages.

Now Google tells me that the word can mean "affectionate water" when asked to analyse the separate idioms. I tried to check whether that could be true, but I cannot find evidence... I tmight of course be a typical computer translation mistake... 

Can you help?


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## crow703

ThomasK said:


> I have been thinking about paintings that are called "nature morte" or "still-life" in some languages.
> 
> Now Google tells me that the word can mean "affectionate water" when asked to analyse the separate idioms. I tried to check whether that could be true, but I cannot find evidence... I tmight of course be a typical computer translation mistake...
> 
> Can you help?


'정물' is 'still-life' as you mentioned. I got to think '정물' could be affectionate water because you'd said that. In some strange way it seems to make sense, but I don't think any native Korean speakers would use that word as affectionate water. Just forget about any other meanings but 'still-life'.


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## ThomasK

Thanks a lot! 

But may I still ask this question: 
- does the first ideogram refer to death or only to being still, motionless? I  stillness imply some kind of affection? Does the ideogram appear elsewhere as well as "still" or ...? 
- does the second one refer to living/inanimate/... things? Is that why it could represent water? 
But maybe such a question would be too fundamental, and therefore too difficult, because it is about representation of meaning and some kind of etymology. Then i won't insist. I remember the same kind of problem with Chinese and Japanese, where analysis into separate meanings is not evident in any way...


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## crow703

ThomasK said:


> Thanks a lot!
> 
> But may I still ask this question:
> - does the first ideogram refer to death or only to being still, motionless? I  stillness imply some kind of affection? Does the ideogram appear elsewhere as well as "still" or ...?
> - does the second one refer to living/inanimate/... things? Is that why it could represent water?
> But maybe such a question would be too fundamental, and therefore too difficult, because it is about representation of meaning and some kind of etymology. Then i won't insist. I remember the same kind of problem with Chinese and Japanese, where analysis into separate meanings is not evident in any way...


1. The first syllable '정' has nothing to do with death, but just stillness though '정' itself has a lot of meanings.
'정적' is an adjective and a noun at the same time.
정적이다_it's not lively, but just static and silent.
정적이 흐르다. (literal translation) silence is flowing. (Very silent moment goes on)
'정' here came from Chinese letters. 
2. Korean-origin '정' is also an assorted feeling or sentiment of affection, attachment, kindness and relation.
3. 물 from Chinese letters means a thing, an object or a material .
4. Korean-origin 물 means water. 

Still-life is the combo of 1+3 and the affectionate water you said seems to be from 2+4 which I've never said or heard of.
fyi, '정' has 7 or 8 meanings that I can think of all inclusive of nouns, prefixes and suffixes. So when you can't understand how a one-syllable Korean word can represent something totally different, that's because it also has distinguishable another meaning.
Hope this is of any help.


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## ThomasK

crow703 said:


> 1. The first syllable '정' has *nothing to do with death, but just stillness* though '정' itself has a lot of meanings.
> '정적' is an adjective and a noun at the same time.
> 정적이다_it's not lively, but just *static and silen*t.
> 정적이 흐르다. (literal translation) *silence is flowing.* (Very silent moment goes on)
> 2. '정' here came from Chinese letters.
> Korean-origin '정' is also an assorted *feeling or sentiment of affection, attachment, kindness and relation*.
> 3a. 물 from Chinese letters means a thing, an object or a material .
> 3b. Korean-origin 물 means water.
> 
> Still-life is the combo of 1+3 and the affectionate water you said seems to be from 2+3b which I've never said or heard of.
> fyi, '정' has 7 or 8 meanings that I can think of all inclusive of nouns, prefixes and suffixes. So when you can't understand how a one-syllable Korean word can represent something totally different, that's because it also has distinguishable another meaning.
> Hope this is of any help.


This is really very interesting to me: the distinctions you are making are helpful to see how nature morte is viewed in Korean. But the fact that one single symbol can belong to so many word categories seems to make the language quite different from our languages,  which makes it a challenge, I guess, to learn the language if you are a "Westerner"...


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