# 하라체



## mdbvma

I don't know any Korean, but I read the following on the Japanese  Wikipedia article about Hara Hara Tokei, the manual on guerrilla warfare  and bomb-making used by the terrorist group East Asia Anti-Japan Armed  Front.

"「腹腹」の由来は、爆弾でハラハラドキドキする意味と朝鮮語の文法の「하라체（ハラ体）」の両方の意味を含んでいる。"
Translation: "'Hara Hara' carries a double meaning of heart-pounding  suspense (hara hara) from an explosive device and 하라체 (hara tai) from  Korean grammar."

My questions are, what does 하라체 mean in English and does anyone have a  guess as to why this group would want to include a reference to Korean  grammar in the title of their manual?


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## 조금만

Since I haven't the foggiest idea of the answer, I should shut up. But the somewhat intriguing reference to "Korean grammar" prompts me to remark on the way that the word seems to fit the general pattern of the terms Korean grammarians use to label the speech "levels" or "styles" of Korean.

In those terms the 체 part is 體 , "style/form", and what precedes it is a kind of potted example of the style concerned, based on the form which the imperative of the verb 하다 ("to do") takes in that style. So, for example, what English-language grammars tend to call the "polite" style is classed in Korean grammars as 해요체 and the "plain" style is called 해라체. 

I've never seen a reference to a style called 하라체 in an actual grammar manual. But I have seen the term used by Koreans who were exchanging views or seeking opinions on-line about their own language, and my assumption from the context was that they were referring to the "plain" style in its archaic or self-consciously literary variant, in which 하라 can indeed be found as a plain-form imperative, where modern everyday Korean has 해라. But this may be yet another of my numerous jumped-to conclusions.

The unmodified ㅏ vowel is indeed preserved in the imperative form 하게 of a speech style now rarely encountered outside costume dramas (for which it furnishes a useful ingredient to concoct a Korean equivalent of the "Ye Olde Worlde Tea Shoppe" English you see in tourist traps like Stratford upon Avon.) But that style is called 하게체.

I imagine that may be the longest "don't know" answer in the history of this forum.


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## vientito

the following is an exact quote from "using korean: a guide to contemporary usage" by MIHO CHOO

"The 하라 style is used for commands in written instructions, as in exams. (An
exception here is 주라, which can be used in casual speech to mean ‘give it to
me.’)
다음 물음에 답하라. Answer the following questions.
빈칸에 알맞은 단어를 쓰라. Fill in the blanks with appropriate words.

NOTE: The written style ending is -(으)라 while the casual speech ending is -아/어라."

Well I guess if I were to write a guerilla warfare 101 manuscript I should sound a bit more authoritative (or at least know what exactly I am talking about), shouldn't I?


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## 조금만

Choo and Kwak usually have everything covered, with a specially keen eye on things that native speakers often take for granted but are mightily puzzling for others. 

However, that particular passage (top of p.12 for anyone who wants to consult it) does take something pretty important for granted, though; namely that what Ch & K  call the "casual speech ending" in the plain style imperative is normally applied to what is called in Korean grammar the "infinitive" (NOT the same thing as the "infinitive" of verbs in indo-european languages, OR the "dictionary form" of Korean verbs, though some web sites set up by learners to help other learners have taken to calling the Korean dictionary form "the infinitive" which is a VERY bad idea: the infinitive of 하다 in the Korean sense of the term is 해). This is what produces 해라 in the everyday plain imperative form, from which the name 해라체 used for that style is derived.

If Ch & K had given examples where the form is 해라, they would have been reminded to explain why in literary texts, costume dramas and in examination rubrics -- and, one might add, given the apparently  militant context of the original query, demonstrators' slogans demanding the someone (usually, the Americans) do something (usually, get out) -- the form 하라 is used. But they don't draw attention to this, and thus conflate two issues: (1) when the plain style is used in general and (2) when the plain style imperative of 하다 specifically is 하라 rather than 해라.

Normally, Choi and Kwak are very sharp-eyed on such points, and I can't recommend their book highly enough, not  just to learners from a European-language background, but also to native-speaking teachers who often fail grasp where their Western learners "are coming from" (as the phrase goes) and hence struggle to explain aspects of Korean grammar and usage that most natives never need to think about.

But one caveat. The book has numerous excellent sections, but one strangely wayward one. It's one whose weakness most native English speakers will see at once, but it could be a disaster to any native-speaking Koreans who believed what the authors say, especially if they then passed it on to young learners of English. I refer to the section on Interjections (pp. 64-5). I cannot imagine what possessed the authors to claim that 세상에!, an interjection made by highly respectable Korean old ladies in polite company, is the straightforward equivalent of an English speaker uttering the full name of the Founder of Christianity. Or that a Korean beginning a remark with 아니! or even the near-ubiquitous 어! is saying the equivalent of "Oh my God!" in English. This is all the more puzzling, coming from authors whose coverage of the niceties of Korean speech propriety is so thorough and accurate. There are similar, though not quite so wide, discrepancies in some of the supposedly matching terms they offer for obscenities rather than profanities. The authors are based in Hawai'i, but their editors, who seem to have let these things pass unremarked, are based at Cambridge. Never having been to Hawai'i, I might be prepared to believe that the phrase "Blue Hawai'i" reveals that the locals turn the air blue more readily than other speakers of the English tongue. But I know that in my own Alma Mater, "blue" is merely the colour of the university sportswear, and I'm surprised the editors didn't intervene.


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## mdbvma

Thank you for this helpful information, vientito and 조금만.


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