# Power



## Persimmon

Hi Guys,

I was wondering if you can help me out with something.

I've been struggling to figure out whether the word *Power* (meaning of strength),(pouvoir) as it is in English, is known/understood around the world.

Do you think that the majority of people in your country know what power means in Korean?

Any helps would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!


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## want8

Yes, almost everyone knows what 'power' means. 
The word power is being used in everyday life and it has been adopted as a loanword.

Ciao!


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## Persimmon

Hi want8,

Thank you very much for getting back to me so promptly.

I really appreciate it!

Thanks again


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## 조금만

I see you've posted the identical question in a considerable number of language forums. But I don't think you are going to get many useful answers in any of them unless you formulate it more clearly.

For example, the response you already had in the Spanish forum shows the responder thought this was a question about the knowledge of English vocabulary among Spanish speakers.  

My best guess is what you are really asking is whether the actual English form "power" has been adopted as a loanword into each of the languages where you have posted this query, and whether if so, it has retained its meaning. 

If so it would have helped if you had tailored your main question sentence more closely to each specific forum, rather than just adding "in XXXX "to the end of an otherwise identical posting. In this forum, for example, that would have produced the question "Do you think that the majority of people in Korea use the English word "power" as a loan word and know what it means?"  

Of course, you may mean something different altogether, but there's the problem. Questions that are hard to understand are inevitably hard to answer.

But even if you are asking what I take you to be asking, it is a very difficult question for anyone to answer usefully, because although it is nowadays possible via digital corpora to get some measure of the frequency with which a loanword is _used_, it is very hard to know how far it is _understood_ (or understood in its native meaning) in the "host" country. 

For instance, as I write this I am listening (along with over a million other people, according to its web site) to a Korean radio station called 파와FM. That is most certainly the English word "power". But whether that counts as evidence that at least a million Korean speakers right now understand the word is another, undecidable, question.


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## want8

To. 조금만
It's called '파워FM'. 

To. Persimmon
I'm pretty sure most Japanese people know what power means.
'パワ―' stands for 'power'.


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## 조금만

want8 said:


> It's called '파워FM'.



It is indeed, sorry. I can never decide whether the extremely logical layout of the Hangeul keyboard is a good thing or not. Especially where you have to hit ㅜ and ㅓ in quick succession to get the dipththong. That wrong key is only millimetres away...


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## Persimmon

Hi 조금만,

What can I say, you're right, but I was actually striving to find out both whether this word is known among Spanish, French...speakers and if the word power is a loan word in all those countries...

It wasn't easy to ask anyway...I'll get your advice trying to reformulate the question.

Thank you very much!


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## 조금만

It's certainly an interesting question, but this word in particular is likely to be troublesome to pin down because my suspicion is that it is being transmitted (into all countries) largely through mass media appealing to younger people. With also, I suspect, a dose of management and life-coach speech impinging upon specific sections of a slightly older generation. 

I don't doubt that most residents of Seoul (or Busan) would indeed recognize the word "power" (and be better able to write it in Hangeul than I was first time round). But I think that if you got off the beaten track into the remaining pockets of Old Korea, the word would bring some blank stares. As it might do among senior citizens even in metropolitan areas.  

I would expect similar findings from all countries that had accepted "power" into their lexis at all. I would also expect some resistance (maybe manifested as a distribution even more markedly confined to the language of youth) in Romance languages which already had their own established words from the same Latin root ("power" in English is of course descended from a naturalised loan word, a French form brought over by the Norman conquerors in 1066 which in due course displaced the corresponding Germanic word which then acquired a more specialised sense and developed into modern English "might". In other Germanic languages not subjected to the same massive influx of French lexis as English was, the words cognate with English "might" (e.g. modern German "Macht") have remained the term for "power" in the more general sense.


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