In Korean, dress shoes are called 구두 (kudu), and in Japanese, dress shoes are called くつ (kutsu).
구두 only refers to dress shoes made of leather in Korean, but くつ includes sneakers and trainers in Japanese.
Korean linguists say the Korean word 구두 came from くつ, but Japanese linguists say the Japanese word くつ came from 구두.
Korean linguists: “Nah, it’s probably a Japanese word 🤷”
Japanese linguists: “Nope, it’s a Korean word 🤦”
There is no consensus on this mysterious orphan word.
9 comments
Sounds interesting. Where did you read about this? Is there more information?
Didn’t believe this so I looked it up.
From wiktionary…
“Ultimate derivation unclear. Some Japanese sources suggest a borrowing from or cognate with Korean 구두 (gudu, “shoes”), but then some Korean sources suggest that the Korean term was borrowed from Japanese 靴 (kutsu, “shoes”).”
There you go…
Korean is also originally Chinese kanji, so in that sense I think it originated from Chinese.
As for the meaning of shoes as a whole, they came to Japan through Korea, but leather shoes were introduced to Korea from Japan, so I think that is the reason.
https://gogen-yurai.jp/kutsu/
Couple extra theories mentioned here.
In most cases these sort of theories are just advanced guessing. These words predate the written language so there’s not going to be any sort of proof.
Looks like the paradox created by Marty McFly ^^
Marty learnt Johny B Goode from Chuck Berry who learnt it from Marty when he went back in time, thus no one created Johny B Goode and no one created くつ 🙂
Looks like the paradox created by Marty McFly ^^
Marty learnt Johny B Goode from Chuck Berry who learnt it from Marty when he went back in time, thus no one created Johny B Goode and no one created くつ 🙂
Are there a lot of similarities to the 2 languages? Korean sounds a lot like Japanese to me
What if both of them took it from a word from another language? Whats shoes in Chinese?
I like that the other word for shoes in Korean is 신발. Quite close to another word.