Talk:懵懂

@Tibidibi The 표준국어대사전 says that the first attestation of 흐리멍덩 (흐리믕등) is in the 역어유해, where I noticed that it's presented as the gloss of the Chinese word 黑裡𧀧𧄼. Considering the total lack of Google results for variations of 黑裡𧀧𧄼 (黑{裡|裏|里}懵懂), is 黑裡𧀧𧄼 a spurious Sinicization of 흐리믕등? —Suzukaze-c (talk) 02:58, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: 黑裡𧀧𧄼 is probably spurious both because of the lack of independent Chinese attestation and the fact that Mandarin 黑 should not become Korean 흐.

I researched things a bit more and the real etymon appears to be 稀里懵懂, but in any case the first half must have been reshaped under influence from 흐리다 (heurida) and native ideophones of that family, e.g. 흐릿흐릿 (heuritheurit) (a regular borrowing would produce *히리멍덩).--Tibidibi (talk) 04:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tibidibi Cool, thanks for the answer!

(Is there a source? It seems like you have the magic ability to summon (perform?) research on arbitrary Korean words at will, and I am incredibly interested in knowing about these sources.) —Suzukaze-c (talk) 06:43, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: It's easier because I have university digital access to virtually all papers (including journals, dissertations, etc.) produced by Korean-language institutions. DBPia allows full-text searching for about two-thirds of the papers, so if a term isn't discussed in the standard references, I usually begin with DBPia and follow the citation trail.

In the case of this specific word, there wasn't too much research I could find (it seems to have been ignored in some of the major lists of Mandarin loans into Middle and Early Modern Korean). There is a 2018 paper by Luo Yigang, a Master's student at Nanjing University, who proposes Korean 흐리다 (heurida) + Mandarin 懵懂 (měngdǒng), and a 2001 Master's thesis from Seoul National University by Wang Qimeng, who proposes 稀里懵懂 as the etymon. I think the latter makes more sense because a compound of a bare native verb stem and a Mandarin loanword is highly unusual morphologically, as Luo in fact notes. Luo rejects Wang's idea because Mandarin 稀 should not normally become 흐, but this can be easily be explained away by positing an irregular shift motivated by analogy with the native verb, a possibility they do not consider.--Tibidibi (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2021 (UTC)