The Universe of Disco

Dog breeds in Korean

A couple of days ago I mentioned a Korean sign about “petiquette”. Part of the sign lists of breeds that must be kept muzzled:

Here are the Korean texts and their approximate pronunciations. See if you can figure out what the five breeds are:

(Answers below.)

Dog #1 is 도사견 (to-sa-gyŏn), in English called the Tosa. I had not heard of that before but if I had there would have been nothing to guess.

Dog #5, 로트와일러 (ro-teu-wa-il-lŏ), I figured out quickly; it's a Rottweiler. Korean Wikipedia spells it differently: [로트바일러] (ro-teu-ba-il-lŏ).

[ Addendum 20230904: I just realized the likely cause of the difference: Korean Wikipedia is using the German pronunciation. ]

The other three are all terriers of some sort. (테리어 (te-ri-ŏ) was clearly “terrier”). It didn't take long to understand that #2 was “American Pit Bull Terrier”, which I guessed was the official name for a Pit Bull. That isn't quite right but it is close and I did understand the name correctly.

Similarly #3 was an American ¿something? terrier and #4 was a ¿something? bull terrier. But what was ¿something?? I could not recognize 스태퍼드셔 (seu-tae-pŏ-deu-sya) as anything I knew and it was clearly not Korean.

Once I got home, I asked the Goog “What kinds of terriers are there?” and the answer to the puzzle was instantly revealed.

“Seu-tae-pŏ-deu-sya” is the Hangeul rendering of the very un-Korean word “Staffordshire”.

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