붕가붕가
Korean
Etymology
Probably ultimately derived from some foreign language, but the precise source is unclear. The word is highly unlikely to be a naturally developed Korean ideophone as there is no clear source within the language, and iconophones in Korean behave as adverbs, not nouns.
There is a perfect phonetic and semantic match to Italian bunga bunga. However, the word was popularized in Italian mainly by Silvio Berlusconi in 2011, whereas there is clear evidence that the Korean term was popular by at least the early 2000s. The earliest reliable attestation of the word may be from a South Korean arcade game released in 2001, Boong-Ga Boong-Ga, which uses it as a humorous term for kancho (a children's prank involving the anus).
As of 2020, some Korean-language wiki sites claim (without providing any corroborating evidence) that the term originated as slang for kancho in the 1980s.
Pronunciation
- (SK Standard/Seoul) IPA(key): [puŋɡa̠buŋɡa̠]
- Phonetic hangul: [붕가붕가]
| Romanizations | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization? | bunggabungga |
| Revised Romanization (translit.)? | bunggabungga |
| McCune–Reischauer? | punggabungga |
| Yale Romanization? | pungkapungka |