두셋

Korean

Etymology

From 두 (du, “two”) + 셋 (set, “three”).

Pronunciation

(SK Standard/Seoul) IPA^(key): [tusʰe̞t̚]
Phonetic hangul: [두섿]

Romanizations
Revised Romanization^?	duset
Revised Romanization (translit.)^?	duses
McCune–Reischauer^?	tuset
Yale Romanization^?	twuseys

Numeral

두셋 • (duset)

(native numeral) two or three; a few (as a nominal numeral)
Synonyms: 두세 (duse, as a determiner before nouns and classifiers), 이삼(二三) (Sino-Korean numeral)

Usage notes

In modern Korean, numbers are usually written in Arabic numerals.

The Korean language has two sets of numerals: a native set of numerals inherited from Old Korean, and a Sino-Korean set which was borrowed from Middle Chinese in the first millennium C.E.

Native classifiers take native numerals.

개 한 마리 (gae han mari, “one dog”, native numeral)
나무 두 그루 (namu du geuru, “two trees”, native numeral)

Some Sino-Korean classifiers take native numerals, others take Sino-Korean numerals, while yet others take both.

종이 두 장(張) (jong'i du jang, “two sheets of paper”, native numeral)
이 분(分) (i bun, “two minutes”, Sino-Korean numeral)
서른/삼십 명(名) (seoreun/samsip myeong, “thirty people”, both sets possible)

Recently loaned classifiers generally take Sino-Korean numerals.

일 킬로미터 (il killomiteo, “one kilometer”, Sino-Korean numeral)

For many terms, a native numeral has a quantifying sense, whereas a Sino-Korean numeral has a sense of labeling.

세 반(班) (se ban, “three school classes”, native numeral)
삼 반(班) (sam ban, “Class Number Three”, Sino-Korean numeral)

When used in isolation, native numerals refer to objects of that number and are used in counting and quantifying, whereas Sino-Korean numerals refer to the numbers in a more mathematical sense.

하나만 더 주세 요 (hana-man deo juse-yo, “Could you give me just one more, please”, native numeral)
일 더하기 일은? (il deohagi ir-eun?, “What's one plus one?”, Sino-Korean numeral)

While older stages of Korean had native numerals up to the thousands, native numerals currently exist only up to ninety-nine, and Sino-Korean is used for all higher numbers. There is also a tendency—particularly among younger speakers—to uniformly use Sino-Korean numerals for the higher tens as well, so that native numerals such as 일흔 (ilheun, “seventy”) or 아흔 (aheun, “ninety”) are becoming less common.