Young + 젊은 = 엶은

So this morning I was dreaming,
I was with a group of people climbing a mountain
I was walking with my grandma (Dad's side)
and telling her about a movie
this movie had two protagonists,
I started with the older one
and then I wanted to tell her about the younger one
and at this point, when I wanted to say the word "young" in Korean
what came out of my mouth was something like "yulmun (열믄/엶은)"
and since I realized that this was not a real word, I repeated it several times
until the correct form finally came to me, "chulmun (젊은)."

Luckily, shortly after that, my alarm went off and I was able to remember this dream (as I believe that only interrupted dreams get remembered).

I have two possible explanations for this crosslinguistic word blending.
1. The English word "young" interfered with my Korean word retrieval.

2. The ambiguous nature of the consonant "ㅈ" (ch in word-initial positions but actually similar to j) confused me. For example, the "j" in German is pronounced like "y" in English, the "y" or "ll" in Spanish is pronounced like the "j" in English" in some parts.

1 is more likely than 2, and it is also possible that they both contributed to this error in my dream. I'm still rather amazed that this sort of thing happens in dreams at all.


Also, when I was describing the older protagonist to my grandma, I was telling her that he is going over to North Korea and will meet somebody named "Chu Gil Sang." While I said this word, I had "Chow Yun-Fat" in mind, but believed that "Chu Gil Sang" was his name. And as I said it, I realized that "Chu Gil Sang" sounds like "죽일상" which can be roughly translated to "a killer's look" and wondered what kind of a name that was, and why I hadn't realized it before.

Of course, after I woke up, I remembered that the actor's name is "Chow Yun-Fat," the Korean pronunciation being "Chu Yun Ball" and wondered where did that killer face name came from, and was surprised that I noticed the pun in that name at all because I normally don't notice those things unless somebody else points them out to me (usually my husband).

Dreams are intriguing.