WINTER GAMES: Linguistic divide poses problem to Korea hockey team.

The Canadian coach of the joint women’s hockey team said Monday her squad has made a three-page dictionary that translates key hockey terms from English into South Korean and then into North Korean for better communication among the players and herself.

“In North Korean, there are no English words so everything is totally different. So we actually made like a dictionary, English to Korean to North Korean. So we can communicate and hopefully learn how to speak each other’s languages,” Sarah Murray told reporters following her team’s first practice after arriving at the Gangneung athletes’ village earlier Monday.

Murray’s Team Korea was formed only 11 days ago as a result of the Koreas’ abrupt decision to cooperate in the Olympics, which start Friday.

South Korea has incorporated many English words and phrases into its language, while North Korea has eliminated words with foreign origins and created homegrown substitutes, which many South Koreans feel sound funny. Experts say about a third of the everyday words used in the two countries are different.

North and South Korea are divided by much more than just a demilitarized zone and different governments.