(The sign for a coffee shop)
English is difficult. Especially if you're Korean.
The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, does not have any sound that is comparable to our f,v,th,r,short i, short a, or z. I feel sorry for the kids, I really do, because for many generations their teachers have been telling them to use their aspirated p sound for an f, their b sound for a v, I-don't-know-what for th (it always sounds like s to me) and the "ee" sound for short i. Also, the hanguel language has a maximum of four characters for each syllable, so English gets turned into en-gli-shee, print into peu-leen-teu, and pants are pant-suh.
Some other interesting Konglish includes 'ha-ee-ma-tuh' for High Mart (a popular shopping center here), and Kaw-pi for coffee (not to be confused with ko-pi, which is nosebleed. I learned this the hard way when I tried to show off my Korean to the other teachers and I accidentally said 'I like nosebleed' in Korean).
I wish I could find the guy who first started to teach English in Korea and shake him, sayiing "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE???" Because he taught it wrong to a bunch of would-be English teachers, who then taught all of their students the wrong pronunciation and so on... It seems to me that all of the other Native English teachers have the same problem that I do, which is: How do you correct decades of incorrect learning? It's a bit overwhelming. I can't very well say, "I'm sorry, but you were taught English incorrectly your entire life, and here's the correct way to speak it." Instead, I try to patiently encourage them to mimic a beaver when they make the "f" or "v" sound, but they look at me like I'm crazy when I try to explain that your lips never touch while making those sounds.
But I really can't blame them for being confused. After all, when I first came to Korea, I didn't know that shirts were called jumpers (in Britain), that wife beaters were called singlets (in Australia), or that kgs (pronounced "kageys") were what South Africans call kilograms. I can't understand my Welsh friends when they speak, but I'm suppposed to teach the students at Pu-il Electronics and Design High School how to understand me.
I guess I have my work cut out for me, if only because I don't know how to explain "I have my work cut out for me" to my students.
Sheesh.
This made me laugh out loud!
ReplyDeleteOne day, last year, Stella (my old co-teacher)taught me "Chookah hamnida" which means congratulations!
At lunch that day, one of the older woman teachers was talking about how she had just learned to drive... so I proudly stood up and yelled, across the lunchroom, "Charity, Chookoo hamnida" which didn't mean, "Charity Congratulations," but rather, "Charity, I'm a good soccer player!" As you can imagine, there was an uproar of laughter from all my colleagues!
LOL, that's hilarious. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete