July | 2010 | Feeling Strangely Fine

Konglish Lesson

Before leaving for Korea a year ago, I wondered how impossible it was going to be to go anywhere or do anything in this country without knowing the language. Turns out if you know how to play a mean game of charades or can say a general area in the city and the words for “left” and “right,” you’re pretty much golden. What I didn’t expect was the sublanguage in Korea: Konglish. Take an English word, Korean-ize it, and voila – Konglish! There are so many words in this country that are just adapted from English and given a phonetic Korean spelling (No R’s, Z’s, F’s, or Th’s though). It’s actually quite ridiculous that they haven’t created their own words for certain things, but it comes in handy for us foreigners – if you learn how to pronounce the Korean alphabet, you can often read menus and signs and decipher the meaning; “Hey they have prench-eu-prys!”

Here are a few of my favorites. When you see “eu,” think “uh.”

no-teu	note
reo-si-a	Russia
bi-di-o	video
seu-po-cheu	sports
a-pa-teu	apartment
o-ren-ji	orange
keo-pi	coffee
te-ni-seu	tennis
haen-deu-pon	cellphone (think handphone)
rah-di-o	radio
tim	team
so-pa	sofa
seu-teu-re-seu	stress
ju-seu	juice
ka-deu	card
taek-shi	taxi
pi-ja	pizza
haem-beu-geu	hamburger
prench-eu-pry	french fry
beu-lak-eu-reo-si-a	black russian

Currently Loving: Summer vacation.

Currently Missing: Mild weather. I feel as if I’m melting the second I step outside.

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JUMP to the DMZ

Long time no type. Sorry people, this girl’s been busy. My crazy busy-ness included an all expenses paid trip to Seoul this past weekend for the 2010 EPIK Reunion. EPIK stands for “English Program in Korea” and it is the organization that recruits and trains native English speakers to teach in public schools in Korea. Syd and I were two of ten people chosen from Daegu to attend the reunion. **Don’t read that as “we’re the best teachers in Daegu.” It was a ridiculous selection process and we were just lucky to be picked.

Anyway, this trip included a free night’s stay in a fairly nice hotel (the best part was the buffet dinner with unlimited crab legs), a viewing of the Korean stage performance “JUMP,” and a stop at the DMZ.

Although the hotel room was nothing to spend words on, the view was rather nice: hotel view

By far, the highlight of the trip was the stage performance of JUMP. JUMP is basically a non-verbal sitcom with Tae Kwon Do, acrobatics, and “sword fighting” thrown in. The performance told the story of an eccentric “Kung Fu” family complete with an overbearing grandfather, a drunken uncle, and a high-kicking sister. It had the essential moments of slapstick comedy and hopeless romance. There was even a character who pulled a “Steve Urkel” (sans annoying laughter). If this character’s glasses were removed at any point, he morphed from a stumbling, shy, idiot to a strong, confident, martial arts master. If you get the chance to see JUMP, don’t pass it up. It was seriously amazing. We weren’t allowed to take photos or video, so here’s a little sample from YouTube:

JUMP Performance Highlights

Day two involved a lot of time on a bus and a fairly disappointing outcome. We visited the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel which is a military tunnel created by North Korea that connects North to South. After donning yellow helmets we were allowed to walk down the STEEP entrance and walk nearly all the way to the military line (anyone over 5’ 3” was ducking the entire time). It was A LOT of walking with an anticlimactic ending, but it was still cool to be in an underground tunnel walking toward North Korea. No cameras or belongings of any kind were allowed into the tunnel, so again, no pictures. But here’s one from the official website for Gyeonggi-do (the area of Korea where the tunnel is accessible).

Our trip ended with a visit to the Dora Observatory. The observatory is a military building that seems to be more of a tourist attraction than anything else – although a very nice soldier informed me that extremely official things do happen there. Looking through binoculars for 500 won, we could “see” North Korea. And by “see” I mean see the fog shrouding North Korea. We had extremely poor visibility and pictures could only be taken behind a yellow line, so again, nothing to document our view of the reclusive nation.