Korea! Cuteness, Weirdness & Wrongness!
Oct. 16th, 2008 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaSo, school continues to be something of an insane chaotic pit that I go into at the start of the day and manage my way through a lesson at a time until the end of the day. I'm getting better at it and getting better at not hating it and focusing on the fun bits like when the kids are cute, rather than when they decide to either burst into hysterical fits of tears for arcane reasons when a co-teacher is nowhere to be found, or decide to bite me.
Oh, or punch me, which I then hilariously and seemingly effortlessly deflect on my elbow (through sheer fluke) meaning I feel nothing but the kid who thought "punch the teacher" would make an entertaining game is left nursing a fist he's lucky he didn't shatter having just thrown his entire weight into a punch aimed at the hardest point on the human body.
really hard time being in a classroom environment.)
So anyway -
The cuteness: The other day I had some of my classes jiggled around so I could cover for one of the Korean co-teachers who was being sent off to listen to some person give a talk about something or other. So the Kindergarten kids were highly confused when I showed up to teach them Math instead of my normal class. But you know, it was cool. I explained that their teacher wasn't there because she's gone to listen to someone talk about teaching. This, they didn't really understand. So I said, "She went to school for teachers today."
One of the little girls thought about this very seriously for a moment, then gave me a knowing look. "Ah," she said. "High school."
The weirdness: OH T-SHIRTS. I will never, ever get used to completely inappropriate people wearing t-shirts that say, in HUGE, BLACK LETTERS ALL OVER YOUR ENTIRE CHEST AND UPPER THIGHS, "Make love not babies." I saw two of those today. One on a teenage boy, which was mildly more appropriate than the middle-aged woman with two kids. Though it still doesn't beat the old woman wearing the t-shirt that proudly proclaimed "EROTIC." It may, however, beat the girl who had a shirt which says - in its natural form (because I've seen it elsewhere) "Paris," with an arrow pointing down to "London." Unfortunately, she'd tucked her t-shirt into her trousers and had ended up with "Paris," and an arrow pointing at her crotch. I mean, even if I had no idea what something said, I wouldn't wear ANYTHING with an arrow pointing at my own crotch!
The wrongness: In an effort not to be illiterate, I'm learning to read Korean and it's damn weird because I have this compulsion to try and read everything even though it's not actually often that helpful because, being in a foreign language, I can't tell if what I think it says makes any sense. Which is why I like the subway system because I can check, and why I like it when I find Konglish, which is reasonably common. That's when there's an English word rendered phonetically in Korean script. Usually an English word rendered phonetically as a Korean person would say it in a thick Korean accent, so, for instance, "Phantasy Star," the PSP game is written, "Pantasy Suh-tah."
You may be wondering when the wrongness is going to kick in. Well, that would be about now.
I saw a version of the PSP game, "Parappa the Rapper." It's a great rhythm game where you playt his little cartoon dog on a quest to get your girlfriend back by impressing her with your rapping skills and you have to take lessons from these truly whacked out characters like a karate-teaching onion-man and a chilled-out frog who sells stuff at a flea market and a bitch of a chicken who has a TV cooking show.
Anyway, in Korea, it's not "Parappa the Rapper," it is, in fact, "Parappa the Raper."
No, this isn't just a mispelling. They actually wrote it that way deliberately. As in, the "ae" sound is used instead of the "ah" sound. *headdesk*
And thus ends my Korean Update!
Oh, or punch me, which I then hilariously and seemingly effortlessly deflect on my elbow (through sheer fluke) meaning I feel nothing but the kid who thought "punch the teacher" would make an entertaining game is left nursing a fist he's lucky he didn't shatter having just thrown his entire weight into a punch aimed at the hardest point on the human body.
really hard time being in a classroom environment.)
So anyway -
The cuteness: The other day I had some of my classes jiggled around so I could cover for one of the Korean co-teachers who was being sent off to listen to some person give a talk about something or other. So the Kindergarten kids were highly confused when I showed up to teach them Math instead of my normal class. But you know, it was cool. I explained that their teacher wasn't there because she's gone to listen to someone talk about teaching. This, they didn't really understand. So I said, "She went to school for teachers today."
One of the little girls thought about this very seriously for a moment, then gave me a knowing look. "Ah," she said. "High school."
The weirdness: OH T-SHIRTS. I will never, ever get used to completely inappropriate people wearing t-shirts that say, in HUGE, BLACK LETTERS ALL OVER YOUR ENTIRE CHEST AND UPPER THIGHS, "Make love not babies." I saw two of those today. One on a teenage boy, which was mildly more appropriate than the middle-aged woman with two kids. Though it still doesn't beat the old woman wearing the t-shirt that proudly proclaimed "EROTIC." It may, however, beat the girl who had a shirt which says - in its natural form (because I've seen it elsewhere) "Paris," with an arrow pointing down to "London." Unfortunately, she'd tucked her t-shirt into her trousers and had ended up with "Paris," and an arrow pointing at her crotch. I mean, even if I had no idea what something said, I wouldn't wear ANYTHING with an arrow pointing at my own crotch!
The wrongness: In an effort not to be illiterate, I'm learning to read Korean and it's damn weird because I have this compulsion to try and read everything even though it's not actually often that helpful because, being in a foreign language, I can't tell if what I think it says makes any sense. Which is why I like the subway system because I can check, and why I like it when I find Konglish, which is reasonably common. That's when there's an English word rendered phonetically in Korean script. Usually an English word rendered phonetically as a Korean person would say it in a thick Korean accent, so, for instance, "Phantasy Star," the PSP game is written, "Pantasy Suh-tah."
You may be wondering when the wrongness is going to kick in. Well, that would be about now.
I saw a version of the PSP game, "Parappa the Rapper." It's a great rhythm game where you playt his little cartoon dog on a quest to get your girlfriend back by impressing her with your rapping skills and you have to take lessons from these truly whacked out characters like a karate-teaching onion-man and a chilled-out frog who sells stuff at a flea market and a bitch of a chicken who has a TV cooking show.
Anyway, in Korea, it's not "Parappa the Rapper," it is, in fact, "Parappa the Raper."
No, this isn't just a mispelling. They actually wrote it that way deliberately. As in, the "ae" sound is used instead of the "ah" sound. *headdesk*
And thus ends my Korean Update!
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 04:59 pm (UTC)::dies laughing::
no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-23 02:39 am (UTC)Punch Kick its all in the mind! Great game :)
Lol that Hapkido kid got exactly what he deserved :P I bet you get some crazy scences in the class room. My girl friend was teaching young kids about uses for electricty last week and got told "miss if your naughty in America they shock you in a chair"
T-shirts slogans are just crazy. It why i cant bare to see people in this country wearing clothes with kanji or chines symbols. They could say bloody anything. Doubly worse with tattoos. Saying that ive allways found it odd that people wear t-shirts with USA, New York, San Francisco and such. I mean people who have never visited these town nor recived them as holiday presents.
Hope you get many more good days than bad in school.
T-shirts (and general Korean weirdness)
Date: 2008-11-13 07:36 pm (UTC);-)
(I sometimes wonder if the people who 'design' those t-shirts perhaps know English perfectly well, and are having a big laugh at the customers who end up buying them...)
Re: T-shirts (and general Korean weirdness)
Date: 2008-11-14 03:58 pm (UTC)(I also wonder this sometimes, but then at others, the mistakes seem so...genuine. Like "Whip bear love" which is a Bear character made of like...whipped cream or something. IT'S SO WRONG.)