This past Saturday at my Korean Church we had a special event - a baby's first birthday party. In Korea, the baby's first birthday party is very important, and one of the events at the birthday party is said to even foretell the baby's future. This is called 돌잡이 (doljabi). Generally, many different things are spread out on a table, and the baby is encouraged to pick one of the things. The object that the baby picks is said to influence the baby's future. Usually on the table is money (means the baby will be rich), rice (means he won't go hungry), a pencil (means he will be scholarly), among other objects that all have a significance for his future. At this particular 돌잡이 there was a debit card instead of cash (nobody had any!... Show more

Mistranslation. Okay, so a little linguistics never hurt anyone. A transference error is when something gets lost in the translation (think old Jackie Chan movies). This superbly hilarious phenomenon is not exclusive to Korean-English, English-Korean but it still is pretty funny nonetheless. One of my favorites is the whole "our mom" situation. 우리 어머니 is a way of saying "that mother in this context", "our mother" or "the mother that we both know". But when you look at it, even a newbie can be thrown off by the context. "What? Our mother? Dude, that's MY mother!" Good stuff. Why do you know my mom, man? :) How exactly is she your mom, too? Why don't we have "our" everything? This is one of those things that just doesn't translate... Show more

Korean alphabet. Man, we didn't exactly put our best foot forward in creating the English alphabet, did we? I know firsthand what it's like to try to teach a child the English alphabet. "Okay, this little guy is called an "E" and he says a lot of different things. Sometimes he says his name /ee/, sometimes he changes a preceding vowel from short to long so long as the word is relatively small, and his friends "C" and "I" don't get along so he has to stand in between them so they don't fight, but if "C" isn't there, "I" likes to be in front of "E" because "I" is bossy. And please note that when "E" is next to "R", he is controlled by "R" because "R" is even more pushy than "I". Oh, and sometimes "E" says nothing at all. Come to... Show more

Sorry that I've been absent from the blog in recent weeks...but I am returning this week with a 2-part post for your translation pleasure.  My contract is finishing in less than 7 weeks, and I am leaving Korea.  Here is the text from the letter I wrote to half of my students.  The other half got slightly different, and simpler letters. It was a really interesting experience.  As I was thinking about doing it, I was a little daunted by the Korean I would have to use.  I wasn't sure I was up to the task.  I couldn't decide if I should start in English because then I could get the right emotions out, and look for translation help, or if I should just try to write from scratch in Korean....I decided to give it a go starting in Korean.  I... Show more

Tolerance of language learning. I find it so charming that foreigners can seriously slaughter a common phrase in Korean and still get a nice "한국말 잘 하시네요!". You just don't have that in America. Or France for that matter. In America, even though we recognize that there are more cultures and languages represented here than any other country, we still don't do so well in being forgiving with our language. We tend to have a mindset that if you are in America, you must speak English. The use of any other language is often subtly considered sub-par, if even acceptable. It's a little uncomfortable to admit all that, sure. But Americans haven't exactly been politically correct despite our long standing history of immigration. ... Show more