Larry

This is Larry. Well, maybe not, but I'm calling him that.

Larry is not cool. Larry has no hairstyles. Chuck hold pens and stuff inside himself.

Chuck

This is Chuck. Well, maybe not, but I'm calling him that.

Chuck is cool. Chuck has hairstyles. Chuck hold pens and stuff inside himself.

Please don’t.

I try to teach my student not to do this, they tell them to do it with their feet.

America’s Next Top Model

Last night I thought I would give the second episode of the new season of America’s Next Top Model a look see. I watched the first episode and wasn’t completely irritated, but this one didn’t even make it half way before I stopped watching.

At about the 30% mark they were bringing the girls up one at a time to critique their nude photos. The one girl, gorgeous face, walks up and stands there. They make a comment about her clothes and ask her to remove the skirt, leaving her with just a t-shirt and tights.

What made me gag whas their reactions to her body. Their WOWs and OOHs and AAHs for a girl that looked like she hadn’t had anything to eat in three months were ridiculous. The girl’s hip bones were showing, for Zeus’ Sake! I’ve seen Korean Pop Stars with more meat on their bodies!

Oh Boy.

Coffee and Work

Would you not agree that a coffee like this just makes your self study sessions more pleasurable?

Careful when Peeing

Some Shitty Toothpaste

I need to double check, but the Korean in the second and third line, text that crosses the pile of poop, says "Who put poop on my toothbrush?"

That's right, people, this is toothpaste. Who says Korea is not obsessed with poop?

There is another version that makes the poop theme a lot clearer, but why would I go with that when I can go with pink checkered poop and a Hello Kitty?

What students carry around

 

Uri Haggyo?

A elementary scholar on my left spots me, runs and circles behind me, comes up on by right, looks at me, seems very confused and mumbles to herself, of which I only cats “…우리 학교…” (Uri Haggyo). The Foreign Teacher at their school is also male and blond, you see?

What I find strange thought is that she stayed next to me almost all the ay to my apartment, producing confused mumbles.

Your Top 10, in some language

I might be completely missing something here, but isn’t the main market for K-Pop people from about 10 to about 30? And I might be completely stupid, but haven’t most of the people in this group had to study English at school? At the very least, should all these people not be able to read English, even if they don’t understand anything? Amazing what you can get for thousands of dollars and 10 years worth of study, isn’t it? Why am I thinking about this?

A student gave me the Korean Top 100, K-Pop, remember (wink), and I thought I would use it in class. With that is hand, so to speak, I’m keeping an eye on Soompi for the weekly charts. Now, Soompi is caters for people who might not know Korean, so everything is written with the Roman alphabet. Not so for the songs the student gave me.

Of the ten songs in the, urm, Top 10, only three groups/artists have actual Korean names. The others all have names that are supposed to be written using Roman, but of course, none were.

Three quick things about the Korean sounds.
“Ae” is like the “E” in End.
“Eu” is a bit like the sound you make when you are hit in the stomach, like “Uh!”.
“Eo” is like saying “Ah”, but with your mouth rounded

1. Kara, the arse dance girls, became 카라, not to big a problem, except that students shorten the Ah’s to almost nothing so that it almost sounds like Karra

2. 2AM stays the same. I’m still amazed it doesn’t change to 투에이엠 (Too Ae-ee Aem)

3. CNBlue becomes씨엔블루 and that sound exactly the same with Shi Aen Beulloo.

4. SNSD, is actually an abbreviation, in English, of their Korean name. They are also known as Girls Generation. Strange back and forth between the languages going on with them.

5. 민경훈 (Min Kyung-Hoon). Pure Korean here, mate.

6. T-Ara turnes to 티아라. Suposedly they want you to say the name as if it was written Tiara. Good idea in the air, bad idea when printed.

7. 4men is 포맨. This one made me Laugh Out Loud (LOL, for those who still don’t know what that means). The Korean sounds like “Poh Men” Poh? Really?

8. 김종국(Kim Jong Kook). Lay that Korean on me, baby.

9. U-Kiss becomes 유키스, sounding like Yoo Keeseuh

10. Untouchable is now 언터쳐블, Eonteochyabeul. Not too bad, but hands up, students, who knows what that means.

*****

This happens all over the world and I can’t say I like it anywhere, in any language. I am always hearing about how proud Koreans are of their language and how hard they works at learning English, general life contradicts this idea all the time.

On the plus side, I have found a few nice songs in that Top 100, and a few snappy stick in your head songs as well. Demmit!

Weirdest is at it again.

I swear he is doing it just to try and tick me off, in a friendly way:

“Ha-i. How are you. I’m fine thank you and you?”

His English is way good enough to know those are exactly what you should not be saying.

Uri Teecha

I took my recently discovered shortcut home through the elementary school. Through this shortcut I have found that many of the middle school students play football and basketball on that field instead of walking further to the middle school.

As I passed a bunch of my students they all greeted me. One buy  skipped in my direction, yes skipped, and shouted “헬로 우리 티처!” (Hello Uri Teacha) Uri us Korean for ‘our’. How nice.

Crunching Numbers

Via Travis H.

Saw this link above (link) the one you posted and thought I'd crunch some numbers myself. While the foreign population rose 2% from 2008-2009, "violent" crime rose 18%. Robbery was the big one, almost doubling from 133 to 260. To put that in perspective, .03% of foreigners committed a robbery. Furthermore, 0.22% of foreigners are thieves. "Other" crimes (not specified) rose 8%. It is interesting they did not break those numbers down further, since the 5,551 crimes not specified represent more than 2/3 the total 7,812 crimes committed (speeding tickets anyone???).

~=~

Overall, 0.89% of foreigners committed a crime (notice the decimal points on these percentages), giving a "criminal" rate of less than 1 per 100,000. That number would drop further given that one "crime" does not equal one person, one person likely committed several crimes.

~=~

The FBI considers "violent" crime to be murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. But no figures for murder or rape were cited, though those two terms were cited in the second line of the article. Theft is a property crime.

~=~

Just for reference (not to be compared to my "criminal" rates, which account for number of criminals per foreigner) the US crime rate in 2008 for all crimes (violent and property) was 3,672 per 100,000. Violent crimes were 454 per 100,000.

~=~

The US murder rate was 5.4 per 100,000, between Turkey and Kenya. South Korea was 2.8 between Switzerland and Finland.

Smell that foreigner

"When walking past a foreigner's house, there was a unique odor foreigners carry. That is how I fathomed out whether a foreigner lived in the house," Baek was quoted as saying by police. Full article here.

Maybe it was because they didn't smell of kimchi and garlic. Oh! The apartments smelled of deodorant. Funny stuff.

Did you know that Koreans naturally don’t have a sweat smell? That is why deodorant is so difficult to find here.

Thanks to Christopher for turning me on to this one.

I love Google Translate

안녕하세요..급식실입니다.
우유급식 희망조사서를 학생들 편으로 보낼 예정입니다.
꼭 학부모님께 동의를 받아서 작성해 오도록
학생들에게 얘기를 해주시고, 금요일까지 급식실로 가져다
주시기 바랍니다.....선생님들의 많은 협조 부탁드립니다.

 

Hello .. is geupsiksil.
Students Hope Survey of milk feed is expected to send other side.
Write your parents agree to come to you
I'll let the students, through Friday, bringing to geupsiksil
..... Please ask teachers' cooperation.

 

Survey of milk feed? Really? No, thanks you.

Come, you, nooo, YOU.

"Look at all the Waegoogs. Look at all the things they do. We love Waegoogs...who can read and understand Korean."

Magog Temple Stay

You have to wonder what the point is of the photos of foreigners. Are they trying to impress Koreans? Do they think more Koreans will go there because whities go there?

If, maybe, they are trying to show us Waegoogs that is is for us, then would a spot of English not have been more effective?

Aaaaaaaah. Korean Tourism Advertising is almost as good as K-Pop and Konglish.

=D

And another silly K-Pop name is out there

From the Hangeul it seems that F.CUZ is suppose to be a play on Focus. I can see what they are trying to do, but maybe they should use a name that does not need to be explained. Better yet, maybe use something that is not Romanized as "Pokeojeu" and sound a lot more like Picachu, the animation character. =D 

The really funny side, for me at least, is that Cuz, in South Africa, is short for Cousin, and is used like Dude, or Bro.

It means that to me it look like their name is a play on 'F***, Cuz!"
(F***, Dude!" , "Holy S***!" , "Oh My God!" and such)