Friday, March 16, 2012

M

MAD GAB

Many times I think that my life is quite similar to a game of Mad Gab.

  
I feel like I'm playing when I [try to] speak Korean, when I am talking with my students, and...when I read signs. While I am trying to figure out what the Korean means, I realize that it sounds more like English:

sometimes it's because it is a brand or store with an English name:


spam --> 스팸 --> seu-paem

at

costco wholesale --> 코스트코 홀세일--> ko-seu-teu-ko hol-se-il


and sometimes it's because the English word and the Korean word are almost the same [tomato and internet] and sometimes it's totally random [chicken, style, sky...]


It also seems like the titles of English movies are usually just translated into Hangul [Korean letters] rather than actually translated into Korean. Most of the time it's pretty easy to figure out, but last night I went to see 존카터 with my children's center. Having not seen any previews for quite some time, I didn't realize that jon-ka-teo was actually John Carter until the movie started. I knew it was from the U.S. because the Disney logo, but I never would have guessed the title was a name! Also, it was quite funny when the martians [is that the right word?] were talking toward the beginning and there were both Korean and English subtitles.




[Listening to Korean is an entirely different story...it's more like a word search.]

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