Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Fine, thank you. And How Are You?

... which is, as everyone knows, the correct response to "Hello, how are you?"

And that's just about the whole English repertoire of the average Korean. They tell the following joke on themselves:
A Korean is visiting America, when he gets hit by a car, and is lying badly injured on the road.
The car driver gets out, runs over to him and asks, "How are you?"
The Korean replies, "Fine, thank you. And how are you?"

It makes me giggle, I gotta admit.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Had to learn this one the hard way.

"Hello, class. How are you?"
FINE THANK YOU AND YOU?
"I'm doing great!"
*silence*
"I'm doing good?"
*silence*
"I'm fine, thank you?"
*nods of understanding*

So help me, I will teach at least one kid at least one other form of greeting. If it takes me all year. And it might.

Tuttle said...

Well, what gets me is, after 4 weeks, minimum three sessions together, they still greet me in the hall, in passing, etc, with "Hello, nice to meet you!"

No, we met a month ago, dammit! You might say, "Hello, nice to see you again!" but we only "meet" the first time.

Uh, except for that black-haired kid with the brown eyes ...

Well, at least they speak to me in English, which is more than most of the teachers.

Kelsey said...

I did a class recently where I actually taught the kids some of the things that I say that they have know clue what I mean. Among them were:

"I'm good."
"OK" (also 'okie dokie')
"No thanks."
"Nah."

etc, etc. Some of them were responses to "how are you", and some, as you can see, were just simple terms or word chunks that they do not know, but that I unconsciously use.

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