Today's Word

... is Adoniser. My theory is this word is a shortening of "Adonis-izer", and denotes a store whose products will turn one into an Adonis. I choose to ignore the fact that it is a women's apparel concern.

Today's other words are "Wast", which I applaud for its efficiency, not wasting extra letters on an e, and "Edurecting", the gerund form of Edurection, the anatomic condition achieved by getting, um, excited, about learning.


I saw the sign below at Seoul Pub in Itaewon during March, part of the St Patrick's promotion. But it wasn't this one sign, posters and bar cards also alerted imbibers to the establishment's "Patrick's Mouth Special".


Finally, this sign taped to selected doors on the platform at Dangsan station, announces essentially, "Beware! Pigeon shit". In the last several years, pigeons have taken up residence in the large barn-like structure covering the above-ground tracks of the 2 line portion of the station.

Some Korean Expressions on QI

This season's QI (Quite Interesting) is devoted to the letter K. We had only to wait for episode three for Korea to come up. It's all about idiomatic expressions. The fun begins at the 4:53 mark:


I only knew one of these, which I learned as "Too many captains send the boat to the hilltop". I was able to find another, "The other man's rice cake always looks bigger," in the book, "How Koreans Talk" by Sang-Hun Choe and Christopher Torchia, previously mentioned here.

English is Hard ...

... especially when you try very hard not to run it. Er, learn it.
I didn't mention much about the math institute we went to in my previous post, but I am going bring up one display now, but first, a little context. One thing we English-speaking expats in Korea (and Japan, and Thailand, and everywhere else I've been in east Asia) have in common is our mystified chagrin that so few natives can speak English with anything like fluency.
We spend hours, particularly the English teachers, trying to determine what's wrong with them--and when that's exhausted, usually quite late in the evening, after a few pitchers--what we could be doing wrong. Korea, after all, spends huge amounts of money on English language education (mostly, on us). Well, it's a big question, and I've devoted a lot of time and blog posts in considering it.
Why do they need to learn English anyway? I was having this discussion with The Stumbler) recently, who followed up by sending an opinion piece that appeared in the Korea Times. The author points out:

... last week one of the most respected universities in Italy, the Politecnico di Milano, announced that from 2014 all of its courses would be taught in English. There was a predictable wave of outrage all across the country, but the university’s rector, Giovanni Azzoni, simply replied: “We strongly believe our classes should be international classes, and the only way to have international classes is to use the English language. Universities are in a more competitive world. If you want to stay with the other global universities, you have no other choice.”

Okay, now that's settled, more or less, let's get back to the Korean Question: what can they do to improve english instruction? Mainly, stop translating into Korean. Especially, hangeul. But Korean, in general.
Allow me introduce Exhibit A (well, not really A, more like 5,311,658,769A): a multiplication game at the math museum: "Turn&Learn", as it is clearly labeled there on the base. Now, someone at the museum, doing their best, phonetically transliterated that in Korean, and it became 턴 앤 런. Then, they put it back into English, and it's: "Turn&Run", which isn't bad advice if that's the best you've got. This, of course, isn't really why Koreans have trouble learning English, though it is a contributing factor, to be sure. Their nationalistic pride in hangeul, devised by the Great King Sejong in 1443, is quite rational when it comes to recognising its simplicity--but disastrous when they fail to see its shortcomings in representing the many, many sounds it cannot spell.

It would be sheer folly to attempt to learn Korean without using hangeul, so why so many Koreans attempt to fit English into hangeul?

End of Language Series

As a great fan of Stephen Fry, I have enjoyed the Language series partly, I'll admit, for hs erudition--but mainly because of its insight into language, which is one of the key things that separates us from the other animals. I urge you to watch these videos!

Education News

My friend and colleague 'Hwang-tae', as he is colloquially known, mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that he was going to see a movie, Dogani 도가니 (The Crucible) which is based on true stories of sexual and physical abuse at a school for disabled children in Gyeonggi-do.  The movie is for Over-19s only.

I said it sounds quite depressing, and he agreed.  Well, it turns out something possibly good may come out of it, as JoongAng Daily is reporting that the government announced a new set of measures to permanently bar convicted sex offenders from teaching.  This refers to Korean teachers. 

I say "possibly good" for two reasons: alas, it mostly seems to apply to those abusing disabled teens, or at least "especially" disabled teens; further, it is probably yet another example of ill-considered overreaction, or legislation without teeth, as

Students will be disciplined more strictly when they sexually assault their disabled peers than when they do the same to students who are not disabled, the government said, adding that schools will be recommended to change their rules in that direction.

Huh?  Recommended to change? 

Okay, moving on: story #2 is a loosely-disguised ad for a group which wants to close down the English hakwons, this one called World Without Worries About Private Education (WWWPE).  It says "private education" right there in the name, but they seem unconcerned about math hakwons (which I gotta point out more of my students attend than English ones) or music or sports or ...

That's--as I've pointed out before, in my opinion--fine and good: this culture is rather too focused on "getting ahead" in the education game, and thereby robbing children of adequate time to just be kids.  The article touts a new "booklet" from the group that addresses "12 misconceptions about English education and gives alternative solutions".  Sadly, at least in the article, some of the misconceptions are in the alternative solutions, and some of the solutions are mis-labeled as misconceptions. 

I'm not going to belabor this, but let's just take one statement: "According to the booklet, the temporal lobe that controls language ability develops from age six."

Well, no.  In fact, just go to the post above and watch the two eps. so far in Fry's Language series to see that fallacy be destroyed.  In point of fact, most children have developed the majority of their syntactic and grammatical understandings by age three or four--take the kid whose weird father taught him Klingon alongside English: he learned the vocab, structure and syntax of Klingon quite well, but gave it up circa age three (which according to the bollocks above is before he even begins to learn it) because it wasn't very useful in communicating to his cohort.

So, if you want your child to be truly bilingual, speak Korean and English to her from the crib on up.  I must hasten to point out, I am not seriously suggesting this as a solution to the English conundrum in Korea.  No, it is clear from research that children absorb new languages like a sponge at least up to age ten or so; and even old people can learn a new language!  My point is that it "develops from age six" is utter nonsense. 

Stephen Fry on Language

If you are interested in language, as presumably those of us who are English teachers should be, you will be interested to watch Stephen Fry's new 5 part series on language, "Hello". So far, two one-hour segments have aired, and a couple of fine Youtubers have posted them up almost immediately. Part one:

Part two:

That Crazy Language We Call English

I am posting below an email forwarded to me by The Stumbler. Many of these I've heard before, some are new to me, but here they are, all in the same place:

You think English is easy???

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row ...

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people not computers and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP'

It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UPexcuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP ,you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP ... When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP...

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP !

Beastly Book Club

Summer Camp started on Tuesday, and will run until Aug. 5. I am teaching only one class, first period, which runs from 8:00 AM to 9:00. Which means I am finished with my work day and headed home before most shops along my route have even opened for business.

I don't mind, because the class I'm teaching is "Book Club" using the book Beastly by Alex Flinn. I've long wanted to do a book club type thing, so here it is. And these are good students, sixteen of them, the ones chosen earlier to take the trip to Singapore to visit our sister school there. So these are, at least in theory, some of the best English speakers in the school--at least from the set who are in first and second grade, who want to travel overseas, and whose parents can afford the price tag.

This book is a good one to use for a book club of adolescent boys in Korea: the main character is a high school sophomore boy, it is based on an archetypal story (Beauty and the Beast), it is set in modern day NYC, the word count is a managable 55 000, and the reading level is grade 3.3. And it's about love.

Despite that, it is quite a challenge for many of these boys--they are reading the words and sentences, but not necessarily understanding the paragraphs and chapters. But this is exactly what language acquisition is really about: going from words and sentences to thoughts and ideas.

I thought it was a bold choice of the school to have me do a book club with these boys, who are going to Singapore, rather than have me focus on travel vocabulary--airport and hotel simulations, etc. Still, I wasn't going to argue, since it's what I wanted to do.

Of Folklips and Chine

The first grade is in the midst of a unit on food, and at the end of this week's lesson, they get to spend fifteen minutes drawing (and labeling) their favorite Western-style meal. Here are a few pictures:




This leads me to a humorous moment that exemplifies how the Korean tongue makes learning English (and other languages) so difficult. Koreans exhibit considerable confusion over the 'l' sound and the 'r' sound; similarly the 'b' vs. the 'p' vs the'f' vs. the 'v'. Just as I have difficulty with ㅗ, ㅓ and ㅏ.

I am looking at student drawings, reading their labels, and one kid has called the lump of meat on his plate folklips. Read that again. Folklips. There was a time not so long ago when I would have been totally flummoxed. Oh, I would have known he didn't actually mean the labial organs of fellow humans, but I wouldn't have known where to go from there. Now, of course, it's patently obvious to me:

Folklips=Pork ribs

Speaking of pork, I went with my new friend Chris to a restaurant near the Gangseo Saggori where he introduced me to something called 가브리살 gabeurisal:


It is a cut of pork from near the shoulderblade end of the loin, just above the backbone, cf. chine. It is similar to samgyupsal, but much leaner and cut thicker; sweet, tender and delicious. 6,000 W a serving, with lettuce, sesame leaves, samjang and all the panchan, really outstanding!

Winter Camp Tales

I mentioned earlier that attendance at winter camp is deplorable, and it has gotten a little better (4th class has grown from 2 to 5--of 11 enrolled). Still, at least that means the numbers are quite manageable and students have a lot of opportunities to practice speaking with my immediate feedback.

I have organized the camp by doing different categories of activities on different days of the week; for instance, today is "Circle Time", tomorrow is Video Day, Thursday is Writing Lab, etc. Monday is simply conversation day, and I provide various prompts.

Yesterday was all about jokes and funny stories. To start things off, I had a list of short jokes or riddles in a table (the MS Word kind), with the punchlines on the right. I cut them into strips and cut off the punchlines. These are then distributed to the students. But one student gets the joke part, and someone else gets the punchline: "What time is it when you have to go to the dentist?" Another student has to realize he has the answer: "2:30 (tooth-hurty)" This is tricky since a lot of jokes depend on wordplay, puns and multiple meanings.

And the same with Korean jokes. One of the few that students managed to share was this: "How do you make salt more valuable?" "Divide it in two." In English, of course, this is meaningless, but in Korean, salt is sogum, 소금. Taken separately, 소 means beef, and 금 means gold. Not bad.

Today we played, among other things, Finish the Sentence. First up was "My best friend ..." which elicited some standard answers, physical descriptions and the like, and even a sweet one from a boy whose best friend is in America studying arts (?), who he can only contact on the internet--and he misses him. But one kid confessed his best friend was his computer, and another that his was the TV.

Tomorrow we'll be watching all of the Schoolhouse Rock grammar videos--everyone I know can do a bit of Conjunction Junction, what's your function? But did you know there are nine of them in all?

WOTY - Invese, I Mean Twitter

The dramatic leap in the use of social networks this year has extended to the language that surrounds them.
Just a few weeks after the New Oxford American Dictionary announced that "unfriend" is its 2009 Word of the Year, the Global Language Monitor announced that "Twitter" is the top word of 2009 based on its annual global survey of English words and phrases that appear in the media and online.
Rounding out the Monitor's top five words are, in order, "Obama," "H1N1," "Stimulus" and "Vampire."

Read more. My personal choice was 'gluteoplasty'. Full disclosure: I do not have a Twitter account. Nor have I ever had a gluteoplasty.

So now I'm ruminating on the nature of language: we add words, add new meanings to words all the time; I recently read that English has passed the one-million word mark. The Korean language is similarly pliable, though not nearly so large. We call imported words adapted to Korean pronunciation "Konglish", a word which itself is a recently-formed portmanteau of "Korean-English".

Why just today, I listened as a student explained the meaning of his proverb, Don't put all your eggs in one basket. "Do not invese all your money in only one stock," he said. The other student looked at him, brow furrowed.

"Inves-uh," he reiterated. "I-n-v-e-s-e." As if the other kid was a dolt for not knowing this fine word. Well, I sorted it out, checking that I had not made a typo on the original (I hadn't); the student had copied down his proverb and meaning (in violation of the rules I laid down) with his sloppy handwriting converting a t to an e. Still, some small fraction of Koreans now believe that "invese" is something you might do with your money.

And that is where new words come from.

'Konglish' A Double-Edged Sword

This according to a whimsically under-written article in today's Korea Times. Konglish, in case you didn't know, is English words in hangeul, spoken following Korean pronunciation rules. For instance, Burger King is 버거 킹, or Baw-gaw King. Toast is 토스트, or toe-suh-tuh. Last week, "toast" was the answer in a word game I played with the first graders. I made them repeat it properly about six times before moving on.

Anyway. By "contributing writer" Ines Min, the article wants to make four points:
1) Konglish makes it more difficult for Koreans to learn English. As evidence, the author provides no studies, journal papers or such, just a quote from Brian Deutsch of Brian in Jeollanam-do fame:

"(The overuse of English) actually makes it harder for Koreans learning English," [...] "They are so accustomed to pronouncing these borrowed words the Korean way that they can't adjust to English pronunciations and meanings."

I think he's right about accent and pronunciation, but meaning seems a much more tenuous argument to make. And it's not made here.
2) Konglish has a corroding effect on the Korean language. Min quotes Eric Kim, who authors a well-known series of English education books, with an example:

"The Korean language did not (originally) have the present perfect aspect," Kim said. "The recent introduction has resulted from the use of English in Korean." This could later distort the traditional Korean way of constructing meaning, he added.

3) Exactly the opposite of 2. Her source is Edwin Sunder, whose Ph.D in education is the closest thing to expertise in the whole story (well, there is an SNU professor, but we are not told in what field):

He doesn't feel the use of English is a problem because in India, his native country, a similar occurrence took place, with English becoming the official second language.

4) Borrowed words add depth (or certainly new words) to a language and promote multiculturalism. Fair enough.

I might note here that if you were to try to remove the borrowed words from English, you'd have nothing left. Remind me to do a post about "pia" someday. Not Pia Zadora, no. The suffix Koreans use to suggest Utopia.

Bonus Photographs: These are not exactly Konglish, but they're something. The first is just a typo of some kind, on a banner three feet tall. The second is part of the events calendar of the brochure I picked up at Seoul Olympic Park:

Some Thoughts on Teaching English

Incruit Corporation, which claims to be Korea's leading HR company, has released a survey of over 4,000 jobseekers in the Korean market, as reported in Korea Times yesterday, and found that "the country's top employers' recent recruitment trend highlights one value they're looking for most ― English proficiency."

"Our assessment shows that the English test score was the only outstanding factor that differentiated candidates from success and failure," said Ko Jin-hee, a career consultant at Incruit.
Strong academic records, voluntary work, internships, awards and certifications didn't turn out to be decisive, as a large number of candidates who were rejected had such credentials, the data show.
A similar evaluation done previously indicates that English proficiency is one of the skill sets most valued during recruitment, but figures show that candidates ― whether successful or not ― are improving their scores across the board.

This is no surprise to anyone who is knowledgeable about the way Korea works--or doesn't. And for anyone who teaches English here, like me, it's a definite indicator of job security, especially with the jobless rate in the US plummeting towards 10% and our financial whizzes seemingly resigned to it.

I got a W100,000 per month raise on my new contract (about $85 at current exchange rates) even though technically I was supposed to stay at my level for 2 years. I feel that I am well-liked at my school, even seen as a model teacher--I am sometimes asked not just for English advice, but also teaching advice. The older teachers take notes on my presentations.

OTOH, I am wise to the fact that all that respect could disappear with one "wrong" move from me, though I can't even suss out what that might be until it happens. This is the downside of buying into a foreign culture.

"The standard of English proficiency has changed," said Ko. "Job seekers can no longer outshine their competitors with mediocre skills because everyone is getting better."
She stressed that test scores aren't enough to assess language proficiency, which leads companies to put more emphasis on speaking evaluations.

This is why I try to make students--even resistant students--speak English, a sentence or an idea at least, in every class, hoping to give them some confidence. The best way, it seems to me, is to give them no choice. Listen and repeat has its place, but that's not what I'm talking about.

You can't accomplish this with slapping or beating, or even really with hypervigilance. You need to give them a reason to speak English. I never sit at my desk. When not presenting the lesson material, I move among the students and insist my coteachers do the same, asking questions, eliciting responses, or just plain talking to them, even if it's not about the lesson. Sometimes, I make them stand up and address the class--reading a sentence or two they have had an opportunity to work on.

Much of the time, my lesson plan is only really successful with the students who want to practice or improve their English. The least proficient students (i.e., the ones who need it most) are most reticent. I have learned to accept that. Efficiencies are thus, so don't spend too much time trying to lure them out. Teach to the top, and hope it trickles down.

Still, these bottom 10-20% are part of the class, too. The ideal plan is one which requires any student to speak, in a controlled situation, with a good chance of success. An information gap activity fits this bill--especially one designed with student interests in mind, arranged so the teaching team can maintain high vigilance. An example: Job Fair.

Did that take work? Yeah, of course it did. The SMOE contract is 22 teaching hours and 18 planning hours per week. That's close to a 1:1 ratio! My advice--use those planning hours to plan, to look ahead, to strategize. The better your planning, the more polished your powerpoints, the more well-thought-out your logistics, the easier time you will have in class. When students are engaged (or at least occupied) every minute, there is less chance for misbehavior, more chance for English-speaking.

Since this is turning out to be a post about teaching methods, allow me to mention Howard Gardner's work on multiple intelligences--while as second language teachers we focus on listening, reading, speaking and writing, we should also avail ourselves of the different learning styles and worldviews of our students. Gardner's work was a paradigm shift in my teaching, and it's still impacting pedagogical theory.

Korea's Newest Export: Hangeul

Following up on my post from a couple of days ago about Korea's hi-tech prowess, here is an interesting story, reported by Yonhap and Korea Herald:

A tribe in Indonesia has begun adopting Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, as their writing system to express their spoken aboriginal language, which is on the verge of extinction. It is the first time the alphabet has been officially adopted outside the Korean Peninsula.
The 60,000 person tribe in the city of Baubau, located in Buton of Southeast Sulawesi, has been working to transcribe its native language "Jjia jjia" into Hanguel.
The Baubau city counsel decided to adopt Hangeul as the official alphabet for in July of 2008. Work soon began and the textbooks were completed on July 16. By July 21, elementary and high school students began learning their spoken language through the Hangeul writing system.

Who are the Jjia Jjia (or Cia Cia), you may well be asking. After all, you've never heard of them. Neither have I. Neither has Google (beyond the news story quoted here). Neither has Wikipedia.

Buton Island is there in Wiki, and Bau-Bau comes up on Google Earth (if you haven't downloaded it, do so as soon as you finish reading this--it is awesome fun, and useful, even). Still, the place is little-known, so much so that Yonhap's brief story calls it "Bauer and Bauer." Which I think is actually a men's clothiers. Or a financial consultant.

The Bauer and Bauer meme has been propagated to Korea Times and KBS in the last couple of hours.

Anyway, I am reminded of the story of Chief Sequoyah, who developed a Cherokee writing system after seeing the power it gave the white man who raped his people's land, stole their property and banished them to Oklahoma. Well, the pen may be mightier than the sword, but rifles throw off the balance.

Rather than reinvent the wheel alphabet, the Jjia jjia made the decision to borrow a pre-existing phonetic alphabet. They chose hangeul, invented in the fifteenth century at the behest of the enlightened Korean Emperor Sejong, who ruled with a scientific bent. I don't know if this was a good decision, compared to, say, using Sequoyah's alphabet, since I don't know the first thing about his "talking leaves". Or compared to English, which has trouble representing even Korean, much less, say, Swahili or Tonga.

However, if the Jjia jjia use a lot of "f","b","I","r","l" or "z" sounds, they've made a spectacularly bad decision. You cannot represent "cob" in hangeul, only "cop", though can have "cop" two ways. What you can have is "caw-buh". You can't have "shun" only "sun". And so on. As a phonetic alphabet, this system works well for spoken Korean's sounds, the purpose for which it was invented. Hangeul has 24 characters which can be arranged into several dozen syllables which compose the phonetic units of the language.

If your language doesn't use those units, then hangeul can only approximate it. This is the fundamental fact behind what is called Konglish, Korean-English. E-Mar-tuh, pok-uh, English-ee and all the rest of it.

햅브 나이스 대!

Of Chicken, Soccer and Konglish

So, I'm sitting down here in Chicken Mania, drinking beer, eating fried chicken, watching Man U on the big screen and posting with borrowed wireless. And I went to the gym earlier so I'm doing it guiltlessly, yes, even the internet.

On the other hand, I'm reading newspaper articles about Korea's plan to completely erase any strides it has been making in English-language education by scrapping the TOEIC and TOEFL exams, the world-wide standards for English fluency, in favor of a state-developed exam.

"We are benchmarking Japan`s EIKEN, or Test in Practical English Proficiency, which is recognized by over 600 schools worldwide," said Oh Seok-hwan, in charge of English education at the ministry.

1) There are probably ten times that number of English-speaking colleges and universities worldwide, and
2) it has taken EIKEN some 25 years to get this far, and
3) numbers 1 and 2 above make it clear that Korea is choosing to diminish its international footprint for the forseeable future.

On the other other hand, if the locally-developed test were to place greater emphasis on functional skills and self-expression, instead of the single-minded focus on TOEFL's grammatical components, which are the parts easily taught in Korean education's lecture-based pedagogical paradigm, then I say more power to 'em. Well, not really, because any Korean English test simply will not replace TOEFL in the eyes of the world. It is folly to think otherwise.

(Moments after Wayne Rooney comes on for Man U, Gamba Osaka scores, to make it 2 - 1, but Rooney chests a pass on the ensuing kickoff and lays it past the GK, 3 - 1. The man scores after being on the field for about 18 seconds! Before I can write another papagraph, it's now 5 - 2, quite a game! Now GBA misses a PK! The final score is 5 - 3 with one more in stoppage time. That's five Big Five goals, friends--actually six, since Ronaldo's header on the CK was moments before the half!)

Anyway, my battery is dying so I better sto

A Measure of Progress

I know maybe a hundred words in Korean, and can sound out just about anything written in hangeul. I can now determine whether the soccer game is between Ah-suh-nul and Man-cheh-suh-tuh see-tee or Mah-nah-cho and Nee-suh. It was very satisfying when I was able to recognize a samgyupsal restaurant for the first time by reading the name.

Of course, the difference between reading the characters and understanding the language is the difference between humming the tune and singing the lyrics.

Today at lunch, I wanted some napkins (hu-gee). In Korea, the table napkins are these single ply jobbies about 2" X 5". It takes three or four to actually do anything. They come in a box (tung) which can be passed around.

I waited until Miss Cho was talking to Mr Oh, leaned across to her and said, "Hu-gee tung, chuh-say-yo." Wordlessly, she reached for the box and passed it to me.

Then she did a double-take. I smiled with satisfaction.

Bonus Photographs:
--from the cart ramp/escalator at Home Plus, opposite sides of the same sign.

Two Funny Things ... and Snow

First of all, I must confess it has been a sort of hobby of mine making up the names of exotic dancers by altering the names of famous actresses, ever since I was in a production of 'Guys and Dolls' and helped one of the Hot Box Girls name herself Ursula Undress (from Ursula Andress, Swiss sexpot and one of the original Bond girls). Today, one of the students helped me out.

Recall, dear reader, that this week's lesson is about the movies--students will make clues from a movie's genre, actors, setting, etc., and the rest of the group will try to determine the movie in question. Misspellings of names here are sometimes humorous, but usually unremarkable. However, one of the female stars of 'Mama Mia' was rendered as Merry Strip. Score!

The latest joke going around school is this:
Q: What's the biggest bell at Young-il HS?
A: Cam-bell.

Lastly, it snowed today. Starting at lunch, then for about an hour: heavy clumpy wet blobs, none of which stuck to the ground. I came outside and caught a few flakes on my tongue, which prompted Assistant Principal Kim to do the same, laughing like crazy. The air was thick with it for a while here west of the river; by quitting time, the sky was clear and the temp. was around 50 F. Still, my first snow in Korea. Right now, it's 40 F in Seoul, 36 F in Atlanta. I'll take it as a sign.

What Government is For, Korean Edition

"Adoption of English as Official Language Proposed" for Korea, according to an article today in The Korea Times.

Yeah, good luck with that. Of course, Korea is not alone; about one hundred countries (half of the total) include English as an official or widely spoken tongue. A quick google spotted an article about Madagascar's government's decision to do the same. Madagascar is a large island in the country of Africa country in Africa whose president, Marc Ravalomanana, is sometimes called "Park Myung-bak" at least according to this story in Korea's Dong-A Ilbo, due to his five year plans for improving his country's economy, like Park Chung-hee, and his role as an important business leader, like Lee Myung-bak. Park and Lee both have served as Korea's leader.

Indeed, Ravalomanana called Korea "his role model country for economic development," according to the article. You could do worse, as Korea has changed from a feudal, agrarian society into a thoroughly modern, technological marvel and economic powerhouse in just fifty years. This amazing story was one of my key reasons for wanting to spend some time here. Says the article:

Considering the importance of English on the global stage, the Madagascan president designated the language an official language in additional to the indigenous Malagasy and French.
He directed the public sector to use English in a number of work processes...

Now, the fact that many people in Madagascar already speak more than one language suggests a substantial difference with Korea. The population speaks only Korean, and most can read simplified Chinese characters as they are still widely used, but there has been weak cultural interest in learning foreign languages.

Chinese and Japanese have been the most frequently-learned languages, due to the influence of these cultures in Korea's history and geography. In fact, during the Japanese occupation in the first half of the 20th century, speaking Korean was illegal for a while, and everyone was forced to learn Japanese. Some of those people are still alive.

Cut to the latter part of the century past. As Korea's industrial prowess grew, the lack of English speaking began to be recognised as a hindrance to achieving economic goals. The English Program in Korea (EPIK) was introduced in 1992 to bring native English speakers to teach here. Each year, this program is being expanded as rapidly as the market for native teachers will bear. Which also helps explain why I am here. I'll blog later--and ongoingly--about the impediments to teaching English to Koreans.

The Korea Times article focuses on comments from InvestKorea leader Chung Tong-soo, a Harvard Law graduate and a former Clinton administration staffer:

We should convert our difficulty into an advantage. The key is bringing down exorbitant corporate tax rates and giving foreign firms an atmosphere they can easily work in.
Language barriers make life for foreigners more difficult, so let's remove them. Years from now, we may look back on a lost chance with regret.

Acknowledging the difficulties the government would face in adopting English as an official language, Chung said, "That is what the government is for."

The Free-Woman Town

It was a puzzler. When listing three facts he knew about the USA during a class activity, a student today wrote, "America is place of the free-woman town." Free Woman Town? Free-woman town??

Well, thinking quickly, I decided he didn't mean Reno or Las Vegas--I mean, those women aren't free (anything but!) and I wouldn't really know how to ask, anyway. Unable to go anywhere else with it, I called over Mr Oh, my coteacher. A quick exchange of Korean, and he smiles at me. "Statue of Liberty," he explains.

Now, I have promised these students that no one will laugh at their attempts to speak English, least of all myself. Still, the difference between what I thought and what was meant unleashed a brief guffaw before I could repress it. I tried to cover with an "Ah ha! Now I getcha!" kind of thing, and ran to the board to show the correct spelling and point out that the town involved is New York City. If I can make it there, I can make it ...

A Shrink By Any Other Name

The Koreans watch our language use pretty closely. I was reminded of this the other day when I explained to Mr Hwang that 'actress' describes a female actor, but 'actor'
can describe either sex. "Why not 'actperson'?" he asked. The best answer I had was, "Give it time. No one has thought of it yet--you're ahead of the curve." Then I had to explain 'ahead of the curve'. But I digress.

From today's Dong-A Ilbo comes a story titled Shrinks to Use New Term for 'Psychiatry'. In essence, since the term psychiatry has a societal stigma associated with it, the Korean Neuropsychiatric Association is casting about for a "better-sounding" term. Never mind the use of shrink in the headline. According to the article,

New names on the shortlist include “brain psychology”; “mental and physical science”; “stress science”; “neuro-stress science”; “neuropsychology”; “neuropsychiatry”; “mental health;” “mental stress”; and “psychiatric medicine.” ...
Association spokesman Lee Dong-woo said, “Our members are engaged in a wide variety of specialties and have different interests in the name-changing issue. It’s really tough to find a comprehensive shiny term to please them all. We will survey the preferences of members before deciding on a name.”

Despite Westerners' here ongoing amusement at Konglish in our daily lives, it is heartening (or, more precisely, disheartening) to see them embrace the American penchant for "comprehensive shiny terms" to distort, hide or ambiguate meaning on purpose.

In related news, the US Republican Party was considering a name-change to Party of Vertical Income Redistribution, until party leaders were accidentally caught live on mic snickering "And we don't mean downward, baby!"