Here I am. Still. I don’t dislike Korea, but it does have a tendency to piss me off once in a while. Well, OK, most of the time.

Daehan Minguk! Again!

Posted on Jun 23, 2002 in Korea-related | 7 comments

That was an astonishing semifinal game, and the Korean team makes me proud to be…
…well, you know. Canadian. Got caught up in it for a second, there. But honestly – what a well-fought, sportsmanlike, pulse-pounder of a match. sh-t like this might just make a sports fan of me after all these years.
(Edit : Although, clearly, there are some questions about the accuracy of the officiating.)
There’s going to be one hell of a party here tonight. The game just finished, and it’s cocktail hour on a Saturday night.

7 comments

Transliteration

Posted on Jun 22, 2002 in Korea-related | 10 comments

Jonathon’s talked recently about the way his name is modified by Japanese speakers to make it a word they can more easily pronounce. This is probably why, while watching the World Cup game between Brazil and England this afternoon, I noticed the oddball way that the name ‘Ronaldo’ (who’s still an idiot, as far as I’m concerned) is rendered in Korean.
It’s doubly odd, because Han’gul (the Korean alphabet) is perfectly capable of rendering the name perfectly.
This

The right way to spell ronaldo in Korean...

which sounds like Ro – Nal – Do, would be the perfect way to go, I’d think. Sounds almost identical, bar the minor differences in the way the ‘r’ sound and the ‘o’ sounds are pronounced in Korea.
But noooo……
For some reason, the Korean spelling of his name on TV today (and all the other times I’ve seen it) looked like this :

... and the wrong way to spell ronaldo in Korean

This sounds like Ho – Na – Oo – Doo.
What the hell is up with that? I have no idea.
But this creative mangling of the sounds of names and other words imported from other languages drives me moderately batty sometimes, as one of the things I have to do in my work is (for example) to disabuse my students of the notion that the proper English pronunciation of ‘sports’ is ‘suh-PO-chuh’, which is the correct way to pronounce the word as it is written in Korean. This tends to be difficult, as they’ve seen and heard the word in all its Konglish glory every damn day of their lives for 20 years, on the evening news.
Don’t even get me started on ‘Fighting!’
Ah well. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.

10 comments

This can't be right…

Posted on Jun 17, 2002 in Korea-related | Comments Off

English man held without charge, interrogated relentlessly by Japanese police.

“This can’t be right,” said Jo Holt, who owns a pub in England. “Japan is just beautiful except for this. This wouldn’t happen in England. I don’t think it would happen anywhere else.

You wanna bet, lady?

0 comments

Fraught With Portent

Posted on Jun 15, 2002 in Korea-related | 10 comments

Tonight, it’s all about Korea, Portugal, Poland and the USA.
The USA. Hooohoooo – that’s a good one.

10 comments

A Wee Drop of Whine

Posted on Jun 14, 2002 in Korea-related | 5 comments

Time for another Wonderchicken Laundry List Of Annoying Things About Living In Korea© :

  • Local elections are being held today. This is good, because for the last week or two, every time I’ve walked to the subway station I’ve had to run a gauntlet of literally dozens of people bellowing ‘annyong hashimnikka’ (‘hello’, basically, in formal mode), bowing and chanting in unison the name of their candidate and his number on the ballot. There’ve also been roving A/V trucks with airbrushed posters of these grinning bryll-creamed bribe-mongers roaming the beehives, stopping several times a day, and declaiming over their tinny loudspeakers to the mock-ecstatic, worshipful rent-a-crowd the marvellous things they’d do for the community if we’d just vote for them. I assume they’re passing out ‘Vote For Me’ envelopes containing money, too. That sort of thing happens here. If one of those pinstriped, corrupt jackals promised to get rid of the omnipresent piles of reeking garbage and institute a city ordinance banning the horking of phlegm at every third step, I’d worship the bastard. Not likely, though. Too busy making plans for large-scale graft.
  • Five times, today. There is an intercom built into every apartment in this beehive. A special one, with no controls, volume or otherwise. What it really is is an outercom, I guess. You can’t shut it off, or even turn it down, and at predictably inopportune moments (which are best left undescribed perhaps), this tiny speaker will fire up and one of the guards in the guardhouse down by the parking lot will begin to yammer on endlessly (in Korean, of course) about the o-ring vendor that will be in the parking lot for the next 17 hours, just in case you really really need to buy some washers, now don’t forget, that’s O-RINGS and you know that reminds me of a story….I’m waiting for one of these guys to get liquored-up and start singing un-turn-offable karaoke into each and every apartment in the complex, until a certain fierce-looking foreigner stomps into the guardhouse, wrestles him to the floor and gently pummels him into sweet silence…My relatively peaceful day has been interrupted five times already by this demonic device.
    That’s enough for today. Just had to vent a bit. Thanks for listening.

    5 comments

    • Daehan Minguk

    Posted on Jun 10, 2002 in Korea-related | 4 comments

    It’s about an hour and forty-five minutes before the World Cup match between America and Korea begins in Daegu.
    The Korea Herald is reporting that about 150,000 Red Devils (supporters of the Korean team) are expected in the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul, near the US embassy.

    “The police are worried that citizens might throw things into the embassy or set the US flag on fire if Korea loses to the United States or if one of the US players angers Korean supporters by taking a so-called ‘Hollywood action’ or exaggerated gesture, similar to the incident involving US speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno during the 2002 Winter Olympics.”

    So let that be a warning to you, you Imperialist Yankee Footballers : no exaggerated gesures, or we’re gonna trash your embassy!

    4 comments
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