Col.Brandon

Joined: 09 Aug 2004 Location: Seoul
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Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 7:34 pm Post subject: Learning Korean the Hard Way |
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I've had a couple of funny incidents happen to me lately that I thought I might share with you all.
The first one was the other night when I was on my way to pick up my wife after work (She's a nurse.) Anyway, I'm driving over the Han river into Yeouido and there's this huge traffic jam. Now that's not so unusual, but this was 10pm on a Tuesday night. After about 30 minutes of inching my way along I finally came to a police checkpoint where they're breath-testing everyone.
A young police officer pokes this electronic device at me and says, "Who!"
"I'm Col.Brandon", I dutifully reply, but he mustn't have heard me clearly because he again says, "Who!"
"Brandon. I'm Brandon!"
"Who... WHO!!!"
And then it dawned on me; "Who" means "blow" in Korean!" Don't ever let it be said that I'm slow on the uptake. So I blow in this thing, and it seems to be happy because it blinks a green light at me and the cop lets me go on my way.
By the way Mr. policeman, thanks for delaying my journey by half an hour. You can WHO me.
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The second one was last week. I'm in class with a bunch of third-graders and we're talking about, "What do you like?" One earnest young student offers, "I like puppies!"
"Aha!" I think, "Here's a good learning opportunity", so I ask, "What is a puppy?"
"A dog baby", says another student.
And since I'm on a roll I ask, "And what's hangeul-mal for dog baby?"
Tee hee.
If you have a co-teacher try orchestrating this scenario just to see how much they squirm. It might be fun. By the way, sorry to the newbies if you don't get that last one. |
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