Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gord]

[mack the knife]

It's not the phrase itself that bugs, it's the way they use it.

Example:

"How big is your dog?"
"So-so."

"How far is it from Seoul to Busan in Kilometers?"
"So-so."

"I like your dress, is it crimson or scarlet?"
"So-so."

"Where can I find Tommy Hilfiger?"
"So-so."

"Do you like Jjajang or curry?"
"So-so."

"Are you studying English at a hogwon?"
"So-so."

"Would that hogwon happen to be ECC, Wonderland, or SLP?"
"So-so."

"Is your teacher a smelly, unkempt, grease-fire-waiting-to-happen?"
"So-so."

"OK, little Johnny. It all makes sense now. You can go."
"So-so."

[kangnam mafioso]

I've been back in the States now for 6 months after two years in the ROK, and to my dismay I've been saying "so-so." Damn! Along with the subtle head nod, I can't seem to get rid of it.

[Newbie]

[kangnamdragon]

Hey, it's hard enough to get native speakers to speak properly. I would like people to stop saying, "Everyone ...... their....." but I think it is time to give up.

[ryleeys]

I discourage so-so and encourage slang.

That's why I'm here, so they can get native English and not book English.

I love when one of my kids says, "how y'all doin'?"

[Mr. Pink]

[The Lemon]

People use "so so" at home, but not to the frequency we hear it here. I'm sure there are people back home who do answer "I'm fine thank you, and you", but so much repetition of the phrase has rendered it meaningless here.

I once encountered a girl bawling her eyes out, and when I asked her how she was, she answered - through her tears - "I'm fine thank you and you".

[peppermint]

I think what we're responding to is the utter ubiquity of the phrase. I tell students that it's one of many options, and that using the same option everyday makes it seem like either their English skills are very limited or they're simply lazy.

[intergalactic]

I have heard "same-same" coming from westerners' mouths more often than from asians'. I think "same-same" was started by GIs in Asia, as part of what my friends and I call 'takka-takka' english, in an attempt to make the locals understand them. "I'mfinethankyouangnew?" may be annoying along with "OK!", but "same-same" really grates on my ears, especially when I hear a westerner say it!

Following is something a little off-topic, but I thought it might interest some. Heinz Insu Fenkl wrote a novel called "Memories of My Ghost Brother", which includes a lot of pidgin used by GIs back then. Most of it seems to have vanished by now, but I think 'same-same' might come from a similar source. A quote by Fenkl:

"In fact, the spoken language in the narrative is sprinkled with a pidgin that relies heavily on words of Japanese origin. We hear only taksan and ainoko in the context of the narrative, but these words are indexical of entire vocabularies that resonate at two levels. Ainoko (love child), for example, was a term commonly used and understood by Koreans of my mother's generation-those who had grown up speaking Japanese during the Annexation. My mother's Korean, and the Korean I grew up with, was heavily laden with Japanese words used in everyday life: waribashi for wooden chopsticks, dakuwan for pickled yellow turnips, and nodaji for always are just a few examples. Those terms have since been purged from the Korean language, and one would be hard pressed to find a young adult these days who knows the meaning of waribashi. The word taksan (a lot, many) is an example of Japanese that became GI pidgin, although it was not used commonly by Koreans communicating with each other. In this category, one would find words like: skoshi, mira-mira, debuchan, slicky boy, papa san, mama san, number 1, number 10, honcho, and gook. These terms are of mixed origin-mira-mira, for example, is Spanish-but they are still common in the pidgin of the Korean kijich'on, which remains a liminal language with an oddly displaced lexicon. Most GIs who have served abroad are familiar with this pidgin; these days it is commonly known as "Nam-Speak," and it serves as a concrete reminder of colonial succession not only in Korea, but all over the world. "

from http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/2627/autoeth.html

[Ya-ta Boy]

My complaint with 'so-so' is that it doesn't give me any clue how to continue the conversation. If someone tells me his weekend was great or terrible, I have somewhere to go with my next question.

It's like cotton candy. It looks substantial, but there isn't anything there when you bite into it. If you know what I mean.

It's like "I slept" in answer to the question, "What did you do last weekend?" After a few of those, I started assigning a minimum number of events.

[schwa]

[zee]

i am on a mission to get my students to stop saying:
"teacher! cunning!!!"(while pointing to another student)
apparently this means "cheating", but i'm having none of it.
i don't know where they got this from, but it drives me crazy!

[cacheSurfer]

[Zed]