Korean Job Discussion Forums

[DanseurVertical]

On a few occasions I've had native Koreans ask me this question in the sense of, 'How is the day?'

Is this used in some English dialects? I found it odd and at first didn't understand. I thought it may be first language interference, but I wonder now if the expression is used in some regions by native English speakers.

[chasmmi]

There are a number of words and phrases I come across large numbers of Koreans using in English which are either odd or flat out wrong English yet everyone seems to have learnt it.


Some things that come to mind that mass overuse of Continuous tense, the word thing and some adjectives such as Delicious, strange, funny and impossible.

I do enjoy being told that something is 'a little bit impossible thing'.

It would be interesting to know if the mass inaccuracies are down to students being universally mistaught a phrase meaning, if poor interpretations in dictionaries are to blame, maybe people are speaking in literal translation or some other factor.

Would also like to know if there are any Incorrect/odd Korean phrases that a significant percent of us are obliviously using in our Korean.

[Mix1]

A lot of their books teach expressions that aren't used properly or aren't very common or are just vague. Because we can often get the general gist of the question, we rarely correct them and on and on it goes.

[Mix1]

[Stout]

If it results in their creating their own brand of English which is communicative/intelligible to foreigners, more power to'em.

[DanseurVertical]

[DanseurVertical]

[alongway]

A lot of strange English comes from dictionary translation. In Korean certain things are often implied, or dropped when speaking casually. So when they run it through a dictionary there is even less chance of it making sense.

In this case, they'll often casually say to someone:
하루 어떤가요?

하루 - day, not today, just a day. It's implied that it means today today, or "your day"

어떻다 - means "be like" or "be how" or "how about"

This is often used in the sense of "How was your day?" or "how is your day going?"

but when directly translated there isn't much there to fill in the blanks for someone who is using a dictionary. All they've got is:

"how about today?"

I sometimes hear:
"How is your today?"

[Mix1]

[DanseurVertical]

[NYC_Gal 2.0]

I think it sounds poetic. As long as communication is achieved, it's great. If a native speaker said it, I'd wonder about it.

[Landros]

Most Koreans think English is just a Translation of Korean. they just want the English word for stuff they say in Korea. We don't say "work hard" when leaving and we don't say "Help yourself" before eating. You can't learn a language without the culture.

[Stout]

English, like its counterparts, is a living language, and if it aspires to continue to be the best candidate for a future global language, it ought to be malleable to local tastes.

It ought to reflect and respect a given people's right to shape it the way they want (or how it ends up being shaped, however the case the may be).

No doubt the Queen wasn't too pleased when the North American uncouth ingrates adapted English to their tastes, but that was just tough cookies for her.

Similarly, we should make allowances for other peoples to bring their flavor (mistakes/mistranslations are often part of the process) to the mix, so long as we can understand them at the end of the day.

[jpe]

[quote="DanseurVertical"]

[Who's Your Daddy?]