Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Whales swim gracefully off the East Sea coast.
(This is the text under the following picture.)


http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200404/200404250020.html

[Zed]

They seem to have a blurry distiction between whales and dolphins here. I couldn't convince my kids that Free Willy was a whale in English and not a dolphin. I know. Killer Whales are genetically very close to dolphins. In Korean the word dolphin is the same as the word for whale with a prefix "dol~" attached to it.

[hellofaniceguy]

The picture is NOT of whales. Maybe koreans think so....

[Bulsajo]

It's all cetacea... there are smaller beaked and bottlenosed whales, but those look like porpoises.

I think that in the world of Korean newspaper gaffes this one is pretty tiny. I suspect that if they had written 'porpoises' instead of whales some English teacher would be posting here asking why they didn't write 'dolphins'.

[Toby]

I used to work for one....

[VanIslander]

Actually, guys, dolphins ARE whales according to any oceanographer, so yes... it's a picture of whales, one kind of toothed whale. (The real blurry distinction in science is in defining what kind of whale some species are --- and a shark is NOT a whale, even the so-called "whale shark", it's a cold-blooded, gilled fish not a milk-producing, air breathing mammal.)

In English we just usually specify the sub-type of whale it is if it's a dolphin, probably because of the warm fuzzy image of them often promoted in the culture.

I grew up on the Northern coast of Vancouver Island around grey whales, humpback whales, dolphins, and...

Orca, so-called 'killer whales' - they could just as well have been nicknamed 'killer dophins' given their anatomy- a somewhat undeserved reputation, since resident populations are not killers of mammals, transients are (there are genetic differences between them, but not visually obvious differences). The term "killer whale" came from centuries ago when European whalers found out that chased or injured orca fight back. People in the Canadian province of Newfoundland on the east coast also call orca "swordfish" for that reason.

What always irks me is when many English people (including NFL Miami fans) call dolphins "fish", which they most certainly are not!

So, there's nothing inferior about the Korean terms of expression. Given a lack of more specific information about the sub-species, the newspaper photo's caption text was dead-on with its description.

Not IMO. As a matter of fact.

[maxxx_power]

Meat is meat and man's gotta eat!

[Toby]

[maxxx_power]

[Toby]

[waggo]

I saw some swim alongside the "Fukuoka-Busan sea cat" a couple of weeks ago.It was funny because they were jumping out of the water whilst the Korean ajossis were standing at the bar drinlking beer and stuffing their faces with nuts completely oblivious to them.

[Bulsajo]

Dolphin is delicious.

[komtengi]

[VanIslander]

The statement is shocking and outrageous to many on the face of it:

[captain kirk]

Following up what waggo says about Koreans on the ferry being 'completely oblvious' to whales jumping stuffing themselves with snacks there are no whale tours in Ulsan due to 'lack of interest'. I've asked the students and though there are whales which pass on their migration there are no small boat whale watching tours the like of those off Victoria, Canada. Ulsan is only a million people. If it was bigger perhaps there'd be interest, they said. But maybe it's the general lack of interest in wild creatures compared to that of people in North America. The boss said, laughing, that Koreans are too busy making money to bob in a boat looking at whales.