All the World's a Stage

With roughly two hours to spare, I give you...a blog post.


January has been a busy month. The students are on winter break from their elementary schools, which (of course) means that many of them were spending more time with us, and there was a corresponding increase in classes to teach.

In addition to the so-called "intensive" classes, we also had the annual kindergarten concert. Picture, if you will, dozens of Korean six- and seven year-olds singing, dancing, and acting their little kinderhearts out. My Watermelon class unleashed a performance of Snow White and the Six (not seven, six) Dwarfs that would have blown your minds, while my Strawberry class offered an interpretation of Beauty and the Beast that left the audience gaping and gasping in awe. Perhaps the most interesting adaptation, however, came from Lemon class. The Wizard of Oz is a theatrical classic, performed annually on countless stages around the globe.

I am willing to venture a guess, however, that this was the first-ever performance to feature none of:
-the Tin Man
-the Cowardly Lion
-the Scarecrow
-Toto the dog
-the Munchkins.

Parents were apparently unwilling to have their children cast in these roles (I must confess to not quite understanding the reasons why, although I believe it had something to do with the costumes not being sufficiently attractive for the parents' liking), and so instead we saw Superman, Batman, Tae Kwon V (a Korean superhero roughly on par with the first two), and Toto the younger brother. As for the Munchkins, they were simply omitted entirely, but I think this may have more to do with the challenges of performing an entire play in six minutes than out of any editorializing.

In addition to kind of (but not really) emceeing the show, I also had several other roles: the magic mirror in Snow White, the narrator and Servant 1 in Beauty and the Beast, and as a dancer (along with the other waeguk teachers and two kinder classes) to the following song. You really should have seen it. We were awesome.

Deadline

I'm going to bed now, but am making this simple promise: there will be a new blog entry within 24 hours. If there isn't, you can expect to see this post removed, 1984-style, and any evidence of its existence eradicated from your memory.

Buona notte.

Ask A Waeguk - addendum

Those of you who happened to read the comments section of the preceding post will have noticed reference to monkeys and banana flavoured cheetos. Allow me to elaborate.

Relatively soon after my arrival in Korea, I was walking home one night after an evening out with friends. Finding myself somewhat peckish, I stopped at the first convenience store along the way. There, my eye was caught by a bag of what appeared to be Cheetos- at least, that's what the photo on the bag led me to believe. There was also a cute drawing of monkey, but I didn't put too much thought into its significance at that time. It was only later when I happened to open the bag that I realized the "Cheetos" were not cheese-flavoured. Nor, as it happens, were they monkey-flavoured. Or if they were, I am somewhat surprised to learn that monkeys taste suspiciously like artificial banana flavour. Not having sought out this bag since, however, I am unable to say whether a closer attention to the English writing on the package would have provided me with more clues. I feel reasonably confident in saying that nowhere in English was it written, BANANA-Os! Banana-flavoured Cheetos-shaped snack food, but it in Korean it may well have.

Real bananas? Good. Fake banana-flavoured Cheetos? Not so much.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 7

The first question of the year comes from Haleigh in Halifax, who wonders:

"In South Korea, does most product packaging have some English on it, or have you often had to guess at the contents based on the picture on the box? If it's the latter case, have you had any amusing misunderstandings?"

The Waeguk responds:

Almost all packaging does in fact have some English on it, but whether this is to assist any wayward anglophones or to promote some abstract idea of sophistication, I have yet to decide. There's a huge emphasis on learning English, though, so it may be that it's a way of encouraging the people to acclimatize themselves to the roman alphabet. This is all idle speculation, of course, but what it means in practice, then, is that most food products have some English on them. Even things like the generic store-brand rameon noodles have the Korean "라면" (rameon) followed by "noodles."

One of the things which has amused me rather consistently since becoming quasi-literate in Korean is that English words are often transliterated rather than translated. As an example, I present the title of a recent Western movie:

P.S. 아이 러브유

To most of you, of course, the above title is illegible, so let's break it down phonetically.

아 - a
이 -ee
러 -luh
브 -buh
유 -yu

Said quickly enough, a ee luhbuh yu becomes I love you. Thus, we know the movie is P.S. I love you. To see a movie poster, please click here.

What's interesting, though, is that if you were to look up these words in a Korean-English dictionary, you would find something completely different. It should come as no shock to anyone, really, that the Korean for "I love you" is not the same as the English. Furthermore, on movie posters the title is often(though not always) written in English as well as in Korean. So a Korean whose English is good enough that she will know what I love you means will in all likelihood be able to read the title in English, but a Korean who is unable to read the Roman alphabet is not likely to be any more enlightened after reading the Korean transliteration.

Another example? Oh, all right.

아메리칸 갱스터

Again, let's break it down.

아-a
메 -meh
리 -ri
칸 -kan
갱 -gang
스 -suh
터 -tuh

Reassembled, we find ourselves with: a meh ri kan gang suh tuh. Say it quickly, and you're saying American Gangster (movie poster: here). Again, the words for American and gangster are quite different, but the titles are transliterated rather than translated. One of my favourite French novels is Le petit prince, but in English it becomes The Little Prince, not Luh Putty Prance.

This transliteration is not restricted to movie titles; incidentally. Even Mountain Dew is turned into ma-aoun-tin du, rather than some Koreanized "Hill Rain beverage" or somesuch.

On a not entirely unrelated note, my Korean lessons proceed with slow but steady progress. They proved their worth last week when I left my cellphone in a cab. As I discovered my loss shortly after exiting the vehicle, I was able to call my phone almost immediately. The cabdriver answered, and in Korean I was able to impose upon him to return to my apartment so that I might procure my telephonic device. It should be noted that what I actually said in Korean was not in the vicinity of eloquence, nor, indeed, in the same area code, yet the fact remains: my cellphone sits on the desk in front of me as I type. A triumph indeed.

Year in Review: Solipsist Edition

I'll be brief.

2007

Six Countries
Four Continents
Degree Earned
Students Taught
People Met
Friends Made
Language Learned
Beer Drank
Rice Eaten
Words Written

Ups Downs Etc.

May your oh-eight be a good one.