Engrish,, an ohter comon bad the moments times of a recently
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010What a funny thing you have done to the English language, South Korea. You make me laugh. Daily. Hourly. Minute…ly.
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not making fun of Korea in the sense that I think my foreign language skills are better. Not sure if you’ve noticed recently, but my Korean isn’t that great. I’m still translating kid books. So yeah, it’s fun to laugh at but plenty of my friends get to laugh at my expense daily.
Having said that, Engrish is funny. Some of my favorites: “Don’t you tired?“, “That test made me hard“, and “You will be a stress“. Classic. You can’t make up comedy like that. Just a cursory google search will yield some awesome results. There is no shortage of goofy Engrish here.
What other native English speakers have posed before, and I agree with, is that Korea overuses English. I’m not saying that people use English too much in the sense of communication but for advertising and such, English is overused and largely misused when the target demographic aren’t even native English speakers. Therefore, an advertisement in the Korean language would be seemingly more effective. I suppose it’s the status symbol of English in this country that pushes such awful English. What status symbol that is, I don’t know but it’s some sort of status.
Still, if they started replacing questionable food titles and hilarious recycling signs with only Korean language explanations, it would make things hard to get around for non-Korean speakers. Make sure that I’m not for the full removal of English; I’m just for the promulgation of coherent English. Otherwise, leave it alone.
All in all, it’s all just one big unintentional joke. Some of the best Engrish is found on trivial goods such as casual tee shirts and department stores. It’s clearly geared towards a younger audience with disposable income who likely has more of a familiarity with English than the older generation. However, the line between clever marketing and professional incompetence gets blurred all too often leaving foreigners to judge Korea’s image on things that Korea would rather not choose.
To put things in perspective (for our own entertainment, of course) I present Matthew: in full Engrish. Imagine me at a subway stop near you. Brace yourself. It’s going to get ugly.
Thus ends my Engrish modeling career.
The Korean language is daunting as it is but it’s preferable than poorly edited Engrish. Making mistakes in a conversation is one thing - I would never fault anyone for trying to speak a foreign language, let alone English - but marketing English as some sort of hook is almost insulting. It trivializes the language and makes it the butt of jokes and weakly delivered Korean rap song introductions. Example you say? 쥬얼리 (Jewelry)’s song “Vari2ty” is 30% less sexy just from the introduction. What the hell Baby J? Didn’t you live in California for a while? Reason #29 why I hate California.
Thoughts?
Posted by Matthew in How Koreans Do It |
January 6th, 2010 at 2:44 am
Matt, maybe it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate if these blog posts are appropriate for a blog on learning Korean? I think you have a number of valuable insights in Korean culture, but they’re getting less and less valuable as a student of Korean. If you could just refocus more on helping us understand culture instead of on why the culture is ‘bad’, your blog would return to my #1 reading in the morning!
January 6th, 2010 at 7:56 am
@ PaulC - I assure you I write this blog for my own pleasure and not for any form of teaching. A part of modern Korean culture involves the money, time and product placement of excessively bad English. I find no reason to not include it as a topic in this blog. I am in no way bashing or knocking a country that I have grown so found of so as to consider it my second home.
Although the whole ‘English as a status symbol’ thing is curiously entertaining for native English speakers, it is far from what I would consider “bad” culture. Furthermore, although the KC101 main site is a wonderful resource for learning the Korean language, my blog posts are simply my comparative observations written in a semi-humorous way. If someone enjoys reading them, that’s great. If not, no hard feelings.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Just want to say that I enjoy reading Matthew’s posts!
They are usually informative and insightful.
January 11th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Last night, I saw a Korean guy wearing a belt that said, “LOWLIFE.” I thought to myself, “Good luck finding a girl wearing that belt.” ^^ And I’m with Matt in that I’m in no position to criticize those who are learning English, because my Korean isn’t that good, either; but I do think they should at least have a native English speaker (or someone near native) proof things before it’s posted on the side of the wall.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
BAHAHA. Engrish is the best. LOL. You still crack me up. XD
January 15th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
@ Shan - thanks!
@ 윤선 - (see above)
@ Nan - It just fascinates and simultaneously disgusts me that companies make money off of botched, lazy, FUBARed, unrecognizable and/or just incompetent English. The pinnacle came this week at the bookstore. A book designed to teach foreigners how to read 한글 had the title “My First Step In Beautiful Korean” followed by the subtitle: “How to Read & Wright Hangeul?”
Yes.
Not only “wright” which is hilarious enough, but the question mark is the icing on the cake. Where to begin? Not to start and hack the book apart by noticing that a 한글 book designed for someone who has no knowledge of the written language is written entirely in Korean, but the title is the only English in the whole book. And they messed it up. And it’s a language book.
February 17th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Actually I agree, with this post… Wrongly used language makes laugh but as well… sometimes can be bothering. Most of the times I just let it go with a hided smile… Anyway my English -as for most of us non native English speakers- is far from being perfect… Though I still can smile on so many Engrish mistakes… or… maybe I dont even realize them..!
The over-use and mis-use of English is still can help foreigners in everyday life, I think….
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:09 am
I think engrish is cute. I especially like it when the engrish is written in Hangul. 아이 게스 a 마이 패보릿 이즈 ‘앨러지 시전’ 하하. To me the important thing is they are using the language. Foreigners in Korean receive 99.9% praise for trying to speak Korean - and gahh some of the Korean foreigners use is pretty bad. Let’s give Korea a round of applause for their great effort - a much greater effort than some countries just bordering the US have put forth.
March 6th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Apparently the “English as status symbol” is also a big thing in Thailand. My trusty Lonely Planet claims that the keywords “Beyond Expectation” must appear in any billboard or poster ad that is flogging new condos. The word “luxury” also appeared constantly during my Thailand travels: sometimes appropriately, sometimes hilariously.
Either way, I admit that I kinda wanted a condo in Thailand…