Konglish

Some Koreans, including my students, sport poorly translated but pretty cool "Engrish" slogans on their clothing; Tom here is rocking a seemingly pacifist hoodie while having absolutely no idea what it means. He's one of my more violent students, actually.




Meanwhile, other Koreans wear items that have ridiculously vulgar slogans splayed across them. For instance, consider one of Sara's kids' hats, shown here:



You can't very well tell them that they can't wear items such as these without alluding to their vulgarity, so you just hope they don't go home and Google the words on their hats/sweaters.

Yesterday I had one kid teach me a moderately inappropriate Korean cuss word (pronounced "Brak!"), which he explained was not all that bad; not any worse, in fact, than "Shut the fuck up!" I laughed before I could regain my composure and tell him not to use the English "translation" again. Still, I have to say I'm sort of proud of him. If you can't casually utter our swear words, you don't know our language, right?