Tuesday, April 27, 2010

It's Funny You Said That...


Everyone has heard of Engrish.com, the website that compiles copious amounts of lost-in-translation phrases and words, by now. We saw a girl at the puppy cafe on Sunday with "That's a really hard!" in giant block letters across the front of her sweatshirt.

These are the kinds of typical mistakes that my kids (the Korean children I teach - I will henceforth refer to them as such) will make often. Articles (the, a, an) are undoubtedly the hardest thing for any person learning English as their second language. Korean has subject markers and the like, but the two behave quite differently.

When I first started teaching, there was a different "mistake" the kids made that always made me pause for a bit and question whether it was indeed a mistake or just a peculiarity of language difference. Let me provide an example.

Me enthusiastically asking a child: "Do you like pizza?"
Child: "No, I don't like pizza."
Me surprised by the response: "You don't like pizza??"
Child: "Yes."

Does this child actually like pizza? No. Well, not in Korea(n), at least. I think most native English speakers would agree that if the last statement was made by a child in America it would be "No." or "No, I don't like pizza." The child isn't confused. That is exactly what they would say in Korean. The Korean word for yes is ㄴㅔ (Neh). So the kids pretty much equate the word yes with neh. The nuance in the differences between the two words and how they each function in their respective languages is quite important, though.

Serenity recently learned from an excellent Korean language website that neh more or less means "I agree." or "That is correct." In the above example, we almost use yes and no just as a verbal affirmation of the understood sentence that follows: "No, I don't like pizza."/"Yes, I do like pizza." Let's annotate the above example:

Me enthusiastically asking a child: "Do you like pizza?"
Child: "No, I don't like pizza."
Me surprised by the response: "You don't like pizza??"
Child: "Yes, the statement that you just made is the correct one."

I find it fascinating every time and my urge to correct it is slowly subsiding because it isn't necessarily wrong. It's just a different way of processing language.

Yes, this means my posts are going to be the nerdy ones.

~Dan

1 comment:

  1. I just realized I didn't comment on this, and I definitely should have because it made me both smile and think...two of my favorite things to do.

    It's good to have a nerdy post every now and then! :)

    - Christar

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