Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Konglish


In Korea there is a language that is a hybrid of Korean and English, it's called Konglish. Konglish originated during the Korean War. Koreans would adapt English words that sometimes had the same meaning and sometimes had similar or different ones but regardless they would pronounce these words incorrectly and Konglish was born. Generally these words end in E and they add an E sound to the end of the word were the sound is suppossed to be silent, like Orange. They will pronounce it Orange-gee.

Also many times words in Korean that sound similar to English words will be used and the meanings of the Korean word will change. An example of this is haen-deu-pon (핸드폰; "handphone"), we use cell phone but they have adapted one of their words and most Koreans call it a hand phone even if they speak English very well.

There are many other examples and I have included a wikipedia link if you want to learn more. But the last one I want to mention is the incorrect use of grammar on signs, stationary and clothing. In Korea most t-shirts have English words on them and 99% of these sentences are grammatically incorrect. This picture is one that a friend of mine found on the web, I just liked it so I am using it here and it shows how Koreans have no idea what they are wearing. They all wear English shirts regardless of there ability to understand what it means and this kids parents probably didn't know what this meant or they thought it was funny, who knows....

Wikipedia Konglish Link