Madgab

One of my favorite games to play with my family is Madgab. If you don't know what it is, Madgab is a group game where one person draws a card with a contorted phrase on it and their teammates have to guess what the phrase is by hearing it, reading it and trying to decipher what the connected letters/words are actually saying. It's so much fun, and we always have a blast at family get-togethers (though I admit, I've found a cheat and it's not so much fun when I play.) But the others play fair and come up with some ridiculous conclusions that leave us in hysterics. For instance, my cousin tried guessing the phrase with a number of different accents. Her phrase was "Chest Hey Kitty Sea". (Yes, read that and take a guess at what exactly it is- not easy once you've read it!) I think she tried to guess it along with her teammates for the whole two minutes, but her especially going through a list of accents and coming up instead with a table of laughing hyenas, myself included! From the short consonants and long, drawn out vowels of Chinese to sing-song Norwegian to question and answer format, I swear my cousin said it in every possible format and still could not for the life of her and her kin, come up with the phrase she was saying over and over and over and over again. Actually, with some of her accents we thought she got it, she was so close to the phrase. Yet, she'd start on another accent to try and hear the answer in a new spectrum. I don't remember if she got it or not, but the answer was "Just take it easy." An answer we thought all too fitting for such a difficult phrase!

Anyways, I miss this game and my family to play with, but the reason I bring up this story is that I just realized that this game, though I thought I missed it, is actually all around me here in Korea. I swear, every where, everyday! From conversations with my co-teacher and students and fellow Koreans, to reading bad English on signs, to listening to K-pop (the Korean music here that's pretty much Backstreet Boys in Korean) to watching television. It's everywhere. "It" being bad English, bad contorted English!

For instance, a couple of weeks ago I went on a trip with a bunch of foreigners, but I ended up sitting next to one of the few Koreans (a gyopo, so born in Korea but moved to the USA when young). Her English was very good and we chatted for most of the train ride. While we were talking I didn't notice much Konglish (Korean-English that is pretty much their accent/pronunciation of English words put to Korean.) I didn't notice until we got to the turtle ship that is. "Wow, the turtle sheep is so amazing! I never knew!" she said. "The what is so amazing?" I caught my mind tripping up. I didn't want to poke, but she had told me before that she couldn't say 'ship' right and that her children made fun of her. So I joked with her a bit and made her say it again. Then I wondered how she says 'shit'. It's the same sound, so put in her words should come out 'sheet'. I asked her and sure enough she couldn't say 'shit' to save her soul. Her personality was so kind and innocent that I told her her mispronunciation must be meant to be, that to say 'shit' correctly would be the truest profanity against God and mankind and would bring apocalypse if she said anything other than 'Sheet balls in May'. She laughed and said, 'Aw, sheet.'

Moreover, still at the turtle sheep, I remembered my friend Jinah (the girl I wrote a blog about in March) could not say 'turtle' to save her soul either. It was a 'turter', the 'l' sound being often confused with 'r' here because of their tricky Korean letter ㄹ that is sometimes a 'r' and sometimes a 'l'. Thus, standing at the pride of Korea, the great turtle ship that defeated the Japanese so long ago, I could not think of anything outside of how, in the world of Madgab and Konglish, it is demoted to a 'turter sheep', with holes in its bottom to 'sheet', and with spikes on its 'loof' to 'kir' the Japs.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is that I never would have thought that such a simple game could prepare me for a life a world away, but it certainly has. These are but a couple of simple examples of the Konglish I've run into here. There are so many more! So, so many more! Other sounds that are often confused here are 'b' and 'v', 'f' and 'p', 'sh' and 's', and 'th' and 't'. Words like 'violin', 'river', 'love', 'for', 'thank', 'ruler', 'shop' and 'coffee' become 'biolin', 'liber', 'rub', 'por', 'tank', 'rurer', 'sop' and 'coppee'. Thus, imagine talking with someone and hearing, "I went to da Han liber yesterday and drunk coppee wid my priend. Tank you por sowing me dat sop." Can you say tricky? No, but I can say 'ticky'. It's bery ticky libing and speaking here. Bery ticky. It's a good thing, I think, that I can chest hey kitty sea, done two?