Clever Turtles

Apparently there was recently a conference on issues of transgendered individuals in prisons.

I don't have much more information on the conference aside from the Yonhap article, but it looks to be more focused on transgender issues than other queer issues. Nothing wrong with that, exactly, but it seems that in Korea, there is a tendency to be more comfortable with issues of gender reassignment than gender non-normative behavior.

[I considered making this a regular feature, but I don't have the patience to look up interesting vocabulary words every day.]

맞장구를 치다: give responses that make a conversation go smoothly

It's really hard to get used to all of these simple phrases with very specific but difficult to translate meanings. Such is life for the language student . . .

Strange Korean word I found in my dictionary while looking something else up.

서리: stealing (melons, chickens, var. farm products) for fun, mischevious raid (on another's farm products), etc.

Now if only I could find a cultural note explaining the context . . .

EDIT: On a related note . . .

At the end of the trailer for Yes Man, the new Jim Carrey movie, he speaks mangled Korean. Is that based on real scripted Korean? Or is it an attempt to copy something?

It will be a while before I get to posting regularly, now that I'm transferring to a new country, trying to find housing, and getting ready for grad school.

I thought I'd mention an interesting linguistic note I observed in a student. A Korean-American high school kid who grew up in the US mentioned to me that he and his sister often add '-ing' and '-ed' tense markers to Korean sentences. For example, "I'm studying" could be "난 공부해-ing".

Since I'm beginning to reach for a career as an academic (otherwise known as a life of poverty) while dating a girl who is soon to be a dentist (making dentist money), I get a lot of joking comments pointing out the projected income disparity. The other day, I learned a new Konglish word, 셔터멘 [shutter-man].

The "shutter-man" is the husband of a career woman who runs her own office/clinic/shop. He is so called because he comes in every morning and opens the security shutters of the office, and closes it every night. Essentially, a man whose job is supporting his wife's career.

I thought I'd post a quick English-Korean half-pun that my coworker collected. Guaranteed to crack up any third-grade bilinguals.

Room 9.

Translate each word into Korean and put it together.

Here at Clever Turtles, we're dedicated to bringing you the most sophisticated linguistic cross-cultural analyses.

Since its almost Christmas, I thought I'd skim my bookshelf and mention a few Korea-related books that I recommend.

HOW KOREANS TALK: A COLLECTION OF EXPRESSIONS
Sang-hun Choe, Christopher Torchia

Just had a particularly frustrating listening exam today. Both as an instructor and a student, I've given a lot of thought towards listening comprehension. How to teach it, how to test it, and so forth. There are a lot of variables which can affect student performance, although I'm not sure how the research bears out for learning efficiency.