Jalmot Sseosseumnida

Finding English spelling mistakes in Asian countries is like shooting fish in a barrel. It's too easy to be considered sporting. Erma and I are above such things. For example, we would never post a blog entry about signs like this one, which was on the bus that we took back from Erma's parents' place in October:


The part of the sign that we would not direct your attention to is in the upper right corner:

I must say I was quite intrigued about this "fork village". Would it be populated by anthropomorphized cutlery? Sadly, turned out it's just a typo for "folk village".

But, as I said, Erma and I are above pointing out such things. We prefer a bigger challenge: identifying errors involving languages other than English.

For example, here's a sign above a restaurant in Shinchon that sells dakgalbi 닭갈비, 'chicken galbi', a kind of barbecued chicken dish.

The store specializes in chicken galbi in the style of Chuncheon 춘천 春川, a city in Korea famous for the dish. The yellow at the top of the sign is Japanese. It says that the restaurant serves ダツカルビ datsukarubi. What's datsukarubi? It's meaningless. The sign-maker has mistakenly made the second letter big (as ツ) instead of small (as ッ). That makes a significant difference in Japanese, because written big it represents the syllable tsu, while written small it indicates that the following consonant should be doubled. The sign is supposed to say ダッカルビ dakkarubi, which is the closest you can get in Japanese to the pronunciation of dakgalbi.

Here's a movie poster we saw in a local movie theater just the other day, for a French film, Les Dix Commandements:

The Korean rendering of the title of the film is 레 딕스 십계 Re Dikseu Shipgye. The last word, shipgye, means 'ten commandmants' in Korean (ship is the Sino-Korean word for 'ten'). The first two words, re dikseu, are meant to transliterate the French "les dix". But they've transliterated the French word dix, 'ten', as if it were pronounced according to English spelling rules. The proper transliteration would have been 디스 diseu. The Korean title is a bizarre hybrid: a transliterated French article, a mis-transliterated French word for 'ten', and the Korean word for 'ten commandments'. So the word 'ten' actually occurs twice.

Finally, here's a restaurant around the corner from our apartment.


Sheż? I can only guess that this is supposed to be Chez Garden. Perhaps that dot over the 'z' is a randomly tossed in acute accent, to make it look more Frénchified.

Incidentally, Americans fare no better in their use of Chinese characters, most notoriously as tattoos. There are several web sites devoted to exposing mistaken usages, like this one.

Aposeuteuropi

Koreans seem unnecessarily enamored of the apostrophe, a punctuation mark that is not even used when writing in Korean script. You'll remember the intriguing use of the "apostrophe s" described in this entry.

But that's not the half of it.


This presumably Italian joint is in a Yonsei student dining hall one floor above the one we usually eat at. Precisely what kind of relationship between pizza and pasta is being implied by this use of the apostrophe is, to be understated about it, a bit vague. The chef too appears to be puzzled by this conundrum.

We move now to the bustling neighborhood of Shinchon on a recent sunny autumn day.


There is something attractive about the symmetric use of capitalization in Shinchon Bob's name. It makes me think that it would be nice to meet ol' Shinchon Bob some day. By the way, Shinchon Bob's serves -- you guessed it -- Korean food.

After a delicious dinner at Shinchon Bob's, the perfect spot for a little post-prandial jazz music might just be Caesars's.


What I can't figure out is just how many Ceasarses own this place.

Still hungry? Maybe what you need is a chimichanga! Thought you couldn't get Mexican in Shinchon? Think again!

Choi is a common Korean last name. But just how many of them are slaving away behind the counter here dishing up tortillas and refried beans? Perhaps there is one Choi for each Caesars.

Erma and I were very excited to see what's going on at Chois' these days.




This presents us with something of a dilemma. Midterms exams begin Monday November 5. On Sunday should we study or check out the finals of the burrito speed-eating contest? Post a comment, and let us know if you're the little devil with the pitchfork in our left ear or the kindly angel with a halo in our right ear.