Pizza.

When I'm talking in Korean, and if I need to use a foreign word, generally, I try to pronounce it the way Koreans pronounce it. MacDonald becomes meckdonaldu and butter becomes buttoh.
However, some words get pronounced closer to their English pronunciation, sometimes without my awareness.

One of those words is pizza. Koreans write it 피자 which could be roughly transcribed as peejah. Apparently, they pronounce it like that, too, but I didn't notice it, and pronounced it 핏짜, intensifying the second consonant (like "cha"). Somebody pointed it out to me once and I was surprised.

Maybe to me, it was like pronouncing 자장면 (black bean noodles, written "Jahjarngmyon") 짜장면 (common pronunciation, "Chahjarngmyon"). Who knows.

Young + 젊은 = 엶은

So this morning I was dreaming,
I was with a group of people climbing a mountain
I was walking with my grandma (Dad's side)
and telling her about a movie
this movie had two protagonists,
I started with the older one
and then I wanted to tell her about the younger one
and at this point, when I wanted to say the word "young" in Korean
what came out of my mouth was something like "yulmun (열믄/엶은)"
and since I realized that this was not a real word, I repeated it several times
until the correct form finally came to me, "chulmun (젊은)."

Luckily, shortly after that, my alarm went off and I was able to remember this dream (as I believe that only interrupted dreams get remembered).

I have two possible explanations for this crosslinguistic word blending.
1. The English word "young" interfered with my Korean word retrieval.

2. The ambiguous nature of the consonant "ㅈ" (ch in word-initial positions but actually similar to j) confused me. For example, the "j" in German is pronounced like "y" in English, the "y" or "ll" in Spanish is pronounced like the "j" in English" in some parts.

1 is more likely than 2, and it is also possible that they both contributed to this error in my dream. I'm still rather amazed that this sort of thing happens in dreams at all.


Also, when I was describing the older protagonist to my grandma, I was telling her that he is going over to North Korea and will meet somebody named "Chu Gil Sang." While I said this word, I had "Chow Yun-Fat" in mind, but believed that "Chu Gil Sang" was his name. And as I said it, I realized that "Chu Gil Sang" sounds like "죽일상" which can be roughly translated to "a killer's look" and wondered what kind of a name that was, and why I hadn't realized it before.

Of course, after I woke up, I remembered that the actor's name is "Chow Yun-Fat," the Korean pronunciation being "Chu Yun Ball" and wondered where did that killer face name came from, and was surprised that I noticed the pun in that name at all because I normally don't notice those things unless somebody else points them out to me (usually my husband).

Dreams are intriguing.

Trunk or treat?

Is "trick" such a horrible word that Christians have to come up with a neutral substitute?

The significance of having learned German before English

When I see a word I don't know how to pronounce, what comes out usually is how Germans would read it.

My grapheme-to-phoneme rule for things written in the Roman alphabet is German by default, it appears.

I realized this when I started graduate school, as I was getting familiar with the dual-route models of reading (that you can either convert the letters into sounds or just directly get the meaning of the word through its whole printed form). Since then, being aware of the fact that I have a tendency of reading new words with a German pronunciation has helped me correct my pronunciation consciously, but if I'm not thinking about it, I still make mistakes.

Recent example: Conoco.
COnoco, not coNOco.

Soledad

Sometimes I have a word or a phrase stuck in my head kinda like a song getting stuck in your head and playing over and over. It just comes to me at random moments, without any apparent triggers. They just come and go.

This time, it's "soledad."

I think it's a pretty word, though its meaning is rather melancholy. I know I generally like words ending with "-dad." Come to think of it, I did like words ending with "-heit" or "-keit" as well. Not so much for the English "-ness," however, but then again, I never really liked English to begin with.

I just like the sound of it, "soledad." It's soft, it's calm, and if the meaning wasn't too depressing, I probably would consider naming my daughter that one day.

Along with this word, the song currently playing endlessly in my head is "Caraluna" by Bacilos. It is fun to mouth the lyrics. I guess I generally like the sound of Spanish. It's fun, and it's pretty.

Mientras tenga que cambiar la radio de estación por que cada canción me hable de ti, de ti, de ti~

Today's word error

So I had a moment of duh!!!! regarding one of the current projects in the lab, and as I was trying to convey my feelings to a friend, I stopped mid-word as I was mouthing "revelization." A blend of "revelation" and "realization", just like "ginormous" is a blend of "gigantic" and "enormous."

Honey legs and chocolate abs...

(I thought the literal translation of 꿀벅지 would be "honey thighs" or "nectarous femurs" or something along these variations... all them sweet legs)

Apparently, one of the girls from the oh so many girl groups in the Korean pop music industry is often called "honey legs" because her upper leg portions look... delectable. ... I don't see what's so special about her legs, but then again, I normally don't notice things like that. (Do think that she looks cute, but that's mainly because her face resembles that of a cat...)

When I first saw the explanation that the phrase alludes to the uncouth desire to lick that body part so close to the private quarters, I did cringe a bit. Did think that it was vulgar and gross, and felt a bit sorry for the cute little girl whose legs were so openly coveted by her fans(?). Then again I guess she (or at least her boss) might enjoy the extra attention.

However, at the same time, I was also amazed at the novelty of the expression. It sounds rather creative.

Then I also encountered its apparent counterpart, "chocolate abs," referring to those hard, chiseled six-packs that you can appreciate in the boy groups of the same industry. (I guess movies like "300" and "Troy" display many of them, too, but again, I did not notice when I was watching. I guess I'm more interested in hair than muscle.)

Here, the more popular explanation seems to be the one that attributes the phrase to the shape of chocolate bars rather than the taste of them, meaning that it is not as sexually explicit as "honey legs." But I guess chocolate and honey both being sweet eatable things, some people may consider the two phrases the same. Not my concern.

I was just merely awed by the fact that people come up with such ingenuous expressions, though some of them can make you uncomfortable. Too much information.


Another area where I find such creative new uses of words is the world of cat lovers. Now, in English, we have lolcats. I can has cheezburger. They are even rewriting the Bible in lolcat style. They are my bag of weed. Seriously.

Korean cat lovers, on the other hand, have come up with their own word-meaning associations used for describing cats and other cat-related things that shows how leet their love for their cats are.

Tuxedo/cow (black and white), socks (paws colored differently from the body), sweet rice buns (white paws), baking bread (sitting with front paws tucked in), lap cat (sits/sleeps on your lap), potatoes (urine+sand), and various onomatopoeia to refer to some typical behaviors that cats show. So cute. Cheesy? Yes, but still, cute.
Even death is euphemized by the expression, "crossing the rainbow bridge."
Such imagination, such insight to find similar imageries! Something I can't do very well because I'm usually stuck with the dictionary definitions of words. I don't deviate very well from well established conventions. I'm too chicken for that.


Ah well.
To each his/her own.