Archive for the 'engrish' Category

Engrish

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What?

Loving in order to love knows loves you because only it will not be able to love.

What?

It’d still be better than the English Novel.

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The Da Viche Coat by Don Brown pencil case

What’s this pencil case I saw on a student’s desk all about? In Konglish, when you phonetically try to rearrange the English characters into words in Korean, “Da Viche Coat” sounds very similar to what “Da Vinci Code” would be mangled in Korean. I guess this went English to Korean back to English again, if the mistranslation wasn’t intentional to prevent people from suing.

What would Da Vinci’s coat LOOK like? Would it have the secrets of the universe hidden in it’s inner lining or something? I smell sequel!

Ultimate T-Shirt finds: I’m really sorry…

Teaching, engrish 1 Comment »

I am really sorry Paul, I will never make that mistake again.

 

How perfect is this? That’s her teacher’s name too! As previously mentioned here. If any of my students started wearing customized shirts with my name, I might be much more kind too. I don’t want to change my name to “Levi” to imply ownership over a large number of them either.

Engrish T-Shirt Explosion Extravaganza Mark 2.

engrish 3 Comments »

Previously.

I ended up downtown again with my wife, and I had to reject several shirts for insane Engrish today. These happen to be the best of the worst.

Spreads out in the Mouth

The front of this shirt had something about “Grape Flavor Candy: Delicious Taste!” which makes the whole “Spreads Out in the Mouth” a little more sane.

Candy Stripper Deep Under Ground

I think there was a series of prints with the word “Candy Stripper” on them. It must have been from some sort of brand name I’ve never heard of before. I thought this shirt had said, “candy striper”, as in “Hospital Volunteer Deep Under Ground” until I looked at this picture more carefully.

Camp in Summer

So close! “It flies about”? What are they talking about? This is rather mild compared to the other two shirts. No implied sex or anything!

There were several other shirts that were picture worthy, but I was annoying my wife and holding up the process of getting a cheap shirt too much. We got something with a picture on it instead of strange text

Ultimate T-Shirt finds.

Korean life, Teaching, engrish No Comments »

Koreans have a penchant for wearing shirts emblazoned with gibberish:

Man....what?

This sort of thing is common in a store selling cheap clothing. It’s got a load of English. Who cares if it makes no sense as long as it has a bootleg Mickey Mouse?

Someone Make Foppery
This is also common. My students wearing a shirt that makes absolutely no sense, but is funny at the same time. I asked her if she knew what “foppery” was. Of course she had no clue. I really do try my best with the foppery, but I guess I wasn’t bringing enough for her satisfaction.
My personal best sighting for stupid T-shirts will probably always be the couple wearing matching shirts that say “He (She) loves the cock”. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to beat that, unless I actually get a picture next time. Damn my lack of a telephoto lens on my camera phone. (LG, Samsung, are you listening?)

My coworker, who happens to be named Paul, had a very strange T-shirt experience in class. A girl was wearing a shirt that said, “I’m sorry Paul, I’ll never make that mistake again” in large bold letters. It’s the only thing on the entire shirt.

He asked her if she was wearing that shirt for him. The girl had no clue what it meant. She said her mother had bought it for her as a gift. Paul, of course, wanted to know where to get another one…for his girlfriend. I wanted to know if they could be personalized so I could get another one for myself. I’d say the coincidence of a girl wearing that shirt in his class is astronomical.

My wife was walking with a coworker after she left her school. My wife mentioned she wanted to buy some clothes for summer, and her coworker wondered why she didn’t just do it then, since she was downtown in the cheapest area to shop for fashion. My wife declined the chance to go shopping, since her proof reader wasn’t available. My wife explained to her coworker about the strange things that people have on their shirts. Her coworker was amazed to hear about the bad shirts. Slowly the message is getting out.

Chasing a Cult that Hunts Kids?

Korean life, engrish 1 Comment »
Hunt Kids
This story is actually replacing a place called "Baby Hunt". Perhaps there is a ban on infants and they’ve moved on to poaching a large age group?

Chasecult
This is the very next store. Pretty much sums up the fashion industry pretty well, don’t you think?

Say what you will about image quality, but having a camera phone has really increased the likelihood that I’ll post Engrish on this blog. The likelihood exploded exponentially when I figured out a way to get my pictures off my phone and directly to my website if I so chose (a moblog, if you don’t mind stupid Internet buzz words).

Now it’s a matter of finding all those silly signs and stores that I used to walk past because I couldn’t be bothered to bring my camera everywhere I went after my first year. While stores used to give me a hassle about bringing in a camera to take pictures of funny sounding products, asking someone to do without a phone in South Korea is tantamount to heresy in the Vatican. My next phone will probably be purchased, whenever that is, with the express "moblog" and or "engrish" posts in mind exclusively. Other than the occasional call or a few text messages a day, it’s all I use my phone for these days.