In my puzzle class this morning, I had an interesting interlanguage problem.
The riddle “What has arms but can not wave?” was an absolute stumper. Even when I told them that the answer was an object in the room, it might be on their arms too, they had no idea what it meant. This riddle will continue to make no sense to Korean speakers when you explain the answer is “clock”.
This is because they do not use the word “hands” in Korean for the things on a clock. ”바늘” (ba-nul) is the Korean word referring to the thing on the face of a clock that rotates around that lets you read time. This word is translated into English as “needle”. A Korean person would describe the “Hour needle” or “minute needle” of a clock when using English if they translated it literally.
“Needle” is actually a much better word as it describes the shape more accurately. Clock hands don’t look like hands. Why are they called hands in English? Is there an entomological reason that explain this? If the slender part of the hands of a clock were called “arms”, and the point was called a “hand” it might make sense, except that most people’s arms are the same length. This is one of those rare words that is more logical for me in Korean than it is in English.*
To make the equivalent riddle in English for Korean speakers that is equally incomprehensible as a native English speaker, you would ask: “What has needles but doesn’t give a shot?”
Korean ESL students would immediately say, “A clock!”
Weird, huh?
*(Koreans use the Konglish word “sun cream” to describe “sun screen”. I hate the word “sun screen”, because it makes me think of a screen door instead of a lotion to prevent sunburn. This is one of the EXTREMELY rare instances where Konglish might be better than English.)
