[How to Konglish]Car / Automobile expressions

1. Back mirror(백미러)

=> Rearview mirror
We Korean people say back mirror very often because literally the mirror is for 'back(rear view)'.
'Back' is '뒤(dwi)' in Korean and '뒤(dwi)' is all related to everything that is behind something/someone/sometime/some situation and also some event and etc.
The rearview mirror is designed to allow the driver to see rearward(toward the back), so the mirror is for '뒤(dwi) and called back mirror.

2. Side mirror(사이드미러)

=> Wing mirror/Sideview mirror
This is like 'Back mirror'. Side is '옆(yeop)' in Korean and the meaning of '옆(yeop)' is the same as 'side' means in English. Because wing mirror locates at the side of the car, so we say side mirror. And actually it is very easy way to make a word and many Korean words make up like this way.

3. Handle(핸들)

=> Steering wheel
This is originated from Japanese. Many Korean words in engineering field came from Japanese because the technology flowed from Japan to Korea. Anyway, because we handle steering wheel, we call it as handle and generally in Koera, we use 'handle' for almost everything to handle something. Very useful but sometimes confused.

4. Accel(악셀)

=> Accelerator
This is kind of abbreviation of accelerator. Korea is world-famous for 빨리빨리(ppalli ppalli) culture(quick quick culture). So for us, accelerator is too long to speak quickly. 😊

5. So-bar(소바)

=> Shock absorber
I have no idea where ‘so-bar’ comes from. So let me guess..
‘so-bar’ is broken English by Japanese and Korean I think. As I mentioned many words come from Japan to Korea and this is the case. Japanese people, they have a special ability to pronounce English in their way and it makes the pronunciation easy to say for them. Like Mcdonald(Makudonarudo). Anyway, my guessing is like this, some people spoke ‘absorber’ to shorten the words and then some people might think it was still long, so they removed ‘ab’. The leftover is ‘sorber’. And it can be pronounced like ‘so-bar’ by them.

6. Mission(미션)

=> Transmission
Maybe there was a English genius who could understand the composition of English vocabulary.
And they saw the word: Transmission in Latin origin thing like trans- and mission and as you know Korean people like to make words shorter and shorter. They kick off the 'trans-' and start to say 'mission'.

7. Orar-i(오라이)

=> All right
This word usually is used while driving a car in reverse to park. 'Orar-i' is pronounced 'all right' in wrong way because for Korean, it is hard to distinguish L sound and R sound and also not easy to pronounce L sound and R sound properly. And T sound was disappeared somehow. So 'all right' becomes 'Orar-i' in Korean.