[How to Konglish]Office / Job Expressions

English is also the international language in the business world. Thus we, Koreans use many English words FLUENTLY when we work in the office.

In Korea, if you are going to work at the convenience store like 7/11 and best-one as a part-time cashier, you need to have a TOEIC score like above 700. That reflects our English abilities..👍

Anyway, let's see how Konglish at Office / Job goes.

1. Name Card(네임카드, 명함)

=> Business Card

As we are human beings, we consider that it's important to call someone's name not hey! or anonymous.
In this way, the business card is for the name not only business stuff so we changed!
Focus on a human..!

2. Office-tel(오피스텔)

=> Studio flat / studio apartment
I don't know if it is English or not.
Officetel is the result of the fusion of 'office' and 'hotel'.
As we love to work hard and infinitely, we invented the place where we can work and live together. What a great idea!(Just kidding)
Officetel is kind of multi-purposed building that has commercial and residential areas.
For example, maybe bottom, first or more floors is/are the commercial area such as convenience stores, cafes, pub, karaoke, company office or etc. and above the floors, there are residential areas that is usually small one room style units. Recommended for single persons..

3. Interphone(인터폰)

=> Intercom
I'm stunned.. because I believed 'Interphone' was actual English.
Interphone, we use the interphone in the office like they use the intercom in the office.
Anyway, intercom is an abbreviation of intercommunication or internal communication.

4. Meeting(미팅)

=> Blind date or meeting

For instance, if you are single and your friendly-Korean-coworker make a meeting with someone for you outside of the company and then it can be likely 'blind date' to develop a romantic relationship.
Or if your manager organizes the meeting, it is the meeting.
And we make words just using '-ting' from 'meeting' that are meant to gather for some purposes such as 커피팅(coffee-ting) which is the meeting of people who love coffee and to have coffee together.

5. Alba(알바)

=> Part-time job or temporary job
I thought Alba was from English language and abbreviated in Korean way.
BUT no!
Alba is from Arbeit which is German. And first it was called 'A-r-bai-t'- 4 sounds and we shortened in two sounds: 'Al-ba'. As I mentioned previous posting, it's not easy for us to recognize between L and R sound and also pronounce. So 'A-r-' sounds changed into 'Al' and 'i-t' sounds was removed from 'Bai-t' sounds that made it 'Ba'. In this manner, 'Alba' is 'part-time job' and usually students do 'Alba'.

[How to Konglish]Restaurant / Food Expressions

 

We Koreans use a lot of English words in everyday life.
When you get the street, it's even not easy to look up the sign board that does not have English words or alphabets.

So it is very important to learn English before you travel or stay in South Korea and also vital to learn Konglish.

Today, I will talk about 'Restaurant / Food Expressions of Konglish'.

1. Self or self servise(셀프)

=> self serve / help yourself

If you do not know this, you cannot get water in a restaurant.
In South Korea, a glass of water and sometimes a bottle of water is usually FREE. But many Korean restaurant owners think it's old-fashioned to bring/serve the water for customers, so you will bring it for yourself and we express it as 'Water is Self' in Korean.
Anyway, actually self-serving is to reduce cost but nowadays it's kind of trend.
So get used it.

2. Service(서비스)

=> FREE
When the owner says 'this is service', it means 'it's free'. Basically 'service' has a maening of 'provide', so it's like 'provide for free'.
If you get 'Service', just say thank you and be humble.🙂

3. Menu(메뉴)

=> a dish or menu
We do not like to limit things and meanings. That's why some people think Korean language is difficult. And yes. 'Menu' is used as 'a dish' and 'a list of dishes(menu)' in Korea.

For example, we say 'the menu is delicious.' and 'there, the menu is great'.
First one means 'the dish is delicious' and second one means 'the dishes at the restaurant are great'.

4. Set(세트)

=> combo, meal, set menu
'Set' is probably from 'set menu'. And as I mentioned, we Koreans love to abbreviate.

5. One shot(원샷)

=> chug, bottoms up, drink up
I have no idea about who use 'One Shot' first and why and how and when..
Maybe.. the 'shot' can be strong expression for us and shot means firing a gun.. so it's like the projectile of alcohol going into a throat. Make sense?

6. Cider(Cidar, 사이다)

=> Sprite, soda, soft drink
One of the Korean well-known soft drinks is 'ChilSung Cider' and its launch in 1950 and still selling well. And people usually call it 'Cider'. Although now we have many kind of soft drinks in market, when we are heard 'Cider' or cabonated drinks, 'ChilSung Cider' just comes to mind like 'Sprite'.

7. Cola(콜라)

=> Coke, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola
Coca Cola and Pepsi Coal, they have 'Cola' and we make it simple then call it 'Cola' generally.
cola

8. Hot dog(핫도그)

=> Corn dog
'Hot dog' as a street food in Korea is corn dog and 'Hot dog' at hot dog store is also hot dog in Korea. I do not know why it is like this but it is.

9. Dutch pay(더치페이)

=> Go Dutch, Dutch treat, Dutch date
'Dutch pay'!
I recently googled about origin of 'Dutch PAY', some says Britain people brought 'PAY' instead of 'treat' as its meaning is 'paying' and some says definition of 'pay' is more like suitable than 'treat' so someone invented. I don't know which is right or wrong but the world of Internet we have a lot of information that trolling people. So it doesn't matter and just remember what 'Dutch pay' means.

[How to Konglish]DIY(Do It Yourself) Expressions

As we all love DIY(do it yourself), I would like to post about DIY expressions.
DIY expressions can be covered all because there’s nothing you cannot do by yourself! But this time I will focus on simple home tools and works.

Bond(본드, 뽄드)

=> Glue
Since we love to make things simple, we call every type of glue as ‘Bond’. It can be super glue, epoxy glue, two component glue and etc. And actually ‘Bond’ does bonding work so it makes sense anyway.

Angle(앵글)

=> Angle bar
It’s very useful to utilize a small space. Although some Koreans use the Konglish: Angle, todays we don’t use it often.
Because they are used for making a shelf or a table usually, but smart marketing guys make the shelf for DIY and the table for DIY and then we don’t need to use the word that much.

Concent(콘센트)

=> Electrical outlet / socket
It was shortened from ‘Concentric plug’ by Japanese. They say ‘Con-cen-to’ and Koreans have better sense of English than them I believe, we say ‘Con-cen-t’.

Poclain / po-c(포클레인, 포크)

=> Excavator
When a shovel is not enough, we need an excavator. In Korea, we don’t have any excavators but we have ‘Po-c’ or ‘Poclain’.
‘Poclain’ is or was the french manufacturer of excavators and was the world-leading company. So I guess when it came in first, maybe people called ‘Poclain excavators’ however even for me it isn’t easy to pronounce ‘excavators’ properly. So it was removed.. and by some busy men, ‘Poclain’ was abbreviated as ‘po-c’. And now even my 3 year old son calls it ‘Po-c’.

Driver(드라이버)

=> Screw driver
Bye for Screw to shorten all.

McGyver Knife(맥가이버)

=> Swiss Army Knife
McGyver movie series hit so big in 1990s in Korea I remember. I was also a big fan of him and he used the Swiss Army Knife to do almost everything. So we thought the knife had to be followed his name. Anyway the generation changed now, many young people in Korea don't know who McGyver is.. thus I think.. it's kind of old-fashioned.

Trans(Do-ran-s, 도란스)

=> Transformer
Every 'Trans' is from trans-blah-blah and they can be meant many other things but this time it's transformer(electric).
We use 'Up trans' for 'Step up transformer' and 'Down trans' for 'Step down trans'.
And old guys, they pronounce trans 'Do-ran-s'.

 

[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.