[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'.