Sunday, February 5, 2012

Lost In Translation


I was on my way yesterday to see some street art when, at the bus stop, a bunch of young teenage boys started talking to me.  They said “aregatto” to which I responded, “Isn’t that Japanese? Aregatto?”  And then they laughed and pointed to their friend and said, “She’s Japanese.”   This is a big insult, Koreans hate the Japanese.*

They kept talking to me and asking me questions and then their bus came so they said “Goodbye!  Long time no see!”

Long time no see?  Where did they learn that???  And why did they think that was the context to use it?

It’s like some of my classes will randomly shout out “fire in the hole!!!” with no contextual basis.  I’ll be teaching a lesson and out of nowhere one of them will yell out “fire in the hole!”  Thank you video games.

The worst is my one class that somehow picked up the word ‘kinky’ and now use it is all the wrong contexts. 

“Teacher you’re kinky.” 

“Teacher, that’s kinky.” 

No, no it’s not.  Stop saying "Kinky!"  You’re twelve and you’re using it all wrong!

“Teacher, you don’t have to get kinky about it.”

*To a preposterous extent.  I have classes who tell me they would like to see Japan just get obliterated by some natural disaster or otherwise.  I say “and what about the women, children, and innocent civilians?”  And they say they’re all terrible and they could care less.  Ouch. 

2 comments:

  1. The Japanese army was extraordinarily cruel and inhumane to civilians and captured soldiers when it was outside the home islands during the run-up to WW2, and the Koreans were seriously maltreated as the Chinese and British in Singapore were. Among other atrocities, a large number of Korean women were kept as sex slaves by the Japanese army, a scandal that broke a few years ago when the Koreans demanded reparations.

    And as for "kinky- remember when "bad" meant "good"? "That's a bad car you've got", said about a well-made hot rod. Or "sick".

    I'd change my name on here to "Pirate Ed" but nobody else on Google would know who I was!

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