Konglish

What is "A/S?" Ever heard of "burberry." How about "englishee?"

All over the world, there are people who speak some form of English. Most of the time it's a form that can only be understood in that non-English speaking country. When I was in St. Vincent on a high school trip, I was exposed to my first English mixed form called Pidgin English. (I just learned on a google search that "Pidgin" originated in China but the term later evolved into the name of any English mix.) In Guam we heard a lot of interesting versions of English words but the island wasn't exactly big enough to earn its dialect a name of its own, that I know of anyway.

In India, they are holding strong to their version. Even going so far as to refuse correction from English speakers. Thailand has one. Ever heard of Singlish? That's Singapore's version, not karaoke.

Since moving to Korea, we've come to learn a whole new and crazy version of Pidgin called "Konglish" (KO-rean and e-NGLISH). While it's hard to catch onto most of the time, it's usually funny. Sometimes you can see where it comes from; sometimes it seems like they've taken an English word and totally twisted its meaning (like Burberry). Anyway, we're gonna put a little quiz on the side of the page here. You can see it at the top of the right side. Each week I'll (try to) put up a Konglish word and see if you can guess what it means. Vote once, vote often, I don't mind. It's all good.

(By the way, the definitions for the words at the beginning of this post are: warranty service [after service], a raincoat, and English.)