西洋오랑캐

The other day was a momentous day in that my study of 漢字 (Chinese characters) was tangibly useful. I mean knowing 漢字 in a Korean context is a lot like knowing latin in a latin based language. If one knows a great deal of characters it becomes easier to guess at the meanings of unknown words.

For example the character 不 (아닐 / 불[부]) is kind of like the English prefix un- or in, so if one were to see the word 불편하다, without knowing the word they could assume that it was “not…something” (it’s actually “inconvenient”).

In addition to memorizing these various characters, there is a huge group of idioms and expressions based on these characters known as 四字成語 (사자성어 / four character expressions). These expressions are incidentially composed of four different Chinese characters, and memorizing them is part of the primary and secondary education of children here in Korea. I figure if it’s good enough for kids in Korea it’s good enough for me, so I studied a bunch of these expressions…the only thing is, they are only used in very specific situations so they are hard to actually use.

But let me tell you, if Koreans are impressed by your uttering of the most basic Korean expressions (”안녕하세요 [hello]” “감사합니다 [thank you]” “같이 자자 [let’s sleep together]” ect.) correctly using a 四字成語, is the equivelent of correctly executing a Mortal Kombat fatality…everyone around is shocked and impressed.

The other night I met the girlfriend. She had just finished working a million hours and looked kind of upset. I asked her what was wrong (bad idea), and she began to explain a long, complicated situation at work. It seems that someone told her boss that one of the other employees told that person that the boss was a bitch and hard to work with. Anyhow her boss assumed that my girlfriend was the one spreading this disrespectful (though in my opinion true) nugget of information, and accused her of, in the words of the girlfriend, “being nice to me (the boss) when I’m (the boss) there, but lie about me when I’m gone.” Basically the boss said my girlfriend was being two faced, but my girlfriend was having trouble conveying this concept.

So I asked my girlfriend if her boss accused her of (here’s the pay-off kids):

This expression according to my various sources means to be “double-tounged.”

Anyhow after I uttered this expression, my girlfriend’s jaw dropped, “Wha? How do you know that?” I shrugged it off smirking as I proclaimed, “I don’t know.”