SKIRMISHER

I swear, Koreans are kind of bulol. Sometimes in a goofy endearing way, sometimes it just sounds off. When they write English or other foreign words in their alphabet (Hangeul), you know things are bound to get screwy.

Orange is read as oh-rin-jee. Post Brand Almond Flake cereal is spelled as ‘peu-oh-seuh-teuh* beuh-rehn-deuh ah-mon-deuh hoo-reh-ee-keuh.’ No idea how they pronounce that. They can’t seem to either pronounce or write the ‘errrr’ sound. Superman Returns is ’syoo-poh-mehn ree-tawn-jeuh’ (dunno where they got the ‘j’ sound at the end). Manager is ‘mah-nee-jaw’. In the hair salons around my Jegi-dong neighborhood, hair is ‘heh-awe.’ Star Style is ’seuh-taaah seuh-tay-lee.’

But it gets stranger. At the start of spring term in April, we were forced to call Brazil ‘peuh-rah-jil’, France ‘peuh-rang-seuh’, and Philippines ‘pee-lee-peen’. That last one really ticked me off. Dammit, can’t they see/hear that unmistakable sibilance at the end?! I should know, it’s my country! If they can’t pronounce fih-lih-peenzzz, they why not just say pee-lee-pee-nasssss?** Maybe they’ll understand this: Naneun hwaganayo. Shih-royo.***

Anyway. When I turned on the TV (tel-leh-pee-jawn), Channel 21 OCN (o shee ehn) was showing the forgettable Ah-nold vehicle End of Days (en-deuh op-heuh dey-jeuh). Meh. So I reached for the remote.

Egads. Friends (peuh-ren-jeuh) is on at Channel 38 OnStyle (ohn seuh-tay-lee). The start of the not-new season was announced last night as peuh-ren-jeuh SEANSON 2. Yes, it’s a typo. But not mine. They’ve been broadcasting this little gem for a week now. Man, this show sucks in any language. Am so glad the show is kaput. It’s the most unfunny show ever; could never sit through a whole episode, no matter how I tried. And I was reminded once again why I was ecstatic when Brad dumped idiot Aniston for Angelina. He should’ve done that sooner.

Yay! Sex and the City is on. They show reruns every weeknight except the episodes are all mixed up. Tonight is “Change of a Dress” from season 4. It starts with Charlotte in some dance class, trying to deal with her divorce from her hydraulically-challenged WASP husband. Carrie looks ridiculous as always. And I really hate Aidan: he’s ugly and an insecure a-hole. Most importantly, I can’t get over the fact that the show’s title is spelled ’sek-seuh (insert ampersand) shi-tee’. That just sounds wrong.

Oprah on the Oprah Winfrey Show (oh-peuh-rah ween-peuh-ree syoh) is gushing about cakes in Miami. Shaq, who looks scarily old, is chomping on a cinnamon butter cake. Clearly time to switch off the telly.

Funny how I endured six years of linguistic oddities when I was tutoring my friend Sayo, a Japanese housewife (choo-boo in Korean) who lived in Makati, shopped alone at pickpocket-intensive Quiapo, Divisoria and relatively shabby Landmark. Her quirky way of saying things was just that: quirky. And when the lovely Kanako (this Japanese girl we’re all in love with) mixes up her diphthongs, I just melt. Hee.

But I must say that I do like how our program manager, Yeajin-ssi, has an accent that’s softer than the Seoul accent I find so grating. Her soft syllables go really well with her voice (she sounds like a 5-year-old), the overall effect being an effortless kawaii-cuteness that every young woman in East Asia aspires to have. But these other pa-cute girls just end up looking retarded. Go watch any TV ad with Korean girls mugging for the camera and you’ll know what I’m talking about. But Yeajin? She’s cute and wickedly smart (summa cum laude from Seoul National University, Korea’s UP Naming Mahal). If we can clone her, there may be hope for Korean chicks.

* The letter for ‘euh’ is a horizontal line (—) and sounds almost like how the French call the letter ‘e’. The Korean way of shaping the mouth for this sound is too darned hard to explain. Here’s the French way: shape your mouth into a small O then try to say ‘eeeeeee’ while keeping that O shape. Crazy, eh?

** They also taught us about countries I thought were fictional: mee-gook, yong-gook, choong-gook, moong-gool, eel-bohn, kah-jah-heuh-seuh-tan, hoh-soo. That’s the US, England, China, Mongolia, Japan, Kazakhstan and Australia to you. Where do they get these names???

*** Transliteration: “Me angry. Don’t like.” The syntax is very barok, no? S-O-V and not much else. My buddy Eung-hwa (aka Pax Coreana) says: “Korean syntax is very rigid and mechanical, and is therefore a pretty boring language to learn.” Which is why I have a hard time learning hanggukmal. As a writer, I love playing with syntax. English and Filipino allow me room for play and syntactic complexity that seems largely absent in hanggukmal. Even a lot of Korean literature in English translation seems repetitive and monotonous because there are no pronouns. There is no ‘you’ either, so if I wanna tell The Polymath how cute he is, I can’t say “you’re cute.” I’d have to tell him: “The Polymath is cute.” Makes me sound like a fembot.

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