Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Funny English #6

My time here in The Korea has been both burnished and brightened by grammarly rules bent, and others broken, courtesy of our enduring friends on the peninsula.

For those of you unacquainted with Funny English, it's a delightful documentation of instances of English that this young blogger finds amusing.

IMG_3889
This happy message on a vending machine greets subway commuters every morning at Nakseongdae Station. 

Here at Lee's Korea Blog we wish all readers a feeling fine day, everyday.

IMG_3931
The chefs work very hard in this restaurant. 

You can almost taste their efforts.

IMG_5312
This enigmatic zen kōan continues to confound teams of monks in the Korean highlands.

IMG_5011
Here in Seoul, we can cookies. But unfortunately we can't grammar too well.

IMG_5029
As a person who considers myself somewhat internationalised, this chess set is essential for handling the world's inescapable globalisation.

IMG_3758
One might be forgiven for thinking that a simple spell check could have picked up the errors in 'Seoul Metorpol itan Government'.
Before they carved it into a metal mold for manhole covers. 

And placed 4500 of them all over the city.

IMG_3876
This old poster has been left in our building's elevator, and is written mostly in Korean hangeul. Fortunately for the non-hangeul readers out there, the event's name is spelled out phonetically in English.

One only needs to ask "How can I get to Cantata UBOOSASISA?"

IMG_5378
Approximately half of my time at university is spent doing research. The other half is spent methodically deciphering translated official documents that I need to fill out.

IMG_5377
Here's a note that I found on my desk one afternoon, left by our lovely admin staff. It was referring to an invoice problem for our office chairs.

IMG_4802
This is our university mail client. Especially around lunch time, I like to send many Ham Messages.

Untitled
There are many suspicious backronyms in the world of university student clubs that appear to contravene the purposes of choosing a backronym in the first place.

This one, SOCSOC, is one of the finest examples.

308
The popular K-blogger Roboseyo may be interested in a pizza that was named after him, from "Elnopim Pizza".

Untitled
Snapped while on the move, deep in the cavernous batcaves of Sillim E-Mart's underground parking lot.

The politically correct term would be 'Parking Personless Office.'

Untitled
The disposable cup industry in Korea contributes to approximately 20% of GDP. The remainder is composed of the Parking Personless Office industry and Robster Pizza delivery.

Untitled
What we're looking at in this picture is the delectable image of fried chicken in the middle, with cherry tomatoes strewn across a picnic table in an idealistic vision of what will happen the moment such chicken is purchased for only 9,000 7,000 won.

Although I guess the 'Siandard Oil' box in the background is a simple spelling error, the more pertinent question would be "Who garnishes their fried chicken with black gold?"

Untitled
Here's an example of an excellent, but terrible motto.

Found on the front cover of the KTX Magazine.

Untitled
And this is what you wake up to if your baby daughters consume too many beans the night before.

307
To lead us out of this episode's Funny English is an amazing one-piece retailing for only W10,000 at our local Wondang markets. These days, who wouldn't want to be known as a Truck Furniture Maker?

The previous episode of Funny English is available here.

Have a feeling fine day!

6 comments:

David said...

that is so funny lee but most of these funny english makes perfect sense if you translate korean to english.

RR said...

A thought on the We Can Cookies--perhaps in this case, "can" is a verb, as in the practice of canning fruits and vegetables to preserve them. Have you checked you local markets for cans of cookies? Maybe they're just letting people know of their canning service available to all who can't eat their cookies before they expire?

Lee Farrand said...

Haha, yes. You've single-handedly changed my entire perception of the word 'can'.
I can dance. They canned laughter.
Although in this case, I have not seen any canned cookies from the same company. So a better name would be We Cannot Can Cookies, or We Don't Can Cookies.

Melis's world said...

I really like this blog n ı followed you !!!!
Kisses

fashionfrommyeye.blogspot.com

GeronL said...

I was watching a subtitled show "49 Days" and spied a sign on a door saying "Rocker Room".. I think some Koreans are in on the joke.

http://asspos.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Good luck, Lee and best wishes to you and your family.