Feb. 17th, 2005 12:53 pm
Using my noodle
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muckefuckI've got a two-week hiatus from Chinese class and I've been trying to use some of the resulting free time regain my Korean before I forget it all. I pulled out an old sheet of basic verbs and quizzed myself. I did this some time ago, checkmarking those verbs I didn't recognise, and noted wryly that almost all the verbs I didn't know this go round were ones I had checkmarked earlier. The plus side to this seems to be that some of what I learned is as good as woodburned into my cortex: No matter how much time goes by, I'll never forget that kaluchita is "teach" or kongpuhata is "study". On the other hand, things I didn't memorise fifteen years ago never seem to find purchase in my brain. Chances are that five years from now, I'll look at that list again and not be able to identify naylita as "get off", regardless how much I review it now.
From my recent Koreatown trip, I brought back the menu from my favourite Korean noodle shop. I plan to post an analysis of it, since I always find the gap between the original and the English translation on menus (particularly from Asian restaurants) amusing, but I want to research a few items first. While doing a search on thongmantwu (a form of dumpling), I got the following message:
After that, it all fell into place: "This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them." (More literally, perhaps, "(Someone) uses frames on this page, but they aren't supported in the browser.") If only every sample used this much English, Korean pose no difficulties to me!
From my recent Koreatown trip, I brought back the menu from my favourite Korean noodle shop. I plan to post an analysis of it, since I always find the gap between the original and the English translation on menus (particularly from Asian restaurants) amusing, but I want to research a few items first. While doing a search on thongmantwu (a form of dumpling), I got the following message:
이 페이지에서 프레임을 사용하지만 브라우저에서 지원하지 않습니다.(For those of you without CJK support, here it is in Yale transliteration:
i peyici eyse phuleyim ul sayonghaciman pulauceeyso ciwenhaci anhsupnita.)The second word leapt out at me immediately, being a Koreanisation of page--in an online context, almost certainly a reference to a webpage. The next noun (eyso is a particle meaning "on" or "at") also stands out as foreign, but the source wasn't immediately obvious. Prame? Plame? Of course! Korean has no /f/, so substitutes /ph/. What else could it be but frame?
After that, it all fell into place: "This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them." (More literally, perhaps, "(Someone) uses frames on this page, but they aren't supported in the browser.") If only every sample used this much English, Korean pose no difficulties to me!