I Be Stupid
For the last couple weeks, something roughly equivalent to "I be stupid" or "I be a fool" has been my favorite thing to say to shopkeepers, cabbies, people I bump into, and chicks in bars. This is done in the construction for introducing yourself. Except when you would normally insert your name - "I’m Mark" - you substitute the word "stupid," thus making for an ungrammatical and stilted way of letting people know that you’re a fucking idiot, which is all the better.
I’ve run "I be stupid" by a few of my more advanced classes, and invariably about half of them get out of their seats and start jumping up and down in excitement. It seems to be one of the funnier things you can say in Korean, all the more since I’m doubtless fucking up the pronunciation and grammar. Then, without fail, 3-4 students will pull out digital recorders and ask me to say it again: "Teacher, say ‘I’m pabo eem-nee-dah.’" Then the jumping up and down in excitement commences once again. The suckups, not every class has one, will try to fill me in:
"Teacher, what you said, it’s not nice. It is that you are, uh, ‘fooleesh’."
"I be stupid" is a good way of getting people to listen without automatically dismissing you as a waygook ("foreigner," and I’m a little uncomfortable with the spelling, too). When you walk into a store, and ask "How much this be?" - apparently, my pronunciation is adequate, which belies my utter retardation in the Korean language - and they say something in response that is Charlie-Brown’s-mom-esque, "I be stupid" will get people to chuckle and slow the fuck down: "Lady, I’m sorry. One month in Korea (I) exist. Now, I be stupid. Korean, now, no me friend. Tomorrow, yes, yes-no, I be stupid little bit. Long time no see! Aw-right!"* Invariably, they say something like "Stupid? No way... wah wah wah Korean language wah wah wah wah wah, yo." Some of my 10-year-old female students taught me how to say "is that so?" really sarcastically, which is the right thing to say in response to sycophantic, overly polite shopkeepers. People are too polite here, and don’t expect too much from the waygook. I’m not exactly comfortable with the implications of being a whitey living in Korea without making the effort to learn Korean, but many people make little effort. Not that I’m busting my ass to learn Korean myself. Once I have the new job and a bit more leisure time, I hope to spend as much time learning Korean as my students spend learning English.
[On a related note, I really, really wanted to be Borat for Halloween. However, I had to stop growing my mustache - not only because I teach kindergarten and that’s a little weird. Facial hair kinda freaks out kids in Korea, and my supervisor actually asked me to shave what was a pretty full beard that I grew over Thanksgiving. Also, I didn’t sign the contract for new-job until last Friday, and I really didn’t want to make a bad impression there. It’s far too sweet a gig to fuck around with. At any rate, I can be Borat for Halloween ‘07, and my Korean will be even more Borat-esque. For example, I have no idea how to say "sexy time explosion" in Korean - or "my sister, she give the best sex-in-mouth in Kazakhstan" - but will certainly try to have that shit down by late Oct. ‘07. I’m waiting for someone to offer to send me a "mustache rides, 5 cents" belt buckle in a care package, which would make for a delightful Borat accoutrement. Costume ideas for this year? What’s the perfect costume for the hairiest mofo on the block? Or for the white dude in Asia?]
With the proper rising intonation, "I be stupid" can become "I be stupid?" This is useful for haggling on the black market when someone tries to sell you a blanket for $20. "I be stupid?" gets people to knock it down at least a few bucks, but you still fall victim to the waygook tax. People assume foreigners in Korea are wealthy, which is fair enough because foreigners here make well over - easily double - the average Korean wage, which is itself a pretty decent wage on a global scale. Drunk Korean men will ask you on the street or in the bathroom, in English, "So you are... uh... uh... Oh my God! Are you, uh....uh... Are you... rich?"
Not that people here are after your money. On the island where I spent Thanksgiving, I flagged down a van thinking it was a cab-esque service. After going through my repertoire of overly-rehearsed pleasantries, this middle-aged woman went was once again excessively complimentary: "wah wah wah wah Korean language good wah wah wah." Then they turned up the radio, almost certainly to drown out the waygook, and I invited them to sing with the infinitive of a verb I couldn’t then remember how to conjugate: "to sing, to sing. to sing." Whatever the song was, it sounded like a Korean version of "I Just Called (to Say I Love You)," or whateverthefuck, which totally shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t until I asked "How much this be?" - and they mocked me back with my enthusiastic "It’s aw-right!" - that I realized I’d just hitchhiked for the first time.
Later, the man from the van spent a quarter hour explaining, okay mostly gesturing, that the ferry wouldn’t arrive for awhile - it was morning - because there was too much "smoke on the water." Luckily, I knew the word for "sun" and "water," and he somehow knew the English word "smoke" (bilingual no-smoking signs? There were several on the ferry) or I wouldn’t have had taken me even longer for my stupid ass to figure out what be going on. Eventually, he got a little tired of my overuse of "aw-right," and pointed at his face to indicate age. Then he pointed at me, and bowed, as if I should be more deferential to him. Then he instructed me on how I should’ve been saying "aw-right" using verb stems reserved for Jebus and the elderly - omitting the "-yo," which I am remiss, and completely unable, to do. Still, he was cordial about it all, and so I wrote it down. And, due to social hierarchy implicit in language here, it’s more than just a "who/whom" distinction.
I’m getting a little bored with "I be stupid" and its derivatives, like "I have a stupid ear." On the island where I spent Thanksgiving, someone overheard my "I be stupid" and gave me something much cooler to say that I’ve been rehearsing in front of the mirror. It’s a nice companion to the "that is a spicy fart" [actually, my kids have taught me two two ways to say "fart," one of which seems to translate literally to "room ear"; it’s a bit of a problem that my Korean dictionary includes words like "banns" and "wet nurse," but no "fart"] that I’ve been holding up my sleeve for just the right occasion: "I speak Korean the width of a mouse’s tail." Fucking poetry.
*I’m a little bored with "yeah" since Koreans use the affirmative in a ton of situations, so I like throwing down an enthusiastic "aw-right!" whenever possible. "Yes" is semantically flexible, and seems to mean "cool," "fine," and "get to the fucking point, already": [telephone] "Hello?" "Hello." "Yes?"
I’ve run "I be stupid" by a few of my more advanced classes, and invariably about half of them get out of their seats and start jumping up and down in excitement. It seems to be one of the funnier things you can say in Korean, all the more since I’m doubtless fucking up the pronunciation and grammar. Then, without fail, 3-4 students will pull out digital recorders and ask me to say it again: "Teacher, say ‘I’m pabo eem-nee-dah.’" Then the jumping up and down in excitement commences once again. The suckups, not every class has one, will try to fill me in:
"Teacher, what you said, it’s not nice. It is that you are, uh, ‘fooleesh’."
"I be stupid" is a good way of getting people to listen without automatically dismissing you as a waygook ("foreigner," and I’m a little uncomfortable with the spelling, too). When you walk into a store, and ask "How much this be?" - apparently, my pronunciation is adequate, which belies my utter retardation in the Korean language - and they say something in response that is Charlie-Brown’s-mom-esque, "I be stupid" will get people to chuckle and slow the fuck down: "Lady, I’m sorry. One month in Korea (I) exist. Now, I be stupid. Korean, now, no me friend. Tomorrow, yes, yes-no, I be stupid little bit. Long time no see! Aw-right!"* Invariably, they say something like "Stupid? No way... wah wah wah Korean language wah wah wah wah wah, yo." Some of my 10-year-old female students taught me how to say "is that so?" really sarcastically, which is the right thing to say in response to sycophantic, overly polite shopkeepers. People are too polite here, and don’t expect too much from the waygook. I’m not exactly comfortable with the implications of being a whitey living in Korea without making the effort to learn Korean, but many people make little effort. Not that I’m busting my ass to learn Korean myself. Once I have the new job and a bit more leisure time, I hope to spend as much time learning Korean as my students spend learning English.
[On a related note, I really, really wanted to be Borat for Halloween. However, I had to stop growing my mustache - not only because I teach kindergarten and that’s a little weird. Facial hair kinda freaks out kids in Korea, and my supervisor actually asked me to shave what was a pretty full beard that I grew over Thanksgiving. Also, I didn’t sign the contract for new-job until last Friday, and I really didn’t want to make a bad impression there. It’s far too sweet a gig to fuck around with. At any rate, I can be Borat for Halloween ‘07, and my Korean will be even more Borat-esque. For example, I have no idea how to say "sexy time explosion" in Korean - or "my sister, she give the best sex-in-mouth in Kazakhstan" - but will certainly try to have that shit down by late Oct. ‘07. I’m waiting for someone to offer to send me a "mustache rides, 5 cents" belt buckle in a care package, which would make for a delightful Borat accoutrement. Costume ideas for this year? What’s the perfect costume for the hairiest mofo on the block? Or for the white dude in Asia?]
With the proper rising intonation, "I be stupid" can become "I be stupid?" This is useful for haggling on the black market when someone tries to sell you a blanket for $20. "I be stupid?" gets people to knock it down at least a few bucks, but you still fall victim to the waygook tax. People assume foreigners in Korea are wealthy, which is fair enough because foreigners here make well over - easily double - the average Korean wage, which is itself a pretty decent wage on a global scale. Drunk Korean men will ask you on the street or in the bathroom, in English, "So you are... uh... uh... Oh my God! Are you, uh....uh... Are you... rich?"
Not that people here are after your money. On the island where I spent Thanksgiving, I flagged down a van thinking it was a cab-esque service. After going through my repertoire of overly-rehearsed pleasantries, this middle-aged woman went was once again excessively complimentary: "wah wah wah wah Korean language good wah wah wah." Then they turned up the radio, almost certainly to drown out the waygook, and I invited them to sing with the infinitive of a verb I couldn’t then remember how to conjugate: "to sing, to sing. to sing." Whatever the song was, it sounded like a Korean version of "I Just Called (to Say I Love You)," or whateverthefuck, which totally shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t until I asked "How much this be?" - and they mocked me back with my enthusiastic "It’s aw-right!" - that I realized I’d just hitchhiked for the first time.
Later, the man from the van spent a quarter hour explaining, okay mostly gesturing, that the ferry wouldn’t arrive for awhile - it was morning - because there was too much "smoke on the water." Luckily, I knew the word for "sun" and "water," and he somehow knew the English word "smoke" (bilingual no-smoking signs? There were several on the ferry) or I wouldn’t have had taken me even longer for my stupid ass to figure out what be going on. Eventually, he got a little tired of my overuse of "aw-right," and pointed at his face to indicate age. Then he pointed at me, and bowed, as if I should be more deferential to him. Then he instructed me on how I should’ve been saying "aw-right" using verb stems reserved for Jebus and the elderly - omitting the "-yo," which I am remiss, and completely unable, to do. Still, he was cordial about it all, and so I wrote it down. And, due to social hierarchy implicit in language here, it’s more than just a "who/whom" distinction.
I’m getting a little bored with "I be stupid" and its derivatives, like "I have a stupid ear." On the island where I spent Thanksgiving, someone overheard my "I be stupid" and gave me something much cooler to say that I’ve been rehearsing in front of the mirror. It’s a nice companion to the "that is a spicy fart" [actually, my kids have taught me two two ways to say "fart," one of which seems to translate literally to "room ear"; it’s a bit of a problem that my Korean dictionary includes words like "banns" and "wet nurse," but no "fart"] that I’ve been holding up my sleeve for just the right occasion: "I speak Korean the width of a mouse’s tail." Fucking poetry.
*I’m a little bored with "yeah" since Koreans use the affirmative in a ton of situations, so I like throwing down an enthusiastic "aw-right!" whenever possible. "Yes" is semantically flexible, and seems to mean "cool," "fine," and "get to the fucking point, already": [telephone] "Hello?" "Hello." "Yes?"
posted by Mark Hernandef at 9:43 PM
4 Comments:
When my father did poorly in Spanish class his teacher would tell him that he had a "lazy tongue." Maybe something similar to that would be more novel and less self-deprecating. Although we all know how those east Asians adore being shamed/shaming/SHAME!
GDH
Why would you have to buy a blanket on the black market? I can understand refried beans not being readily available, but blankets?
I'm not sure, GDH. I'm a little fond of self-depracation, and don't really want to give that up even in a language where I don't know what the fuck is going on. Though, Koreans actively go out of their way to resist ego in speech, and self-dep may oppose 'em Oriental mores.
Yeah, Alla, DrAwkward here (I had to give myself a palindromic name, yo). Korean-style blankets are a little scratchy for my Western foppish tastes. Further, all they have here is John Wayne toilet paper: rough, tough, and don't take no shit from Indians.
A friend sent me this joke. I tweaked it just a bit...
I had a bunch of Canadian dollars and wanted to exchange so I went to the currency exchange window at a local bank. Short line. Just one guy on front of me.... Korean guy who was trying to exchange won for dollars and he was a little irritated.
He asked the teller, "Why it change ? Yesterday I get one dolor fo 1000 won, today I get 85 cent. Why it change ?"
The teller shrugged his shoulders and said, "fluctuations."
The Korean guy said, "fluc you white people too!"
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