Intercultural Life
I was laughing mostly because “dumblings” sounds funny!
I’m back studying Korean again, well revising everything that I know (not much!), in preparation for when we move to Korea. We’ve decided once in Korea it’s vital for me to learn as much Korean as possible so Korean will be the language we’ll use the most when there. It will be hard, but worth it.
Hehe…. dumblings….
It works like a swear jar and later when there is a lot of money they’ll buy something nice for everyone with it. You aren’t supposed to put money in it in anticipation of speaking Korean though! My husband does things his way though.
It has become like a game where people try to catch the others out. Someone will ask a question in Korean from just outside of the kitchen and the person in the kitchen will automatically answer in Korean and get caught out and have to pay.
My husband just got caught out because he was on the phone and speaking in Korean and standing in the kitchen. My mum saw him and told him, “You’ve used up your dollar!”
He went and put another dollar in and proclaimed that he can now speak Korean 5 more times and my mum said, “You don’t really get how this works do you?”
Hehehe… I’m the only one allowed to speak Korean in the kitchen.
I don’t know where he picks up these sayings! I also don’t know why he needs two phones and why he keeps them in the bed at night.
He is much more attached to his phones than me, and is always using them. I’m the type to put my phone down somewhere and not check it until six hours later.
I try not to make fun of his English because I know he’ll get revenge when I speak more Korean.
He really hates translating and can be really lazy about it. I know it can be really hard though, and some people are just better at it than others. I have a friend, and though her English is not as good as my husband’s, she is much more natural at translating English and Korean.
This time last year his mother arranged for us to have a traditional meal that was made by monks and all the food they had grown themselves. I knew his mother was anxious to know if we enjoyed it so I wanted her to understand that we really liked it. Unfortunately my husband thought a very simple sentence would do.
My husband will only do it when forced and complains about it. He rarely explains anything about Korean to me and is very much in the habit of just speaking English to me. He learns a lot of English from me though, which is probably because of my personality. I’m a writer and I love reading so I’m always explaining words to him because I genuinely find words, and how they are used, interesting. But he doesn’t really have the motivation to talk about languages, so I miss out in that sense.
When we move to Korea next year I’ll have to work hard on my Korean and make the most of being in Korea.
He isn’t the only guy in my life who hates translating. My youngest brother who is fluent in Japanese will deliberately translate things wrong. For example, when a Japanese friend said to him, “Tell your sister she is pretty,” he turned to me and said in English, “She said you are ugly.” And yesterday I was with him at Darling Harbour and there was a little Japanese boy running around saying things and I asked my brother what he was saying. My brother said, “He said he doesn’t like you.”
See what I mean?!
Luckily he did just mean from the bathroom sink. I do understand the confusion though. In Australia if it’s public toilets we can just say “toilets” and if you are “going to go fill up a bottle in the toilets” in public it’s understood that they are using the sinks, not actually filling a bottle with toilet water. So he thought he could just use the word “toilet” to mean our bathroom.
Australians tend to use the word “toilet” a lot more than Americans it seems. Often in Australia, a toilet may not actually be in the bathroom, but in a separate small toilet room often near the bathroom. I remember when I was younger and we had American visitors in our house and they asked to use the bathroom. We had to ask if they wanted to actually use the toilet or the bathroom because no point showing them the toilet-less bathroom if they actually wanted to use a toilet.
Also we can drink the water straight out of the tap in Australia. In Korea they seem to always drink bottled water. I sometimes feel a bit stressed when I’m in countries where you need to buy bottled water because I’m so used to just drinking tap water. I can sometimes panic that I don’t have enough bottles of water to last me, and I’ll die of thirst overnight haha.
What do you call the……”facilities” in your country? Bathroom? I’ve heard “Wash room” before. Australians and Brits I think, may say “loo” for toilet. So many conversations can be had about toilets! A good friend of mine gave me a book about toilets all around the world. Really interesting! Also, Australian toilets flush a different way to American toilets. Another toilet fact is in some areas of Korea, particularly rural areas, or even just some older buildings, you can’t flush the toilet paper, you have to put it into the bin next to the toilet because of the plumbing. If you are not used to that it can be hard to remember to do that….
If you have some interesting toilet facts about your own country, please share! Just don’t drink water out of the toilet….
It’s funny the sayings he picks up sometimes. He used it perfectly in this situation as well. If you are not a native English speaker or have not heard it before, ‘chubby bubby’ is just a cute way of saying ‘fat baby’ or not even especially fat, just a bit roly poly.
He can get pretty clucky sometimes. ‘Clucky’ is a word used in Australia but I think in other countries the word ‘broody’ is used. Basically the feeling of wanting a baby. I don’t think he is ready to be a father quite yet though…
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