When reading any of the English language mainstream press in Korea, it is hard not to run into something sooner or later that comes out against “Konglish”. You know the phrases in English with a Korean twist to its usage. “Handiphone”  instead of cell phone  or cellular  phone; “One Shot” instead of cheers or bottoms up quickly come to mind.  The  mainstream hack with perhaps too little spirit  to explore fresh expression, no doubt wants to grind back down to earth Konglish and everyone who is aware of it. Other tirades against “Konglish” are often delivered by various Korean government  officials  with a PhD. in linguistics but who will never know what linguine is. And then of course there is the real English teacher  (often with an advanced degree in teaching TOEIC, TOEFL, TESL, RESLA CELTA or some other title of the absurd as their calling card)  All of these  language trainers and promoters argue that “Konglish”  acts like a virus to diligent Koreans who are trying to get standard English down. Maybe so, but think again native and non-native English speakers alike. Is not some of the Konglish made by crunching at standard English so expressive that it carries standard  English to new limits of beauty and  expression?   

     Let’s start with the simple “Eye shopping”: Koreans will often say this instead of window shopping. Are we shopping for eyes or windows?  Neither obviously, but what Konglish takes in at the same time it attempts to speak out is the quirkiness of expressing self while trying to understand life. “Eye Shopping”… the ever-present importance of ‘eyes’ to Asians is bubbling on the tongue here. Wait a second… maybe in Konglish only we can shop for new eyes for ourselves! Or imagine Korean university students with their minds swinging back and forth between communicating in English and expressing themselves and their modern world around them: “Eye Shopping” it is.

    Anyone who has spent  anytime in Korea understands that Konglish is rarely the lazy use of language. “One Shot” is a simple example of how Konglish  really encodes the universal tongue of English with the local drinking culture of Korea, and so it goes.    

And as “One shot” is a good example of how “Konglish” happens, then  “Fan Fic” is a good example of how “Konglish” is happening. “Fan Fic”, means Fan fiction. And Fan fic  is the short form name to a club of middle school girls making up stories about  their favorite pop stars and then sharing them on an internet site. What rocks this is that many of “Fan Fic’s”  members cannot pronounce the back-to-back f'’s in English; so it is usually pronounced as ‘Fan Pic’. Now everyone has seen and heard Korean pop stars… do they seem to fit more the ‘fic’ as in fiction or the ‘pic’ as in picture?  Either way “Konglish” has it covered.

     And by the way even a ‘toefl-breath’ knows that language also offers more than meets the eye—or ear really, because who isn’t blown away at the moment it dawns that the Jenglish (Japanese form of Konglish) phrase, ‘saving face’  has a more important psychological  meaning than a physical appearance one?

     Anyway whatever you conceive in it, “Konglish”, with all its convolutions is  really  so direct and unique, that it  gets you between the eyes and goes right through the skin. As native speakers we experience the difference of it when we hear it, or read it, and if we are English teachers then we face the dilemma in fixing it, but, instead of any of these try to also experience it before it is written down or being spoken: right at the moment it’s being conceived. The following “Konglish” is a list of  descriptions taken from a cross-section of Korean university students. These mixed descriptions are of how friends feel about each other.

   Can you sense it? “Konglish” is a work of art in jumbled  disguise! In it’s primordial beauty of expression it seems closer to ancient Greek poetry than any modern politician or academic could ever hope to get. Maybe there is the rub and the worry about “Konglish”. It offers an ecstasy that is anything but technical.

s.l.s.

The writer is editor and cofounder of ‘DDD’, ‘Life in Korea’.  He teaches inside a boy’s reformatory and can be contacted at: [email protected]