spnning my wheels
Who taught : Colin
I have a question to you, my American friends. So, assuming that you are in a foreign country such as Korea and you are having a hard time to find a place where you need to go, you decided to ask one of the Korean people on street.
What would be the first question you ask? Is it “Excuse me! Do you speak English?” or “Excuse me! Can you speak English?”
Which one would you use? Just curious! Because I used to think it should be ‘Can you speak English?’ but now I think it would be ‘Do you speak English?’
Spinning wheels
Well, let’s go on to today’s expression. There is a Korean expression, 쳇바퀴돌다 (chet-ba-qui-dol-da). The translation would be ‘go around in circle.” The meaning of it is basically ‘waste time’ or ‘does not make any progress at all.’
Around a month ago, Colin came to me and said, “Hey, I just thought about a good expression for me. ‘Spinning my wheels’ I was working on something but was not able to make good progress yet. And, in this situation, I would say, ‘I am spinning my wheels on this issue’.” Well, this one was not hard for me to find out the meaning of it by hearing it. But, once I hear it, I realized that there is almost same expression for this one. This was pretty interesting. And, last week, James actully used this expression when he was in the same situation with one of work items he is taking care of.
Having written this blog, it is actually rare to find an English expression that has almost same one in Korean. Korea is located totally the other side of America on the earth. According to history, Korea made a treaty with America about trade in 1882. And it was the first time that Koreans are interacting with Americans. I doubt they can really easily understand each other back then. But, it would be interesting if the Korean expression originated from English or vice versa. Maybe the Korean one is from Chinese? Not sure!
I would say “Do you speak english?” for some reason I can’t explain it seems more polite.
That is exactly what I felt. The more I live in America, the more I feel like saying “can you speak English?” is kind of impolite because it is almost like saying, “I do not think you look like you can even speak English but I will give it a try with you.” But ‘Do you speak English?” sounds more like ‘I think you look like you can speak so that I will try to ask you now.” What do you think? Do I have the similar feeling to what you have?
When I stayed in korea, someone actually asked me if I COULD speak English on the street, anyway I sayed no, ^^
Now, you are in America and speaking English all the time. Ironic!
Yay! Some Minnesotans with whom I once had the pleasure of working used a similar term when something, usually a program, crashed or died: spun out. As in, “the web server spun out.” My guess is that it relates to the definition “rotate out of control” and a car crashing.
I forgot that you told me that the other day!