Category Archives: From friends

As a non-native English speaker, it is fun to learn new English expressions from friends. I am not afraid of asking questions to my friends. Luckily, my friends are so nice that they always do their bests to explain to me. Thank you, all!

02 Feb

stoned or baked

Who taught: Stan and Braverman family

Stoned or Baked (source: http://www.nogoodforme.com/)

A few days ago, I wrote about “edible.” Well, yesterday, I learned a new thing about the word, edible. What if someone on the street asks you like, “Hey do you have any edible?” What would you answer? I would try to think whether I have my lunch box or not. If I have, then maybe my answer would be, “Yes, I do. Why?” Well, that answer could be very dangerous. Do you know why? It is because the word, edible, also means something else. It means marijuana. In my opinion, this usage of the word is not very common in the east coast but in the west coast. How funny is it? You can say “it is edible” to mean something people can eat. And, all of a sudden, the other people would possibly think you have marijuana.

Speaking of marijuana, drug is a big issue in the United States. Hunting my house around, I have learned a lot. One of the things I got to know is related with the size of high schools. Some parents prefer to move to a school district where its high schools are small in terms of class size. The reason is that it is better to prevent their kids from getting into troubles with drugs. Another thing that I learned is that there are many cops in high schools during the day with dogs to find out whether there is any drug or not in the schools. That is scary to hear. In my whole life, I have never even seen any drug.

There are a few expressions that are related with drugs. When you do drugs, you become very happy and kind of abnormal, laughing a lot with no reason. At least, that is what I heard. 🙂 Then, people say, “Are you high?”, which sounds easy to understand. But, there are other expressions such as stoned or baked. Some people say, “Are you stoned?” or “You are baked, right?” These are ridiculous. There is no way we, non-native English speakers, can figure out what they mean. It is like, “Are you saying that some people throw stones at me and I got hurt? or Are you saying I was in the oven for a while?” I actually do not get these. What are the origins of these expressions? Can anyone tell me? For example, a few weeks ago, Stan posted his old picture in which he is smiling on his Facebook. I commented, “Stan, you look so happy.” And, a few hours later, one of his friends added another comment, “You look totally baked.” I was like, “What is going on? What the heck does this baked mean?” I had to look up all the dictionaries to find out what that means. Luckily, there was Urban Dictionary. Without it, my life in the U.S. would be a lot harder. Urband Dictionary is my friend and…… your friend too.

31 Jan

Is it in the bag?

Who taught: Kim

Money in the bag (source: http://cicmusic.wordpress.com/)

As you know, I teach at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). A few days ago, I stumbled upon a youtube video that is about the stereotypes of CMU. Typically, the workload at CMU is intense and heavy. Students spend a lot of hours in libraries and meeting rooms. From the comments on the video, I found one very funny saying among CMU students. They say that the campus was made up of two types of people “the fruits” (drama, fine arts) and “the vegetables” (science, engineering). Sadly (??!!), I was one of the vegetables because I graduated from the School of Computer Science (SCS). Consequently, I am now a vegetable grower since I teach computer science students. Well… vegetables are well known as healthy food. I will do my best to grow nice organic ones so that they can help people.

About two weeks ago, I heard a very happy news from my friend, Kim. She applied for the Fulbright scholarship program a few months ago. She changed her status on Facebook, saying that she passed the first round. I do not know how many people know the program but it is actually a huge one to get as a student in the U.S. I was so happy that I commented saying that, “Awesome! So happy to hear that!” Of course, there were her other friends who added comments. She replied, saying, “It is not in the bag yet. But I will keep you posted.”

Not in the bag… That was a new one to me. I am sure you guys can also understand what it means, right? So, I replied to her, “That is a new one and it will be going into my blog.” That is what is happening now.

If you know the etymology of the expression, you will definitely be able to feel the expression. Based on my research, this expression is from the 16th century. At that time, bird hunting was famous and hunters go out with a bag. When they finally retrieve a bird and put it in the bag, they now can declare that they catch a bird for sure.

Can you feel it? This is the question Jean asked me when I say that “In the bag is the new one to me!” I now feel the expression a lot better after knowing the etymology. How about you? Don’t you like to know etymology of new expressions? Here is today’s homework! Why don’t you ask your American friends whether they know the etymology of this expression? I bet many of them would not know which is not surprising at all. We just use many expressions of our mother tongue without thinking about their origins, don’t we?

26 Jan

big cheese

Who taught: Drew, Jon, Emily and Rachel

The big cheese (source : http://www.ohgeez.com/)

Last Saturday, Jessy and I went to see Pittsburgh Civic Orchestra’s concert. My friend Liz is the assistant concertmaster of the orchestra. It was awesome. We were able to see some young musicians. They are all teenagers but performed like professionals. We were able to see their passion in music. One of the most beautiful things in the world is, in my opinion, seeing someone doing something with passion and happiness. Having said that, I would love to quote part of the President Barack Obama’s speech yesterday at the State of the Union.

One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she’s earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams too. As Kathy said, “I hope it tells them to never give up.”

Very inspiring, isn’t it? At 55 years old, she decided to learn a new thing to pursue her dream. Hope I keep my passion at 55 or even older. Oh… and I also hope you do too.

Going back to the story being with my friends… Before the concert, we all went an Italian restaurant to have dinner together. During dinner, we talked about Emily’s story about her not properly being covered by health insurance. She has been waiting for a while to be covered by the company health insurance but did not happen yet. Hearing this, Drew said, “Who is the big cheese at your work? You should talk about it.” Well, based on the context, I was able to understand what they were talking about but the expression itself would not give any hint to me. The meaning of the expression is “most influential or important person in a group.”

I was so curious about the origin of the expression that I had to look it up. I found a few different theories but there is one very believable or probable. The Persian or Hindi word “chiz” means a thing. So, big cheese or big chiz is what? That’s right. It is a “big thing.” Now, are you a big cheese at your work? 🙂

I have a question. Can I say the big cheese in America is Barack Obama?

14 Jan

ride the short bus

Who taught: Andrew, Jake, Carol and Jean

Have you ever walked any street in the United States? If you have and paid careful attention, you would have noticed that there are some differences between roads. Do you know what that is? It is the name of streets. As far as I know, there are 7 different names. They are Ave, St, Rd, Blvd, Pl, Ln and broadway. Broadway is kind of unique in a sense that it does not have any specific name. It is just broadway. Most of cities I have visited have this road but I do not think Pittsburgh has broadway. I have never heard of it in Pittsburgh. Anyways, the most common ones are Ave (Avenue), St (Street) and Rd (Road). On these, there are usually many traffic. Blvd (Boulevard) one is tricky. It is kind of hard to pronounce correctly. Why don’t you try it now? Do you think you can speak it correctly? Good for you!

You would not see Pl and Ln very often. They are usually narrow which means not that many cars are using those. Well, when I first saw those, I had no idea what they are. I actually pronounced Pl as “pai” because I thought “l” is not lowercase L but uppercase I. But, it is lowercase l and shortened one for Place. Ln is Lane. Are there any other ones? I cannot think of any but I am sure there are more.

Short bus (source: http://conorheffernan.com/)

Two times on weekdays, you can see so many yellow vehicles running around in the United States. They are school buses. Typical school bus is always yellow and pretty big and long. Here is one interesting fact related with school bus I found on Wikipedia.

Every school day, over 480,000 school buses transport 26 million children to and from schools and school-related activities.

This is very different from Korea. Most of students in Korea either walk or use public transportation to or from schools. Well, anyways, they look very simple but they do have many safety features including something related with seats. It is called compartmentalization. Google it up! You will find it very interesting.

A few months ago, my friends and I had dinner and they used an expression, riding the short bus, which I had no idea what they are talking about. This is of course related with school bus. As I said, typical school buses are pretty long but there are short ones too. Well, before I heard of this expression, I thought those short ones are just short because there are not that many students using the bus.

Well, it turns out that those short ones are mostly used to ferry students with special needs. So, if you are in that bus, then what? Well, I do not want to go too far and leave this to your imagination. You can use this expression to your friends when they say something dumb or do stupid things. But, this expression is derogatory so that I would not encourage to use it. Once again, it is good to know so that, if someone uses this to you, you can properly respond. If you know what I mean!! 🙂

05 Jan

got hosed

Who taught: Eric

Hosed (source: http://www.zazzle.com.au/)

Living in the U.S., every day and every moment is pretty much full of surprises. You should be really ready to hear and learn all of the new expressions that are not in any traditional dictionary at all. If you and your American friend who knows that you are a non-native English speaker are the only ones having a conversation, I can guarantee you would not hear those things. But, when you are one of many people and most of them are native English speakers, then there are surprises. If you are not physically in a country where there are bunch of native speakers, the best way you could hear these kinds of expressions is watching TV shows. One of the recent shows I would strongly recommend is 30 Rock. Also, I like watching Outsourced. It has very interesting stories about cultural shock and learning languages.

Let me talk about one of the experiences from which I heard a total new expression I had a few days ago. I am not sure I have ever told this but I love playing soccer. Well, apparently, I am a Korean. Korean people are in love with soccer. Every Monday, I play soccer with people whom I met in a league. Two days ago, I was there too. There were so many people so that many of us had to wait for a turn to play. Two people who came before me got into the game and it was finally my turn. As one guy who was playing came out, another person besides me suddenly got in before me. Well, it was too late for me to ask him to come out. So, I decided to wait for the next turn. At that moment, Eric said to me, “Terry! You just got hosed. You should just stick your nose in.”

I knew what he meant from the context. Especially, “sticking your nose in” part was easy. But, what the heck is “got hosed?” I have tried to find etymology of this expression out but no success yet. There is one scenario I can guess though. Hose itself means a flexible tube conveying water or other liquid. It could also be a verb to mean spray water with a hose. Thus, if someone hose you, then you will get wet which you do not really like unless it is really hot and that is what you want, right? Hey, my American friends! What do you think about my guess here? Am I right? For some reason, I have a bad feeling about this expression too. Sounds kind of dirty. Is my mind in the gutter?!? 🙂

More simply, “got hosed” is the same thing as “got screwed.” As I said in previous posts, it is easy to say, “OK.. that is easy. I think I know that expression now.” But, I would like to challenge you here. How many times do you think you would ever use this expression in the proper context? Why don’t you count it? That would be fun and it could motivate you to try to remember them to be able to use them later. Having said that, I just remembered one quote I heard from Today show. “People are goal-oriented. If there is a goal, there is a higher chance to achieve things. So, set your goal. The more specific a goal is, the better it is.”

Getting back to my story…. Funny thing is I got really hosed on that day. Why? Because I got injured. Maybe, Eric’s saying was foreshadowing?  🙁