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!

26 Jul

sunday dinner at Browns Hill Bible Chapel

Who taught : Emily, Rachel and Liz

Cake for Leah and Zac's farewell dinner made by Mandie

When I knew that I am coming to the U.S., my father asked one of his friends who is a missionary from the U.S. to find out the church for me to go. He recommended Browns Hill Bible Chapel to my father and me. Since then, Jessy and I are going to the chapel and it has been such a blessing for us. If you are interested in coming, please tell me. We should go together.

A few weeks later from our first visit to the chapel, Debby asked Jessy and me after the church service, “Hey, do you guys want to have dinner together?” I responded, “OK! What time do you want to meet? Maybe around 5:30 pm?” She said, “No, it is now!” “But you said dinner,” I asked again. She then realized and explained to us, “Oh.. we use dinner for Sunday lunch.” I was quite surprised. I have always thought dinner is a meal we eat in the evening. Do you guys really use dinner, meaning lunch or something?

And, yesterday, we had a special Sunday dinner after the service at church to say good bye to our friends, Leah and Zac. They are moving to Spain because of Zac’s new job. They will be staying there for about 5 years and COME BACK to PGH. Right, Zac? They have to because we all miss them so much and I am pretty sure they will miss us too.

Right before the dinner, I was talking to some friends and Emily and Liz were talking to other friends. But we were pretty close. And for some reason, I felt that Emily and Liz were talking about me. When I looked at them, they were like, “Nothing! How did you know we are talking about you.” I said, “I do not know! I just felt it.”

Then, we sat down together to have dinner and Rachel was right next to me. So, I said to Rachel, “Hey, Rachel. You know what happened? Emily and Liz made fun of me.” And Emily said, “No, we did not! We were just teasing you.” At that time, I was kind of confused and thought about the previous post about “Popular VS Famous.” Again, make fun of someone and tease someone have the same meaning in English-Korean dictionary. Thus, it is hard to find out the proper usage of them in a proper context.

So, here is what I learned. Tease is pretty much same act as making fun of but it does not really involve a bad intention.

Am I right? I am still kind of confused. This kind of subtle difference in expressions is so hard to catch.

22 Jul

popular vs famous

Who taught : Jake

Honda Civic

Popular and famous….

Is anyone out there who does not know what these words mean? I doubt it.ย  In English-Korean dictionary, they have almost same meaning in Korean. It is pretty hard to distinguish each other. I am not sure how they are in other countries’ dictionaries.

Yesterday, I made a mistake with these words. It was a very subtle thing but Jake taught me the correct usage of the words.

After we had dinner together, Pat, Jake, Carol, Mark and me started to walk to the street where we all parked. As we were approaching to the cars, we realized that there are so many people who have Honda Civic in our company. Pat has Civic SI which he really loves. (I mean he is really into it.) Jake has Civic Hybrid. Kara has Civic coupe. Jessy has a regular 4-door Civic. Wow, I realized another thing, writing this. We have all different kinds of Civics we could have in our company. It is such a practical and fuel-efficient car. In addition, reliability is so great that you can easily drive it more than 100,000 miles without any major issue. So, if you are now considering buying a car, I would totally recommend it to you. Well, so, yesterday, I said, “I think Civic is the most famous car in our company.” Hearing it, Jake told me, “T-Bone, you should say the most popular car in our company.” Till that moment, I was not sure what is the difference. “Why? What is wrong with famous?” said I. Jake added, “So, for instance, I would say ‘Ferrari is the most famous car in the world.’ But, when you are tying to describe that many people like and have Civic, I would say, ‘Civic is the most popular car in the company.'” By hearing Jake’s examples, I was able to catch the subtle difference of the two words. Could you also understand? Interesting, isn’t it? Maybe, if I was writing, I would be able to find the proper word but it is again hard to find and use the proper word in speaking. Sigh! But, I really appreciate Jake’s help to make my English better and preciser.

21 Jul

peach fuzz

Who taught: Jake, Carol, Kara, Mark, Patrick, Angela, Stan, Alex and Andrew.

Last Friday, Andrew, Jake, Angela, Stan, Alex and I were having lunch together. Angela used to live in New York City area and, more specifically, her place was in New Jersey. Her house was on the second floor and there was a hair weave place on the first floor of the house. Do you know what the weave is? Here is the definition for you I found from the Wikipedia.

a very general term used to describe human or artificial hair used to alter one’s natural hair appearance by adding additional hair to their natural hair or by covering the natural hair all together with human or synthetic hair pieces.

I think I saw a lot of African American women try to have this weave. One thing I am curious is that how they can maintain or wash the weft hair. It would be really hard to wash regularly.

Speaking of washing hair, on our way to a restaurant this evening with my friends, Mark and Jake taught me one expression that some of the women would use when they would like to say no to some sort of asking from a guy or her friends. Supposed that Jessy, my wife, is a single and a guy asked her out and she really does not want to say straightforwardly no to him, then what she can say to him is “Oh… that is sweet but I am sorry. Tonight, I need to wash my hair.”

Mark and Jake told me it is an expression that WOMEN (maybe men with long hair) can use and it is politer than just saying no. Then, I thought that it is harsher than just saying no. What do you think?

peach fuzz

In relation to hair story, there is another expression I learned in the restaurant today from my friends. During dinner, we ended up talking about some women with bunch of different body hair, especially hair on face.

Do you know what you can use to describe bunch of short hairs on face? Jake said, “peach fuzz.” So, I just wrote that down on my iPhone. But, here is the thing!! So, I looked that expression up in the Urban Dictionary. And…… look what I found here. Jake!!! Can I really use ‘peach fuzz’ for short hairs on face? It sounds dirty. ๐Ÿ™‚

20 Jul

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, ์ณ‡๋ฐ”ํ€ด๋Œ๋‹ค (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!

15 Jul

bumping uglies

Who taught : Andrew

Wow! My blog is featured in this blog, READABLE BLOG, and the author, Clarissa, said that I am a great example of an enthusiastic language learner who likes thinking about language. I don’t know what to say. Thank you!

Two days ago, Andrew asked me a question. “Terry, do you know what ‘bumping uglies’ means?” I was thinking and thinking….. but cannot even guess what it means. “So, uglies mean something really bad?” I asked. He said, “No, they are not bad. Actually, they could be good.” I tried a few things but I was not even get closer at all. Then, he showed me some actions to describe the expression. Then, I got it. Can you guess? Tell you what! If your mind is in the gutter, you would be able to guess but people like me cannot at all. You know, innocent people! ๐Ÿ™‚ (Andrew, I am not saying your mind is in the gutter because you are American and you already know what it means.) Simply, it means “sex.” I was trying to find out its origin but was not successful. Some people say a rapper started to use it as an euphemism for sex. But I cannot buy it. (For some people who would not know ‘buy’ means here, it is the same as ‘believe’. So, I am saying I cannot believe it.)

To be honest, I kind of like this expression. It sounds very funny and cute, doesn’t it? I mean I can understand why there is ‘bumping’ but selection of ‘uglies’ is quite interesting here, representing reproductive organs. Why not bumping beauties or bumping things? And, if I say just ‘uglies’ in a sexual context, would people connect them as the organs? Always curious about the expression!! I have to say. Writing this blog is so much more fun than I thought it would be. Any non-native English speaker should try it. You will learn a lot more and faster. I guarantee!