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!

14 Jul

haircut

Who taught: Andrew, Stan and Kara

Where it would be useful : hair salon

Mullet haircut

Yesterday, I went to a hair salon to get my hair cut. Price of haircut in America is pretty high compared to that of Korea. I used to pay around 8 – 10 dollars for my haircut in Korea. Here in America, it is around 25 dollars and that does not include tips. (This could go up way higher in other cities such as New York or San Francisco.) So, every time I get my hair cut, I need to pay around 30 dollars. To save money, I always get very short hair cut and let it grow for a while like 5 – 6 months. On average, I go to the hair salon around 3 times per year.

This morning, Andrew noticed that I got a haircut. “Hey, T-Bone! You got a haircut.” I answered, “Yeah! What do you think?” “Hmm… It looks like boy’s haircut. Too short!” said Andrew. I said, “Well, it is summer. And it was pretty long. Can you notice a line created by tanned part and untanned part due to the long hair in my back.” Andrew responded, “Why? Did you have a mullet hair style?”

Here, I had to ask, “What is that hair style?” Then, Stan showed me how that hair style looks like using his long hair.

Here is the definition of that hair style.

a hairstyle that is short at the front and sides, and long in the back.

Emo haircut

Andrew said, “It is also called ‘business in the front, party in the back’.” Isn’t that funny? Speaking of hair style, there is another one I learned from Kara. It is emo style. Emo itself is a style of rock music but it is different from the classic rock. Then, let’s think about the hair style all of the rock singers usually have. It is long, right? So, emo style is kind of long but a little different. Its look includes long side-swept bangs, sometimes covering one or both eyes. Well, you need to see the picture I am inserting here to have proper idea about it.

When you go to a hair salon, there are two equipment stylists use a lot. They are scissors and what? In Korea, I used to call it ๋ฐ”๋ฆฌ๊นก(Ba-Ri-Ggang). Do you know why we call it Ba-Ri-Ggang? It is actually not from English but from French, sort of. The name of the French company which makes this equipment is “Bariquant de Marre.” The first part of the name is “Bariquant.” I do not know who first started to call it following its company name. But, interestingly, if you say Ba-Ri-Ggang in Korea, everybody understands what is means.

Well, so if you had a chance to get your hair cut in America and you do not want your stylist to use Ba-Ri-Ggang, you should say, “Please do not use hair clipper to cut the sides! I want you to use scissors instead.” These kind of expressions seems not really important to know but you could easily find out that you wish you already know these before you actually go into a hair salon to get a better haircut. Funny, isn’t it?

I am pretty sure there must be a lot more expressions related with haircut. Do you know any?

13 Jul

shotgun wedding

Whose story : Ashka

Wedding Kiss

Based on what I have observed till now, I think the following is a normal process for a couple get married in America.

1. Start to see each other.

2. Fall in love and spare a lot of time together.

3. Live together (This step could take a few years.)

4. If a couple is still together after a few years of living, then, at some point, a guy pops the question. (Or maybe a lady is the one who pops the question.)

5. Once they are engaged, they start to plan on wedding but it could also take around a year till they really have a wedding ceremony.

Again, this would not be typical case but I have seen bunch of couples going through these steps. Especially, it is very typical to take around a year from proposal to wedding. My friend, Ashka who just got engaged a few weeks ago, decided to have her wedding this coming Labor day (Sep 6th 2010) weekend. It is a quite short period from engagement to wedding. So, whenever she tells her friends that she is going to marry this Labor day weekend, they ask her, “What? That early! Don’t say this is a shotgun wedding! Is it?” Here is a very interesting expression, shotgun wedding! I personally think this is very American one because it indicates the use of a gun. You all know that people can buy guns in America. For your better understanding, here is a good definition I got from Ashka.

A shotgun wedding takes place when the girl gets pregnant while dating a boy and the boy is not too sure about marrying her. So, the father of the girl steps in and uses a shotgun to scare the boy and talk him into marrying his daughter. Basically saying you got her pregnant so you better marry her or I am going to shoot you!

Well, this is not happening now. But I do believe this used to happen in the past and it became an expression.

For the similar case, we, Korean, have a very different expression. ์†๋„์œ„๋ฐ˜(Sok-Do-Wui-Ban) Its literal translation is “speed limit violation.” It originates from traffic law. If you violate speed limit, there is a higher chance that you can get into an accident. By accident, I mean a guy knocks a girl up. That is a big accident because there are not that many days a woman can get pregnant in a year. So, Korean people would say, “Is this marriage a Sok-Do-Wui-Ban or what?”, if a couple tries to marry all of a sudden. What a different expression for a similar situation! Isn’t it?

Ashka, many conguratulations on your wedding! Wish the best of luck in your life ahead! By the way, are you sure it is not a shotgun wedding or Sok-Do-Wui-Ban? ๐Ÿ™‚

11 Jul

dry county

Who taught: Phil and Kelly

Mountain pie

This afternoon, Jessy and I got back from camping with my friends, Phil and Kelly. We went to one of the Pennsylvania state parks. We were going to be there Friday night but, due to the heavy thunderstorm, we instead left Saturday morning. It was really fun! We definitely would like to try longer one next time. One of the surprising stories of our camping happened Saturday night. We left some of our food on the tables and some animals came and had their own feast while we were sleeping. They ate all of our breads, beef jerky, chocolate and marshmellow. We think it was raccoons. But who knows? It could be bears. This would never happen in Korea. So, one lesson for you if you are going to camp in America. “Never leave your food outside! Safest place would be in your car!” Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Especially, Jessy and I finally get to eat mountain pies and s’mores. Furthermore, Kelly told us a few scary stories, sitting around camp fire. I sill think about them, especially black little dog story, and feel scary.

Another thing which I found very interesting is no alcoholic beverages are allowed in all of the state parks in Pennsylvania. I was curious and of course asked Phil and Kelly. “So, I do not understand why they do not allow alcoholic beverages here. Is Pennsylvania most conservative state in America?” And They said, “No.. not really! You can find so many dry counties in many states.” “Wait! What is dry county?” I asked. Phil said, “It is a county where you cannot buy or sell any alcoholic beverages at all.” I was not able to believe it. “What? Really?” (For your information, all of the states in America have counties and counties comprise cities, townships and municipalities.) In fact, I looked into this a little bit more. There are three different types.

1. dry county (dry city, dry town, etc.) : bans both the sale and possession of alcohol.

2. wet county : permits both the sale and possession of alcohol.

3. damp county : permits possession of alcohol but bans the sale of it.

And, believe it or not, there are so many dry counties in America. You can find the list of them here. So, apparently, Pennsylvania is not the most conservative state in terms of alcoholic beverage consumption or sales. Honestly, I cannot imagine that people cannot even see any of the alcoholic beverages in their neighborhood. What do you think? Do you want to live there? Another question is what if you break that law? Is there any severe consequence for that?

08 Jul

the question

Whose story: Ashka

Proposal

Once again, Article is one of the hardest things in English. Here is a good example for you! The question! Do you know what it is?

Yesterday, my friend, Ashka, sent me a story about her experience which happened in her conversation with her friend who is in France. In her talk with her, she said, “Ray popped the question.” Her French friend did not understand it, which is not a surprise at all. It would be hard to understand by just this simple sentence here. If there is a little more context, it would be a little bit easier for non-native English speakers to understand. Pop the question means to ask someone to marry. Thus, the question would mean the official proposal of marriage. Were you even able to guess? I bet you were not.

FYI, there is even an USA Today news article with this expression, 10 great places to pop the question. Suppose that you say “pop a question” instead of “pop the question”! Then it has a total different meaning. It would mean just like coming up with any question you want to ask.

Since I mentioned Ashka, I have a very inspiring story about her. She came to U.S. from Poland when she was around 19. She went to a college here in U.S. Back then, she was not able to speak English at all. I mean really at all. So, she had really hard time to pronounce correctly and understand all of the slangs her American friends use. (I will tell you what! Americans use a lot of slangs, especially in informal conversations, such as lunch time talks. It is so hard to understand them if you do not know what they mean.) She told me that her friends corrected her pronunciation and taught a lot of slangs. So, what she did was setting the highest goal. You know what it was. She decided to study and practice English a lot so that no Americans ever notice that she is from other countries. You know what? Her English now is flawless and I believe no one would think that she is from another country. At least I thought that she is born in America. Ashka, you are amazing! You are my inspiration! You should share your secret studying methodologies here. And, once again, many many congratulations for your engagement!

Here is today’s lesson for me and you!

Set the highest goal and never give up at all! Never!

07 Jul

How do you think?

Who taught : Carl and Andrew

Jessy and Me

So, this is my 100th post! Yay! I am pretty excited about it. It has been 4 months and 7 days since I wrote my first post. To commemorate this milestone, I would like to share one of my personal stories. It is about my wife, Jessy. First of all, I am not telling any lie here. Jessy and I went to the same university in Korea. We both majored law. And, back then, she was one of the most famous girls in the school. (I am not saying she is not any more. ๐Ÿ™‚ ) Many times, a lot of guys waited for her outside of classrooms where she took classes to see her. How about me? I was just a normal guy whom no girls showed any interests in. Then, I am sure you would have a question you would ask. How the heck was I able to woo her? (The word, “woo”, here is a good expression you can use when anyone is trying to make a girl or a guy fall for him/her.) Well, I actually do not know. The only thing I know is that she was the one who hit on me. She actually told me, “First time I saw you, I just felt that you are the one for me.” What did I do? Well, I think I just did not pay attention to her a lot. Do you know why? I had to study hard to recover my bad GPA. ๐Ÿ™‚

So, college students out there! Believe it or not, here is today’s lesson for you.

Girls dig a guy who is enthusiastic about what he does! If you do your best at what you are supposed to do, you are charm enough to woo the best girl!

Now, let’s get to today’s expression, shall we? About three years ago when I first started my work, I was pretty nervous about having conference calls. And, one day, I was in a conference call with a few people from a client and my boss, Carl. They asked me a few questions and I provided a few suggestions. Following the suggestions, I said, “So… how do you think?” Why I use “how” instead of “what”? Probably, it is because I was translating Korean into English. In Korean, we say, “์–ด๋–ป๊ฒŒ ์ƒ๊ฐํ•˜์„ธ์š”? (Eu-Dduk-Ke Saeng-Gak-Ha-Se-Yo ?)” and literal translation of “์–ด๋–ป๊ฒŒ(Eu-Dduk-Ke)” is “how” not “what.” After the meeting, Carl grabbed me and said, “Terry, you should say ‘what do you think?’ If you say ‘how do you think?’, it is almost like insulting because it would mean like, ‘do you even have brain to think about?'”

Man, I was so embarrassed. On that day, I repeated ‘what do you think?’ like 100 times on my way to home. Now? I never even think ‘how do you think?’ at all.