15 Apr

pardon my French

Who taught: Brian

When Brian taught me, he used, “excuse my french!” But, about two days ago, I said this one to my other friends and they all said, “It should be pardon my french!” Hmm… I thought American people do not use “pardon.” Don’t you prefer “excuse”? People in UK use “pardon” a lot, aren’t they?

Anyways, this expression might be very useful if you can use it in a good context. I mean… I don’t know… Maybe, you do not want to use this too often. I researched about the definition of this expression but was not able to find a real easy one. The easiest one I found is “excuse my bad language or forgive me for swearing.” Here is an simple example from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Pardon my French, but you’re an asshole!

I am not totally convinced about the origin of the expression, though. Here is what I found.

The word for “seal” (the animal) in french is “phoque,” which is pronounced the same as the word “fuck” in english. This is how the phrase originated.

This one does not make sense at all. Here is another one.

It in fact originates from the constant warfare between England and France many years ago, at that time “French” was associated with indecent things and activies (Swearing, kissing etc).

This might be possibly correct. My guess is basically that English people decided to use this one long time ago when they did have animosity toward French people. (Maybe they still have it???) Do French people also say, “Pardon my English” as the same meaning? Very curious…. Hmm.. Well, maybe I should not use this one in front of the real French people. They would not like it. Am I right?

Korean equivalent : 미안하지만 (Mi-An-Ha-Ji-Man) This might not be the perfect equivalent. But, you can use it in a similar context. I would translate this like, “Sorry for saying this… But!”

From today, I would like also to go through injuries in English, one per day, taught by Andrew. (So called, Andrew’s injuries in English series!!)

Today’s one is “jammed finger.” About three weeks ago, I played basketball and, during the game, the ball hits the tip of my index finger and my finger get swollen due to the impact of the hit. This case you can use “My finger is jammed!” If I heard this one without any context, I would have thought a finger covered with jam, like strawberry jam. Sounds yummy!

14 Apr

Preach to the choir

Who taught: Kara

Let me start with the update from the yesterday’s post! My team won the IO Days competition. I was so amazed by all of the outputs each team came up with within just three and half days. I am so thankful that I am working with unbelievably smart people. Where the heck all these people come from? My team worked as much as others did. We were just very lucky. One thing I really liked about my team was the final presentation. Kara already started the whole presentation preparation from the starting point and we were able to be well prepared for what we are gong to talk to the audience. Having said that, one of the best classes I took from Carnegie Mellon University during my master’s program was “How to make a great presentation.” Frankly, at that moment, I did not really appreciate the importance of the presentations and hated the class. But, it turns out that was one of the best classes I took in my life. The professor himself was really awesome presenter. Hearing his lecture, you are just totally blown away by his great flow and connection with students during the whole time of each class. There are a few rules he really emphasized to us.

1. Keep your presentation simple : One of the projects I have to go through in the class was actually making a powerpoint file. The grading system was very simple. Does it have too much words in it and does it have unnecessary slides in it. “Never let your ppt distract your audience’s attention! He always says there are so many people try to put too much in the ppt. Powerpoint itself should never try to talk to the audience. You are the one talking to the audience so that ppt file should be a useful help!”

2. Keep your time : “Time is money! Never waist your audience’s time! The better presenter should be able to convey the core idea to the audience in an easy and simple way and in SHORT time! If you can finish earlier than the allocated time, that is fine.” That is what he said! Of course, the final exam of the class was making a presentation. And, if anyone went over the time limit, they get penalized for that.

3. Know your audience : My program was one of the program under software engineering department. So, a lot of students had a tendency to talk about technologies or methodologies they used in their presentations. He hated that even he was a professor of the School of Computer Science. “If your audience has no or little technical background which is usually the case in the business world, never talk about the technology itself. Instead, talk about what the outputs are and what values they can get from using the technology you developed. They have no interest in how the technology works!”

4. Kill them with your killer point : In a similar context from the third one above, “Do not talk or reiterate what the audience already know, they will get bored right away”, he said. For this one, I have really nice expression. Kara used this one when my team practiced the presentation yesterday night. When James suggested that he might start with questioning “What is the information optimization?” for our presentation. Kara, without any hesitance, said, “Don’t preach to the choir! The whole company talked about it all the time. They all know what it is.” Well, that was correct. In our presentation, we focused on talking about what the problem was and how our application could solve it. I think that was what my team did really good.

The origin of the expression: It is easily acceptable that people in the choir of a church are already believers. Thus, you do not have to preach to them about believing in God. They all know it.

Korean equivalent : I cannot think of any other ones but I think this might be the one. 번데기앞에서 주름잡기! (Beon-De-Gi ap e su ju reum jap gi) Literal translation of this one would be “Do not even try to make wrinkles in front of silkworm pupae!” 🙂 Silworms have a lot of wrinkles and if you try to make wrinkles in front of them, you are waisting your time. Funny thing, though, we, Korean, eat the silkworm pupae.

13 Apr

pull your weight

Who taught: Jake

Starting from the last Friday through Monday, there was a team competition in my company. We call it, “IO Days.” During about 3 and half days, each team can design and develop any new feature integrated into my company’s core software which is search engine. It was really fun. Our team developed a really cool and amazing analysis dashboard tool which can be used in any companies with very easy configurations, if they bought our software. 🙂 We have a big presentation day tomorrow. No doubt we will win. Go, IOcandy! I will keep you posted about the result of the competition later. But, at the same time, I feel really tired now. Maybe I am too old for this. 🙂 This group work remind me of the expression Jake told me a few days ago.

Well, in so many times, I guess you would have to work with other people as a Well, in so many times, I guess you would have to work with other people as a team, right? Then, there is always someone who do not work as hard as they supposed to. Here is an expression you can use when you see those people. “I do not think you are pulling your weight! Don’t you think so?” Jake told me this expression the other day, “So, T-Bone, I heard you did not pull your weight for the professional services team’s quarterly goal.” I knew he was joking about something (“What? Jake! You were not joking?? That is BS! I know you did not pull your weight for the IO Days.”) but I did not know what he meant. Well, as always, curious Terry had to ask the origin of the expression. He dose not know it. Hmm… I thought about it and my only guess is “tug of war.” When you play it, you are always in a team and you really need to pull all of your weight to contribute to your team’s win. So, in that sense, it totally makes sense. But, I am not sure if my guess is right or not. Do you guys know?

12 Apr

wine and dine

Who taught : Kelly

Wine and Dine….Sounds like really elegant and nice expression, isn’t it?

When I heard it for the first time from Kelly, I thought this would be an expression used for having real nice dinner. It is half correct because there is something else after dinner. You can use this one like, “I am going to wine and dine her tonight.” I mean you could use but you have to be careful. Why? this is an expression you can use, “when you want to take a lady out to real nice dinner and then have a sex with her.” Well, I think you should drink wine too along with dinner. I am not sure whether women can use this one. Is it possible? One more cultural lesson here! Be careful asking any woman for having dinner together! In America, if you ask any lady to go out for dinner together, then it implicitly means you might want to have a sex with her. Well, if you think more carefully, if you are a woman, if you say yes to this request, then you are implicitly saying I would like to have a sex with you. I mean, possibly. This is not the case at all in Korea as far as I know. (You know, I am very innocent and do not know a lot about this. I am not sure how I was able to marry Jessy. 🙂 )

There is a dirtier expression than this one, “wine dine 69.” Kelly actually taught me this one 🙂 Well, I will let you figure out the 69 part. One hint is … Think of 6 as a man and 9 as a woman. “Still not get it? My friends! I donno… You should research by yourself!”

Having said an expression related with sex, there is an expression you can use when you want to stop talking about sexual stuff with your friends if he/she keeps talking about those things. You can say, “Get you mind out of the gutter!” The gutter literally means a narrow channel that gets water from the roof of the building. Also, there is a street gutter for the same purpose. As you can see, the gutter has pretty dirty things. So, for American people, the gutter is related with some sort of dirty things especially thoughts related with sexual stuff. If any of your friends like to talk about sexual stuff, then you can say, “Dude, your mind is in the gutter!” This might be offensive to your friends so that you should be careful when you use it.

Interesting thing is, though, that people are really fast to learn these kind of expressions. Is it because people like to talk about this kind of stuff more than others or is it just because of human basic instinct?

08 Apr

Your eyes are bigger than your stomach

Who taught : Brian, Scott, Carol

In the last post, I talked about a big social issue in Korea. Now, let’s talk about America’s. What do you think is one of the serious issues in America? I would say it is “obesity.” The other day, I was watching a new TV show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. In the show, Jamie Oliver who is from UK visited an elementary school in West Virginia. In the school kitchen, employees were preparing breakfast for students. You know what the menu was? It was instant Pizza. And there was another box full of chicken nuggets. They were for lunch. Unbelievable!! I was not able to believe what I was watching. I have to say this show is one of the best shows in a sense that it could help to change children’s diet and, if it could really make children stay fit and healthy, this would contribute to saving a lot of health care cost nationwide in the future.

Speaking of food, I learned two good expressions regarding eating or biting.

1. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach : When Carol told me this one, my interpretation was, “Well eyes cannot be bigger than stomach at all… So, maybe it means something nonsense??” Well, this time I was kind of close. Don’t you agree? This expression means…. Actually, instead of trying to define, let me give you a context. You and your family went to a seafood buffet and you started to pile up a lot of food in you plate. I mean really really high. Then, your wife would say to you, “Oh honey! Your eyes are bigger than your stomach! Can you finish it? You might throw a lot of them out.” I believe we all have the same experience, right? The thing is I always have really small portion and Jessy complains a lot like, “Your stomach must be smaller than your eyes!” 🙂 My feeling with this expression is that it can only be used in relation with food. Can I also use this expression if someone being too greedier than what he/she can afford?

2. Don’t bite off more than you can chew : I think this expression is more suitable to describe the situation that someone being too aggressive. Is this originated from eating apple or something? That is what I feel when I hear this one. Anyways, you would also hear this one often in business conversations. For example, if someone is trying to agree to do something more than he/she can handle, then you can say, “Let’s not bite off more than we can chew! We gotta be realistic.” Actually, today, Scott used this expression in relation with some sort of our sales. So, if you can use this kind of expression in a proper business context, people might think you are pretty good at English and you are hip.