I’ve come to the conclusion that English must be the most sexually suggestive language on the planet. Of course, being fluent in an impressive one language, my sample size isn’t very large and that statistic isn’t very reliable. Still, the incredible ability of English language learners to accidentally imply things that are rather naughty is… enormous. I’d like to share a few vignettes from my time in Korea thus far. (Apologies for those of you who have seen some of these on blog posts, twitters, or Facebook posts before.)
To begin with the obvious: Almost once a week, I break up little cat fights between middle school girls that go approximately, “Teacher! She touched me. There!” “No, teacher, she first.” “NO! She did me!” “Liar! She did me four times!” I try not to snort as I play responsible teacher and break it up.
An amusing theme and variation on this came up a week or so ago, when I came across one student tying a string just above her friend’s elbow, almost as if she was going to measure her blood pressure. When I asked what they were doing, she responded in all innocence, “Playing doctor.”
Another classic occurred several months ago. I was asking students about the differences between Korean and American Thanksgiving, and we were talking about what you normally do on each holiday. On American Thanksgiving, we watch parades and football and eat turkey, unless you’re a part of my family, in which case you eat walnut cheddar loaf. Korean Thanksgiving is significantly less fun, and involves an extended ceremony of ritually bowing first to an altar dedicated to various ancestors, then to all the elders in your family. When I prompted the students to tell me this, one responded immediately, “Go down!” I was heroically repressing the urge to giggle when another added helpfully, “Go down to grandma!” Thank god she didn’t change to the “to” to an “on”, or I definitely couldn’t have kept up my neutral teacher face. I dutifully wrote “Bow to grandma” on the board.
Perhaps my new favorite, though, came in a conversation with a Korean friend a few weeks ago. Her husband had just moved into their new house (he’d been living in another town for a while) the weekend before, and she’d consequently cancelled her plans with me. She swore up and down they’d been unpacking all afternoon, and I couldn’t help but tease her about it a little. She got a bit defensive and informed me, “You should see his package! It’s huge!” I burst out laughing, and she, being basically fluent in English and knowledgeable in slang, quickly realized her error. “Not that! I mean his junk! There’s so much of it!” That, of course, only made it worse, and she gave up and started laughing with me. When I’d finally recovered a semblance of calm, she asked me what she could possibly say that wouldn’t sound so damn sexual. We settled on “He has lots of luggage.” Though if anyone can make an innuendo out of that, I’d be interested to hear it.
