Wednesday, December 17, 2008

yesŭmaen* (예스맨)

Jim Carrey's upcoming film, YESman, includes scenes where the Cannuck funnyman takes a Korean class (apparently because, per the film's premise, he couldn't say no). 

A Hollywood figure employing Korean culture as a vehicle for laughs? What could possibly go wrong?

By the way, the Han'gŭl (한글; Korean text) on the chalkboard is rather odd. The largest letters on the left (그, 느, 드) looks like someone meticulously drew how those characters would be printed on a serif typewriter, while the large characters to the right (시옷) look like someone without much experience with Han'gŭl tried to mimic serif typewriter characters (what Burger King would call a Han'gŭl virgin). 

Meanwhile, the horizontal sentence at top (청주 날씨는 어때요?, meaning "What is the weather like in Chongju?") looks like it was sloppily drawn by the same Han'gŭl newbie or possibly a really, really tall kindergartner. 

Anyway, it's not the first time Hollywood has employed Han'gŭl to make things cool.

And just how is the weather in Chongju? Well, over the next couple days highs will be in the upper 30s (Fahrenheit) with lows in the 20s (also Fahrenheit). Click here to check the weather right now.

* When writing the McCune-Reischauer Romanization for "yes man" (which is now an acceptable Konglish term), this is a good time NOT to leave out the breve [˘] over the u, since the breve-less yesu maen would be "Jesus man."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Share your thoughts, but please be kind and respectful. My mom reads this blog.