Conversational Moments I Want To Remember

Gord: Wait, is this a multiple choice question?
Lime: No, choose only one answer.

I’ll be quite happy when I can make such an interpretive error in Korean. I mean, when you think about it, if it’s an unknown term, her understanding of “multiple choice” makes sense: you would choose multiple answers, rather than just one “correct” answer. Fascinating little turn of conversation, and just shows how potentially counterintuitive terminology (like idioms and other features of language) can actually be.

Another example is pronunciation I was trying to get right earlier. I encountered the word “꼬마” and discovered it means “kiddo” or something like that. I was so focused on getting the double-consonant at the beginning right that I couldn’t hear what I was actually messing up, so I asked Lime to say what I was doing wrong instead of just demonstrating the right pronunciation. Finally, it turned out I was saying something that sounded more like “꼼아!”, which meant the bit I was most focused on I was getting right, but the bit that is normally easy became hard because I was a focused on something else that I couldn’t even hear a very clear and audible difference.

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