Yesterday, I played a game with a few of my middle school classes. It was a basic Taboo or Hot Seat style game, where one person comes up to the front and doesn’t look at the TV. A word and picture come on the screen and the others on their team have to describe it without saying the word or using any Korean.
It was amazing some of the ways they came up with to describe things using their limited vocabulary. Some were fairly obvious, like “Justin ____” for the word “beaver”, since Koreans pronounce “Bieber” and “beaver” the same. For others, they used Korean as a base, like “rock whale” for dolphin, since the Korean word for dolphin literally means “rock whale” (although I’m pretty sure the rock part of that is just a homophone for something else). Also, for the word “pear”, they pointed to their stomachs, since the word for stomach and pear are the same in Korean (not that anyone guessed correctly using that clue. They usually just passed on that one.)
And then there were some others. Take the quiz and see if you can guess the answers based on the clues that they gave (and which their friends used to guess the word correctly.) The answers are at the end.
Quiz
1. “firefighter’s friend”
2. “chicken changed”
3. “Edison” (plus pointing up)
4. “Pizza’s friend”
5. “white water”
6. “small round cake”
7. “bird king”
8. “lion’s friend”
9. “Korean number 1 food”
10. “Made in _______”
How many could you guess? Scroll down to see how you did.
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Answers:
1. “police officer” (They tend to link these two jobs.)
2. “kitchen” (Korean students always mix these two words up, so they see them as related.)
3. “light”
4. “chicken” or “pickles” (This had two, since they closely relate pizza and chicken, but also when you order pizza here, pickles always come with them as a side dish, even with delivery.)
5. “milk”
6 “muffin”
7. “eagle”
8. “tiger”
9. “kimchi”
10. “China” (even in Korea, a lot of things are manufactured in China, so they are used to seeing Made in China.)
The Green-Walled Tower 
April 18th, 2014 at 11:58 pm
I got only two right: tiger and kimchi
April 18th, 2014 at 11:59 pm
That’s pretty good. Some of them I would have had absolutely no idea about if I hadn’t been looking at the answers myself.
April 19th, 2014 at 12:35 am
That was fun. I got a few of them, but man, the thinking is very different there. Kimchi was pretty easy, but I figured a firefighters friend was a fire hydrant. Oh well, it was entertaining.
April 19th, 2014 at 12:47 am
I don’t know how much is cultural and how much is just them. Of course, it’s much easier for them, since they have a substantially smaller English vocabulary, so they don’t know words like hydrant, hose, Dalmatian, or all the other things we would think of. Glad you liked it. 🙂
April 19th, 2014 at 1:24 pm
Got 5 ! yoo hoo.. but “Police Officer” and “Tiger” was quite baffling ! 🙂
April 19th, 2014 at 1:26 pm
Yes, the definition of “friend” is rather flexible. 🙂
April 19th, 2014 at 7:39 pm
This is fascinating. I got three right, which are kimchi, light and China. I love languages and the different ways people associate things with different words.
April 20th, 2014 at 3:13 am
Well I got 4 and should have figured out 9 & 10. Love Kimchi! I’ll bet your students love you.
April 20th, 2014 at 9:10 am
Most of them, I hope. 🙂
April 21st, 2014 at 2:44 am
Boy, did I blow this quiz.
April 21st, 2014 at 3:40 pm
only one! God only knows how… but i guessed the eagle 🙂
April 22nd, 2014 at 9:07 pm
Only got 1. An interesting game there.
April 23rd, 2014 at 3:23 am
I only got three: light, eagle and China! Fun game. I never would have guessed pickles came with pizza!
April 23rd, 2014 at 7:49 am
Over here they eat side dishes with everything. Usually it’s kimchi but with pizza it’s pickles. Even with delivery, you get a small container of pickles with it.
April 23rd, 2014 at 7:53 am
It just seems like an unusual combination 🙂
May 6th, 2014 at 9:08 pm
The only ones I got were “light” and “kimchi”. But pickles & pizza! what an abomination. (She says grabbing a fork to eat that kimchi…)