Saturday, April 16, 2011

Korenglish

Come on, you know you miss my Korenglish posts....
For those of you who are more recent readers, we lived in Korea for a year, and I did frequent posts about the "not quite right" English translations that were EVERYWHERE!  Seriously, if you haven't done so before, click on "Korenglish" in my sidebar or under my labels and prepare to pee your pants.

On my way home from work a few months ago, I stopped at a "non brand name" grocery store.  It turned out to be a sort of international grocery store....with some CHEAP produce.  There were about 30 fruits/vegetables/herbs that I have NEVER heard of in my life.  I like to cook, and my husband and kids will eat any genre of food.  I'm telling you, this place is a WHOLE new experience.  There are the Korean, Thai, Mexican, and Chinese aisles (several of which have zero English on their products), the "American milk" aisle, and a huge seafood counter (since many of these cultures cook with a lot of seafood).  Just to make it more authentically "international" (or at least qualify it as a notquiteright Korenglish establishment), there are small stores in the back and front of the market, kinda like in an airport.  The computer repair shop is next to the wig store (I kid you not).  

My favorite sign was this one...


"PERSON HYEGENE"
"TOILT TISSUE"

Also, you gotta love that those things are in the same aisle as BBQ Supply, Pest Control, and light bulbs.  

Oh, and did I mention that I got a free roll of paper towels at the check out?  I thought they added them to my order by mistake.  They said, "No, they free."  nice....

3 comments:

Mari said...

I've missed your Korenglish posts! This is pretty funny - the free paper towels are nice though!

Jean said...

Awesome!

Jen said...

This sounds somewhat like my adventures to the Asian grocery store, only on a much larger scale and with much funnier signs! The first time I bought coconut sugar there, I had to go home and google the words, which were in Vietnamese (I think), just to make sure I bought the right thing. But, the prices can't be beat!