What the .... definition?!?!?

Hat Tip to Brian in Jeollanamdo for the post about a Korean TV show. It inspired me to post this.

Electronic dictionaries should be banned from use in Korea. I don't usually let my students use them in class. I would rather we try and figure out what they want to say together. They tend to remember it more.

This show is a good example of what is wrong with using the dictionaries, at least in Korea. The 1st definition used is NOT always the most common. In many cases it is a much older or even archaic meaning. Koreans tend to just go with whatever the 1st definition says without bothering to consider the context. Or without considering the other meanings. This often leads to stupidity and sometimes hilarity.

One of my old students was a great writer. His main problem is that he relied on his electronic dictionary too much. It would turn a good sentence into nonsense sometimes.

Once the assignment was to write about their best friend. As usual this student put together a good paragraph except for one sentence. He wrote "I miss having intercourse with my friend." It was hard but I managed not to break out laughing. He (the student) could see something was wrong, odds are I was getting red in the face trying not to laugh. All I said was that there is more than one meaning to intercourse than discussion, and discussion isn't what first comes to mind.

Being a keener he immediately opened the dictionary and started typing. His face turned red and he started sputtering "No teacher! No. Not sex! Just talking."

I told him I understood. Then we had a discussion about the problems with using a dictionary or thesaurus. The problems with using words you don't really know and the context they are being used in. I told him about the Friends episode where Joey used a thesaurus to look more intelligent when writing a letter for a friend. In the end he looked like a child because it looked so stupid.

This isn't even getting into the other areas of crappy English in Korea. There are a lot of them. Song lyrics, album names, signs, ads, t-shirts. The list goes on and on. Its bad enough the dictionaries don't help but the bad English they get coming from so many other areas just makes things worse. Like a student listening to Gay-Dragon or one of the other Gay-Pop singers singing and then thinking "Teacher come on me" is the proper way to say "Teacher come here please."

By not REALLY checking their English they are just going to continue to look stupid.