English Speaking

I saw this English conversation book on sale at a store in the COEX mall a while back. The title, "English Speaking" is a syntactically direct translation. Though it's a bit awkward, this is a pretty common "Konglish" construction -- I remember students saying things like "Teacher! No Korean speaking!" on the occasions I broke the English immersion environment.

Although my impression that the English wouldn't be so great was right, for $3 I was willing to overlook that to get the (presumably) flawless Korean dialogue. As a bonus, there are even a few unintentially funny passages. Take this one, for example. The last line makes the woman seem snarky and sarcastic, as if to say "Of course I'm going on a date with my boyfriend! Who else?!"

The problem comes from the word the word "약속" in the second line. In its most literal sense, it means "promise," but can also mean "appointment," or as (B) presumes, "date."

So in the fourth line, when (A) says the "약속" is with the hairdresser, she's not being mean -- it's just the ambiguity of the Korean word. Pretty funny stuff, though.