I love your post @hotcocoagirl! It reminds me of the time that I met a couple from Korea at a choir retreat in the UK and I shared with them some of my Korean vocabulary. They laughed a lot.

One of the first things I learned to say was: 미쳤어? I'm sure that was going through their minds too...

This. is. hilarious. What a fun read, @hotcocoagirl! It's amazing to see how we unconsciously pick up on different behaviors and tones through exposure. XD I applaud your courage to learn and speak it, I feel that if asked, I would reply with a scared, "aniyo".

Nice Coco , I love your piece and congrats 🎉🎉🎉🎉 on being published

@hotcocoagirl It was fun a read from the start till the end. It's Daebak.👍
It reminds me of my friends who does the aegyo extremely well though intentionally still I end up laughing with them.😂😂
Congratulations on being published.💗

I love this so much.

Omo I laughed so much reading this! Thank you @hotcocoagirl! It was a great post!

I really enjoyed reading this, @hotcocoagirl! When I was new with Kdramas, I often wondered why the girls spoke in that manner. I remember practicing how to say Oppa aegyo style. You really made me laugh!

Hahaha! I knew this was gonna be good from the title, but it was even funnier than I expected! And so relatable!

Certain Korean words/phrases I've learned are indelibly linked to the drama that taught me them, and often bring back fond memories when I hear the word or phrase. Like you, Gumiho's "Nomoonomoonomoonomoo jo-ah-hae" made a strong impression on me; that drama also taught me kogi (meat) because Gumiho was so enthusiastic about it. I think it was Best Love that taught me that 소 (so) means cow by making fun of the fact that Cha Seung-won's facial hair looks like the word 소. Best Love also taught me that "potato" is 감자 (gamja)-- how can I not think of Dokko Jin's kissing his beloved potato plant when I hear gamja being used in a drama?

I could go on and on with my Korean word associations, but I won't bore you. I'll just add that I think it's funny that one of the very first expressions I picked up (because it was so common in dramas of the mid-2000s) was 죽을래? (jug-eullae?), meaning Do you wanna die?

Thanks for the entertaining read, HotCocoaGirl!

Omo! Loved this post! I was kind of thinking of writing about this too, but I'm too lazy. I tend to pick up phrases and mannerisms from whatever drama I'm watching. Ddabong! Daebak! Fighting! Heol. Gwenchana, gwenchana. And after the 3 Reply series, I do some satoori, too, which always cracks up my family. The scary thing is when I do it unintentionally, in the presence of people who have never laid eyes on a kdrama.

😂😂😂 I laughed so hard while reading your piece. Thank you for the warning about dramaland Korean. The most I've used is "mashissoyo" & "kamsahamnida" to the owners of a Korean restaurant once. 😅 I do not have the courage to be you. Well done!

Also, "belting out each syllable with tearful love as I scared my cat". This is me and my dog as well. I see all non human companions of kdrama addicts suffer through this.

A good read, thumbs up! (Why can't we thumbs up articles?)

I am not brave enough to speak the korean I have picked up watching kdramas (though I have noticed I understand a lot more than expected nowadays!), except for under my breath during periods where I have been watching too many shows.

I once however binged shows for a whole weekend, and ended up randomly going "Ani-e-yo" in Korean instead of "Mei-you" in a Chinese conversation with a friend. Needless to say, she almost died laughing and my (not so?) hidden obsession with Korean dramas was embarrassingly exposed.

Aeygo you write so well!!! Such a fun read! I will die if any native Korean speaker asks me to say a few words haha! I’ll be all ‘aniyo khamsammida’!

@hotcocoagirl
I love you so much, Coco! This is hilarious, I can't imagine your Korean friends listening to your aegyo. Since you talked about wide open eyes and gestures, I now kind of imagine you like PSH in You're Beautiful and it's killing me!
Thanks for the laughs!

Thats so precious! 😂😂😂 I wouldnt actually try any of my kdrama phrases on an actual native korean so I find you really brave.
Thanks for sharing such a cute story! 😁

😂😂😂 @hotcocoagirl I laughed so much reading this.

Oh dear @hotcocoagirl that was hilarious! And the comments here too!!! Reading all this is such an great way to start my Saturday.

I've actually tried briefly to 'learn' spoken Korean online. Going deeper meant knowing how to read it as well, so I stopped.

With the Korean community whom I may meet from time to time, I only dare say "Anyong hasaeyo", sometimes with a nod or a bow. They often look non-plussed, I guess because they don't expect to hear Korean spoken to them by one so obviously not Korean. 😆

I thought that with the common phrases that I could pick up from Kdrama, that I'd be able to understand them a bit, as they speak among themselves. But I realised that they speak so fast, I cannot even catch the common phrases most of the time! 😊

I love this post, its funny but educational as well! And it gave me the idea that i can practice my "saranghae" with my cats shamelessly 😆 .. @hotcocoagirl you're brave to try the Korean words with the actual Koreans 👏👏👍.. I didnt even try to say thank you in Korea to the cab ahjussi who helped me a lot during my recent trip~owh that was so rude of me right but i wasnt prepared to be left alone in Korea for more than 10hrs.. i promise to learn more Korean phrases before making an attempt to enter Korea again.

Ahhhh! Soooo cute!!! Great job , @hotcocoagirl! What a fantastically entertaining read! And all I can say is thank you.

HAHAHAHAHA @hotcocoagirl I don't dare speak korean. Sure... I could understand a bit (well can I understand a bit?) but NEVER would I dare speak it. And I'm infinitely sure I'd have been in the same situation as you.

What a great piece!! You've hit a nerve with all of us drama-watchers!

Omg, I just laughed SO hard! This should so be a scene in a drama. I always say that my first three words of kdrama Korean were
Hajima - don't do it
Kajima - don't leave me
and
Uljima - don't cry
But I was once in a business meeting in Seoul and the company President joined us, whereupon I enthusiastically belted out, "YOBOSEYO, MR LEE!" and every Korean person within earshot burst into loud laughter. Because rather than shouting HELLO! as I assumed after hearing Koreans answer the phone, I'd basically yelled something more like "I'M HERE, GO AHEAD AND TALK!" ☺️
So that was the hard way to learn annyeong haseyo and never forget it.
(Btw, if anyone hears Italians answering the phone with "Pronto!", it's the same thing-do not greet people with Pronto, it's only a phone greeting 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Jinja!? Daebak!
While I can't say dramas have affected me in quite this way, I did unintentionally add a hwaiting! to a message I sent to a colleague the other day and a gwenchana to a tweet recently. It sneaks in.

I loved this by the way. The image of you attempting to communicate entirely as a candy trying to win her Oppa is hilarious. It sounds like your friend and I would get on well. The infantilising of female characters and my hatred for aegyo is well-established by now.

@hotcocoagirl,

ROFLMAO at your mortifyingly cringetastic aegyo. I feel for you. ;-)

I cannot abide American aegyo. Yes, there is such a thing. I realized with a start that there's a certain tone of voice and inflection that was used by schoolgirls when I was growing up in New Jersey that was the equivalent of aegyo. Even as a kid, I hated it. Now that I'm old enough to be a halmoni, I still occasionally hear contemporaries use it, which instantly triggers my gag response. Yuck!

There is a side-splitting scene in MARRY ME NOW of Hyun-ha giving her twin oppa Jae-hyung's girlfriend the hot tip that he loves hearing aegyo, when in fact it causes him to practically curl up in a fetal position and go catatonic in a corner. The look of horror on his face is priceless. Their soon-to-be stepbrother is also reduced to a blob of quivering protoplasm by Hyun-ha's verbal secret weapon. Which is pretty much how I react to it, too. (OTOH, I have to admit that Kim Young-kwang's over-the-top aegyo in LOOKOUT was epic. Maybe because his voice is lower.)

Thanks again for your thoroughly engaging essay. I got a good chuckle out of it. ;-)

Thank you for sharing such a relatable post! This is totally similar to my experience when me and my friends traveling to Korea, we went to Myeong-dong to bought a gift for our teacher. My friend only know Korean catchphrase, while I can bargain a little. Me, like any typical K-drama leads on the street, called the street vendor "ahjumma!" she suddenly ball out her eyes, telling me that I should call her imo then ahjumma :'D

Thank you for the laugh @hotcocoagirl.

“Jincha?” “Otoke?!” LOL 😂😂😂😂
I loved your post. As a linguist, I feel exactly the same, and whenever I speak a new language or new phrases of a new language for me, I tend naturally to imitate the others from whom I took it. When I lived in Wisconsin I immediately catched the mid west accent, and when I first came to Germany (I already spoke German at the time), people used to tell me I barely had any accent... of course, years on with the high German from college.
But anyways... I understand you sooooo much.
And you post wad cool!

@hotcocoagirl Never thought of it but your story is very true. I think I also picked up mostly those cute/slow/simple vowel phrases of female leads without realizing that's ayego. :D
I'm imagining me telling you "the best" and you replying "chin cha?"... :)))))

@hotcocoagirl This was amazing! I couldn't stop laughing all the way through.^_^

I can so relate to your post, which made my morning!!

I remember accidentally overhearing two Korean guys talking a couple of years ago in a Burger King. I remember they were talking so fast (only knowing the words Aigoo and Otoke at that time) when one of them said the word " 남편 " I recall internally screaming for understanding that word😭 lol fifteen year old me was crazy!

Thank you for this wonderful essay, @hotcocoagirl!
So funny and so well told...
I'm impressed that you have gone beyond aegyo Korean to real k-drama Korean.
I am forever your fan.
😂💕

Aigoo, omayah, neomuneomuneomu chalhaessho yong~ Jjinja wanjeon re-al! Neooooooomu himdeurojjyo yong? Geundae, omona, wanjeon daebakida. ddabong! jjang jjang!

(아이고야, 오마이야, 너무너무너무 찰해쪄용~ 진짜 완전 레알! 너어어어어어어무 힘드러쪄용? 근데, 어머나, 완전 대박이다. 따봉! 짱짱!)

[cringes. LMAO]

thats such a cute post @hotcocoagirl... I had little smile while reading it till the end but that "curry sharing" gave me big wide grin knowing Korean words can work ad bribe too i never knew about it...lol..

and for me.. my first challenge was also to figure out catching names while character speak their sentence at supersonic speed... I really had to work hard (with my ears and brain coordination) to get that thing fixed... but eventually it worked....
Thanks for the lovely, cute writeup.

Oh such a cute post!!!
I relate to picking up Korean through watching countless dramas, movies and variety shows!! But still cannot beat the younger set - my daughter is actually quite fluent in understanding although not so much in speaking - and she was tickled to death when someone called her Noona in college!!!

The comments are just as funny as @hotcocoagirl your story.

My first word was yeobosayo (hello) and I didn't know what it meant at that time. I used to live in an apartment complex in Ktown and my sister and I would press all of the apartment buttons in the lobby. We
would wait to hear the ajumma's and ajusshi's yell out yeobosayo and then we would yell yeobosayo back to them and run away.

Hahaha I love it! This was such a fun and adorable story @hotcocoagirl! Way to go, too, for try out a new language :D Many find aegyo cringey, but your sincerity and enthusiasm in learning Korean would have me sharing my curry too if I was your roommate lol.

I'm way too self-conscious to try speaking Korean in front of anyone yet, so I practice with my dog or the cats I watch, but always slip into that goofy sing-songy voice reserved for cute animals so maybe that's not the best idea haha

Should I ever visit Korea, I shall be that foreigner who only repeats drama phrases.
You'd be like k-drama version of Bumblebee :D

That aside, I love your post.

What a fabulous write up! You are a braver sould than I, Coco. I wouldn't dare speak outloud the phrases to a native speaker. I practice on my husband quiet a lot and all I get are eyerolls and "are-you-sure-you're-ok?" looks.

I have got a COP in Korean but I don't have any friends who share my interest or enthusiasm for kdramas. There must be other students who love them on the campus but I am not familiar with them. So I can't share my excitements with anybody nor can I sharpen my language expertise. Whenever I am all alone or thinking to myself, some Korean phrases will come to mind such as (when things are not going well or when I am excited) "jincha" "michikinne jincha", "cham" "ieron", "chugulle" "othoke" and the like. But I am careful not to say them aloud because the people around will be weirded out. However, my sister and mother are more tolerant or indifferent to my antics so it is not a problem at home.
Another thing I have noticed is that when I say that I am into kdramas and movies the reaction I get is not so good. They don't even know the stuff I watch but they dare to give me judgemental looks and I don't know why there is a kind of prejudice attached with kdramas. And the only dramas most of them know or have watched are Boys over flowers, heirs and playful kiss.
It must be nice to have friends who share kdrama interest. I am jealous of you all.