"American-Style Cool!"

The other day my 73 yr old. grandma told me that my outfit was "off da chain gurl!" I was so jolted by her use of this highly hip-hop, and highly teenage remark that I did not know what to do but to laugh and say thanks.  I'm sure many people can think of this type of instance when an older person says something typical of a person belonging to a much younger generation.  Pretty funny right?   It is even funnier when that old person is also a Korean whose number one cultural goal is to be "Amedikan styll kool"(American-style cool).

Similar to the previous discovery of the phrase "give him a big hand" (most of us know what happened with that one), the Head master always finds himself in situations where he will miss-learn the pronunciation of a word to the point of disaster and total confusion. 

"Dats-uh Kohl" (Thats Cool) the master, says when he figures out how the new air conditioning works. 
"Wow dat is-uh sooooh unique" (Wow that is so Unique), he says when something is presented to him that he has never heard of before. 

Of course, the headmaster is most often aware of his all-too-often misfortunate pronunciations and has a humorous way of navigating them when they occur.  One such occasion was told to me by the Headmaster himself. 

It was toward the begining of his teaching TaeKwonDo in America and he had been trying to learn different ways of praising children.  He had grown bored with the traditional "Gooh Jah" (Good Job) and was looking to mix it up a bit.  He came across a new word, learned it, and the next day he used it in class. 
"Wow!!! You are TEDABLE!!!" (terrible) he says with a big, huge, proud smile of his face to a 5 yr old yellow belt student.  Nobody made any comment, the kids were confused as usual but since he had such a nice smile on his face and his intonation was "exciting" as he would put it, they continued class like nothing. 

"You are Tedable!!!" (terrible) he continued to shout out to students in each of the following classes throughout the day.  Each student continued on without question.

The headmaster tells that he did not realize that Terrible was the opposite of what students want to hear when they are first learning.  He finally realized he was saying it wrong when an adult student took the word for what it meant instead of deducing that it was meant to be good based on the smile and intonation of the headmaster.  After he went back to his English notes he approached that same student and learned that the new word he had been mispronouncing all day was actually pronounced ter-if-ik (Terrific). 

The headmaster now uses this story to teach new instructors the importance of intonation and facial expression when teaching children.  He was telling children all day that they were terrible but they didn't cry because he said it with a smile. 

This is one perk of my job here.  Comic entertainment when the Headmaster ventures outside of the normal instructor script and talks to the class, or when he trys to be "American-style cool".