As a weird follow-up to my previous post, in my 7th grade debate class, we keep ending up mentioning Aristotle. Seriously – it’s not really me who’s bringing him up, either.
Somehow, after having established the fact that the English alphabet wasn’t invented by King Sejong, and having established that it wasn’t invented in England, and having hinted that it was several thousand years old, someone suggested it was invented by Aristotle. Perhaps he stands in for “famous Western philosopher from really really long ago.” A Greek Sejong, if you will.
The funny moment was when, upon hearing the name Aristotle, Jiwon shakes her head, looking down, and mutters, “아아, 아리스토텔레스! 어려운 남자…” [Ah, Aristoteles! Difficult man…]. But the phrase “difficult man” was more like a complaint about a boyfriend than a philosopher. That’s the connotation, I think, of “어려운 남자.” Or rather, it’s just as ambiguous in Korean as it is in English, and her tone conveyed this strange familiarity.
It made me laugh very hard.
