Caveat: 똥먹었다

Here follows an actual conversation with one of my favorite seven year old students:
“Hi. How are you?”
“I’m happy!”
“Good. What are you doing?”
“Water. 물.” He was translating – for himself, or to make sure he was getting the right word with me. He was standing at the water cooler, putting water in one of those envelope-shaped paper cups. Children seem to find drinking water this way endlessly entertaining.
“Did you have a good weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What did you do?” I was going out on a limb in asking this question, because it was somewhat beyond little Jinyong’s level of English ability.
Without hesitation, and with a straight face, he answered, “똥먹었다!” As cheerful and as pleased as can be.
I burst out laughing. You see, “똥먹었다” means “I ate shit.” Seriously.
On the one hand, I was very proud of the kid – he’d understood a question I hadn’t expected him to (past tense, open-ended), and answered it (although in Korean) with communicative competence. The whole conversation showed a higher level of comprehension than I’d expected from him – he’s probably my lowest ability student. So I felt proud.
At the same time, it was a rather disgusting answer. He’s what you might call a potty-mouthed kid. He’s a Korean version of a character from South Park. So his answer wasn’t exactly unprecedented. It was funny.
I was laughing too much to continue the conversation. And I unintentionally reinforced his disgusting sense of humor by laughing at his statement. Ah well. Life goes on.

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