Day: November 9, 2012

My student who goes by John wrote this too-short essay in his essay book.

Jarad Way always say 왜저래? so his mother really upset. Jarad be punished. So he was really sad. So, He changed his name 왜저래?

I’ve written before that I sometimes jokingly tell my students that my Korean name is 왜저래 [wae-jeo-rae = way-juh-ray]. It has a similar sound to my name when pronounced casually in Korean order (i.e. last name first): way-ja-red. And the meaning is something akin to “what the heck?” – it’s not really bad cussing, but it’s not exactly polite – this explains why my mother punished me, in the essay. It’s a clever folk-etymology of my name (auto-onomastics?), from a 5th grader.

Here’s a bit of self-flattery to make up for the preceding – something encountered in 2nd-grader Lucy’s essay book earlier today. Notice how she started to write alligator but decided that that was too hard, and wrote “Steve” – which is the current alligator’s name.

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