Caveat: I’m Boring

Student: "Teacher! Are you boring?"

Me: "Yes. I am. Now go away, before I bore you more."

Student: laughing, ran away.

You see, it's quite difficult for Korean-speakers to get the difference in meaning between English pairs like "boring / bored" or "exciting / excited" because Korean adjectives describing feelings of this sort work differently, such that the same word can have both meanings. So the distinction between something or someone being bored or boring is difficult to explain.

So I welcome the opportunity to make stupid jokes of their frequently erroneous deployment of boredom-related words in particular. This was exceptional only because the student was sufficiently advanced that he recognized his mistake and got that I was making a joke.

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