Back in 2003, this piece of news featuring misguided South Korean parents subjecting their children to "tongue-snip surgery" to give them a better chance at becoming a fluent English speaker created a small buzz in the community of linguists. When I was prompted for an opinion by my linguist friends, I have to say I felt more than a little embarrassed. The reaction to this story varied from sheer astonishment to suspecting hidden anti-American agenda on the news source's part (by Mark Liberman on Language Log), but from what I know about this society, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that we Koreans are quite capable of such unreasonable acts.

There are several cultural contexts at work here: the way mastery of the English language has become a symbol of class in the modern Korean society; how Korean parents will do just about anything to pave way for their children's future success; and the Korean people's deeply held belief in bettering oneself, no matter how far-out the means to achieve it. I suspect that the last context is not very well understood by the American folks, who grew up hearing stories about best things happening to people when they just be who they are. This virtue of "being yourself" is not among the most promoted in the Korean society: we are ardent believers in self-improvement, whether it be through getting into a top university by studying 15 hours a day, achieving better looks by plastic surgery, or resorting to a little medical trick to become a better English speaker. So, we can be relentless and sometimes foolish to the extreme in the pursuit of better selves, and frankly, that energy might just have gotten the country where it is now.

Anyway. That was old news about South Korea's unhealthy obsession with English. Today, while cruising ohmynews.com, I ran across this delightful article titled "Catch the Comedy in Korea's English Craze". This is a case of brilliant comedy emerging through self-awareness. Basically, the comedy skit works by attaching to short English sentences some far-fetched Korean interpretations which the original English sentences, distorted with thick Korean accents, are made to sound like. In essence, it's a sort of English-to-Korean translation system which maps directly from sound to sound, entirely skipping syntax and semantics!

It took me a while to reconstruct the alleged interpretations -- would have been easier if the words were spelled in Korean, rather than in their English counterparts. The Korean nonsense interpretation for "I wanna go to the zoo" is "아원아 고 뜯어줘", which can be translated back as "Awan, open it (=the bag) for me"; "OK, let's go" is "옥혜, 내 찍어", which is "Okhye, take a picture of me". Utterly ridiculous!

A note on the title of the show: "Ut-Chat-Sa (웃찾사)" is an acronym of "웃음을 찾는 사람들", somewhat unconventional since acronymization in Korean is done with cino-Korean noun compounds and this name is a noun phrase with a modifying relative clause. The article duly notes towards the end the social phenomenon behind what makes this show so much appealing to the Korean audience, along with a mention of the "tongue-snip surgery" case.

I know, I know. Fun with machine translation engines on the web is old news. But that doesn't stop me from posting this absolutely nonsensical English-to-Korean translation of this very page done by Babelfish. I should probably add that I once worked in a joint machine translation project with CoGentex Inc., which was sub-contracted by Systran, the venerable machine translation company behind Babelfish.

There are some peculiarities in the translated page. First, there's my name appearing as "Na-Raerae". Where did the extra "rae" come from?? Second, their morphological generation engine needs fixing so it does not produce illegitimate forms such as "na-ka" (correct: "nay-ka") and adjective + habitual tense inflection sequences as in "iss-nunta". (ADVERT: My Klex does not make these mistakes... ^_^) Lastly, the translation for the first sentence of this section "I know, I know." is rather puzzling, given its very simple structure. Why the "iss" ('to exist') adjective, and why is it duplicated as "ississta"? The ghost in this machine sure swims in mysterious ways...

If you're like me, you are always in dire need of caffeine and internet. If you're even more like me, you have a 2+ year old laptop which is always hungry for power with its battery pack all but dead. Luckily, one-stop solutions exist for all of these three absolutely pressing needs.

I embarked upon searching for the perfect coffeeshop in Philadelphia with free wireless internet and a generous installment of power outlets, armed with my old Thinkpad plus an AC power adapter (and occasionally a 6-ft power extension cord... harhar... works better than asking the hunky guy sitting by the precious power outlet if he would be so kind as to switch tables with me).

Some of these coffeeshops run their own wi-fi networks; some of them happen to have charitable neighbors who do not bother to secure their wireless signals. Also, some coffee shops are fit for hours of pounding away at laptops, while in others you might feel a bit self-conscious immersed in long solitary geek-out sessions: see comments on "lounge-ability". I wish I was more of a coffee connoisseur and can offer more insightful notes on the quality of caffeine served at venue, but I'm just in for the buzz. My two cents where available. Here goes...

Intermezzo Cafi & Lounge 3131 Walnut St. (215) 222-4300	-- wireless (run by shop) -- plenty of power outlets -- high lounge-ability in non-evening hours. it sells liquor too, so you can indulge in intoxicated browsing if you so desire. has nice lunch menus, including paninis.
The Green Line Cafe 4239 Baltimore Ave. (215) 222-3431	-- wireless (unsecured nets in the hood) -- plenty of power outlets -- good lounge-ability. wireless signal is apparently stronger by the window.
Cafi Clave 4305 Locust St. (215) 386-3436	-- wireless (unsecured nets in the hood) -- at least 3 power outlets -- excellent lounge-ability
Paris Cafi 41 124 South 41st St. (215) 382-2577	-- wireless (unsecured nets in the hood) -- plenty of power outlets -- place is a bit crammed, but good lounge-ability in general.
Bucks County Coffeehouse 240 S. 40th St. (215) 386-1832	-- no wireless access. but the place has a couple of power outlets and a large seating area which make it quite comfortable for hours of uninterrupted work.
Ants Pants Cafe 2212 South St. (215) 875-8002	-- wireless (run by shop) -- 1 power outlet in front area -- low lounge-ability: a bit fancy. have amazing munchies. excellent coffee and bread pudding.
Philadelphia Java Company 518 S. 4th St. (at Rodman) (215) 928-1811	-- wireless (run by shop) -- some outlets... I gotta go back and check -- high lounge-ability. good munchies, fun South Street crowd.

Of course, if (1) weather is good and (2) you have a brand-new laptop with a battery still kicking and alive then you can buy your coffee from a cheap street vendor and take advantage of the much-bandied-about Wireless Philadelphia^TM by Philadelphia city government (damn, is it Mayor Street's face crammed right in the corner of the front page of the official site?? A very bad paste job, I say). You might even have read about some of the controversies surrounding this grand project and its recent legal standing. Lawrence Lessig recently had something to say about all this commotion, which doesn't seem to be online yet. Will link when it surfaces. (Update 03/03/05: Here it is.)

Posted on http://www.techcentralstation.com by Robert McHenry:

... The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.

-- My official home page

-- Back by popular demand: My Sister's Bigger, Fatter Korean Wedding. Now with a baby!

-- Mark Liberman's Language Log: when great linguists blog.

-- Applele hiBook (02/21/05)
The day Apple releases a laptop like this will be the day when I finally switch. Images by Japanese mockup Mac designer Isamu Sanada.

-- North Korea's War on Long Hair (02/02/05)
It reads like a perfect Onion article, only it isn't. Sigh. If you're not a Salon reader and don't want to go through the ad, you can read a shorter version here. Note the bits on the generous "comb-over exception" and the alleged "long hair -- reduced brain activity con nection".

-- Announcing Apple iProduct (02/24/05)
A perfect antidote to the spreading cult. Apparently, the cult felt the need to defend itself (make sure to click on the picture). Is it me or is this supposed rebuttal totally missing the point? Look, the original iProduct piece was not about making fun of Apple products -- it was making fun of you people, MacHeads!
(New to the battle scene? Read this collection of Salon reader's opinions.)