Your Monthly Konglish: 4/2016

1). Not Konglish, just something that doesn’t make sense. You’ll often see “freebies” taped to products in grocery stores. Things that belong together: a couple extra diapers taped to a box of diapers, or batteries taped to a toy. Things that don’t belong together: a raincoat (!!!) taped to a box of cereal (left) or a sponge taped to a box of cereal (right).

2). Trouble Buster: you bust trouble?

3). “Let’s groove it!” Not sure what that means. But, this store has a plethora of items with Konglish printed on them!

4). Cactus: “Clumpy but he has warm heart.” Clumpy = prickly? How do they know that the cactus is a “he?”

5). “Wheelie bin desk tidy.” Wheelie bin keeps your desk tidy? They were really cute tiny trash bins.

6). Meow! “Cat is always right.” Dog is always wrong.

7). Bears “need more slep” in order to spell ‘sleep’ correctly.

8). Not even sure why they would advertise that the AC in the subway car is on low?

9). Pocket Cheese actually makes sense. Individually wrapped cheese sticks you can put in your pocket.

10). Isn’t there more than one odd person?

11). “The grow mustache and be a man” shirt.

12). Seen in elevator: very confusing graphics to what appears to be an anti-smoking poster. The graphic on the left is disturbing… A child suffocating in a plastic bag. (Smoking can be like suffocating your child?) My neighbor (also a foreigner) said she thought the sign was about a child who was kidnapped! The graphic on the right looks to be a picture of a person in prison, behind bars that are made of cigarettes (and it looks to be drawn by an elementary school kid).

Oh, and the tagline (which I cropped out by accident) says, “World class self-esteem.” Um, ok.