[Korean Culture & Language] Korean idiom jokes

Hello, this is Uptempo Marketers!

Food and humility are important parts of Korean culture. So, when someone invites others over for a meal, they say “차린 건 없지만, 많이 드세요”. 

차린 means prepared

없지만 means Even though not much

많이 means a lot

드세요 means eat

It means “There’s not much to eat, but please enjoy”. They would say it regardless of the actual amount of food they have prepared.

Sure, it’s nice to be polite and humble, but it’s not always fun! When you invite your friends over, you can say “차린건 많지만 조금 드세요” to be funny. It means “I’ve prepared a lot, but please eat little”. For a second, they would think that you are being polite, but soon they would realize that you were only being mean and funny.

Another thing you can say when you invite someone over is “이렇게 누추한 곳에 귀한분이…”.
이렇게 means like this
누추한 곳 means shabby place
귀한 분 means precious person 

It means “It’s an honor to have such a precious person over at my shabby place”. Many people used to say this to be humble and make the guests feel welcome. Even though some people still say this in formal situations today, others think that this is too much. Instead, you can change the order of the sentence and say “이렇게 귀한곳에 누추한 분이…” to be funny. It means “It’s an honor to have such a shabby person over at my precious place”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hkrekyobr8

In this video, Ye-Ji (ITZY) acts arrogantly and asks, “제가 왜 저 사람들과 함께 있는거죠? (Why am I here with these people?)”. The other girls respond cleverly, “What did you say? We’ve got such a shabby person (referring to Ye-Ji) over at our precious place”. They all start laughing.

It is always fun to play around with words with friends. However, it’s important to speak sentences in the correct order in formal situations, since simply changing the word order can completely alter the meaning of a sentence.

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