Remember the Lanterns

David

Monday morning passes as usual. I have the early morning class with the three quiet students. In the 6:30 class, only Rina is there at first. She sweetly
tells me slowly about her weekend. She helps run her sister's store and much of her weekend was spent there. The 7:30 class is a little funny. Since the beginning of a month, a new student has joined us. Indeed, he actually missed the first three weeks of classes or so because he was on a business trip. His name is David and he is probably mid to late fifties. I get the impression that he is kind of a big deal at his work. I suppose he's pretty senior and has been working for his company for much of his life.
Therefore he is just killing time until retirement. He used to live in France and speaks pretty good English, and apparently some French too. But he has this extremely weird tendency – it turns my friend Chris, who would say ya every other word or so, was just doing this because he was nervous, and the more I spoke to him the less he said it. However, this gentleman, David (I don't know his Korean name), would frequently insert the non-word, or sound, buh, into every utterance.
Hello David. How are you today?
Yes, buh, good thank you, buh.
Did you have a nice weekend?
Yes, buh, but my weekend was buh, very busy. Why's that? What did you do?
Well buh, I had many work to do buh.
And so on.
We'd talk about the elections in the UK:
Yes buh David Cameron buh very young buh. We talked about Obama.
Yes buh Mr. Obama buh I don't know buh.
We talked about holidays.
Yes buh, I have buh many wonderful souvenirs buh.
Another one of his tendencies was to drop French loanwords in English conversations, not realising that they didn't have the same meaning or he'd pronounce them with a French accent.
We talked about everyone's younger days.

Yes buh, I had wanted buh to be entrepreneur. Buh I would change many things buh. I would date buh a young buh beautiful buh girl from Canada buh, about 25 years buh.
And then I'd feel like he'd be undressing me with his eyes. It was uncomfortable at times, to say the least, and not only for me, but for other students as well. He couldn't stand talking to them and he always wanted to speak with me only. Apparently this was the case with all of the native teachers, and one of the reasons he was in a low level class. Well, that and the fact that he was often away on business trips. Still, I didn't mind him and could deal with most of his interruptions until today.
And today, for whatever reason, the topic of Deborah came up in class. This was a hot topic in the news, and the students loved to discuss topics like this. Essentially, Deborah was a successful employee for First Bank in New York City or somewhere. And she had recently been fired or was forced to resign. She was suing her employers because she felt that she had been let go for being too attractive. Naturally, this topic was a huge hit with David and it gave me, as a teacher, an opportunity to correct some of the rampant Konglish that was being thrown around the class.
Many of you today used the words "She is a glamor" to describe Deborah. This is a Konglish word. Glamor has quite a different meaning in English to in Korean. Any ideas? Glamor does not describe a woman's figure, rather its more related to a lifestyle.
Here are a list of women:
I revealed them dramatically, one by one. I had written Scarlett Johansson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Salma Hayek's names on the board. I asked the classmates to discuss what these women had in common. Then I asked for some Korean examples of women with similar physiques. I got Kim Mi Hee as an example, and Lee Hyo Ri (the latter of which I do not agree with as being curvy whatsoever).
In English, we don't use the word 'glamor' to describe these women. Does anyone know an alternative?
Keovee?
Thanks Chris. Yes, we might use the word curvy instead. I wrote it on the board.

Ask your partner if they agree that curvy is a good word to use.
Discussions exploded about the 'body lines' or S-lines of these women. These students were very happy to talk about this.
I reigned them in. There's another Konglish expression that I heard a few people use just now: body line or S-line.
David, like he often does, interrupts at this point.
Yes buh, I think, buh that maybe figure or physique buh.
Thank you David. Yes, you could use the words figure or physique instead of body line. A curvy physique or a nice figure would replace body-line or S-line and it's a polite and respectful way of describing a woman's body.
Yes buh. So how do you say buh large.... He makes a gesture to refer to breasts.
I must have blushed, but he was serious. I responded with, a polite way of referring to that body part is breasts. I did not repeat the gesture.
So, buh, how would you buh tell someone they have big breasts?
At this I was stumped.
I.. I.. I... I'm not sure I can help with that David.
Yes buh, I just want buh to know buh an academic way buh. If I meet buh someone.
Yes, because David important in business was also an aspiring academic.
The other students were not impressed.
I moved on. For homework, please look up the definition for the word 'glamor' and 'glamorous' and we will discuss it again tomorrow. Have a nice day everyone.
Chris came up to me after class to apologise and express his disbelief. He told me not to worry about David. And I thought this was very kind of him.
You know Chris? We are coming to the end of our month of study together. Do you think we should organise a class party?
Sure ya! I can be captain! Maybe ya this Friday? Sounds good.
In David's monthly evaluation, I wrote that he should do his best to stop using the word 'buh' intermittently in his speech since not only is it

meaningless, but it makes him seem to be at a lower level than what he actually is. But, David is David and it's hard to change something that's so 'habituelle'.