Unvoluntary 吏讀
Yesterday I was watching 도전 골든벨, a quizz show featuring a bunch of high school kids being eliminated question after question until only one remains. Of course, Korea being Korea it’s all about rote memory and cramming as much useless data as possible into their little brains – doesn’t mean they know shit about life, but the crap they remember sometimes is astounding…
Anyways, yesterday, they were asked to write down 불사조 — 죽지 않는 새 — in sinograms. 13 or so were kicked out after this question, which, well, figures, considering the state of sinograms teaching in Korea [and let’s not get started on things like 베이징 instead of 北京/북경]. I did catch one funny – albeit wrong – answer:
火死鳥
Considering that 火 is [불] 화, this is extremely funny, since that girl had meaning and pronunciation confused. It looked like some old Korean vernacular text written in 吏讀 [이두], where sinograms where sometimes used for their actual pronunciation, and sometimes for their vernacular reading.
Needless to say, I was the only one at home to see this [somehow my family has a tendency to watch TV without really watching, and I am guessing here that it’s not just them… Of course, had I had control over the remote control – firmly held by the head of the family 
– I would never had watched this show, ㅋㅋㅋ], and the only one I could tell the story without writing it down – like now – was Oranckay…