Engrish in South Korea: Cafes

Koreans are obsessed with learning English for tests, traveling, and for work. They also have a strong desire to learn English phrases so they can understand American or British TV shows and movies. The weird thing is that you'll see a lot of awkward or badly translated English in front of businesses and on clothing despite so many native English speakers in Seoul. And some of them aren't awkward, they're just cute expressions that you wouldn't normally use for a business.

Americans, Brits, Canadians, or Australians could easily check to see if the English is natural or strange.  Over the many years of living in Korea (almost 15 years), I've collected photos of funny or unnatural English that I found on cafes, restaurants, and t-shirts. I've continuously put them into a photo album on Facebook and I'm still collecting them on a monthly basis. Due to so many great pictures, I thought I would create a three-part series on my blog, so more people can enjoy all of these gems. 

Today, we will start with Engrish in South Korea: Part 1: Cafes.

A. Cute Cafe Names

1. You can see why the owner of the cafe picked this name. Anyone would like to take it easy and relax while you're at a cafe. I would say that "take it easy" isn't as common of an expression as it used to be, but it's still not a bad name for a cafe.

2.  I'm not exactly what the creator of this idea was thinking. When you order coffee, do you get a hug? Or do you feel like you're getting a hug when you drink their coffee? I have no idea. Although this is a random name, the name has that cute Asian Hello Kitty (Sorry Koreans, I mean Kakao Friends) feel about it.

B. Funny Cafe Names

1. Coffee Bean makes sense, but beans alone does not. I think of Mexican food and the power of those beans (gas) for some reason. Haha!

2. Apparently Bean has a brother and opened his own cafe....

3. The next one is fairly clever since you can ask your coworker, "Wanna Coffee?" and the coworker can just say "Yes!" and then you head over here. The Brits might hate this name since they hate American English slang but I think this name makes me snicker.

4. Then we have a fairly ridiculous one, yet the humor makes me appreciate Korea. My hunch is that the owner of this cafe probably has a great personality. As an English teacher, you might want to be picky about the name placement since he or she should have put the word "cafe" on the end. But then the name of this cafe wouldn't have been that as funny.

5. And if you don't want awesome coffee, you can settle for "good good good" coffee...

6. The final name in this category makes the coffee seem unique and uses the word "ground" to refer to coffee grounds. I like it!

C. Random Cafe Names

1. Ireland is known for its potatoes, but I'm not sure what this exactly has to do with coffee (Cafe Irish Potato). Hmm...

2. This next one has two problems with it. First, it's not a cafe; It's actually a bar. Secondly, they ripped off the logo from American Airlines. Oops!

3. I get the intent of Omnipotent Coffee. They wanted to make the coffee sound powerful but it just doesn't work especially when "powerful" has three syllables. Why don't we just kick it up a notch to four syllables? I would really love to hear how you would pronounce this in Konglish!

4. Koreans understandably love Tiramisu cake and this cafe sells that kind of cake. However, the owner of this cafe thought that would be a silly name for a coffee establishment, so they came up with this name instead...

D. Awful Cafe Names

1. Let's start with "Hussy Coffee". Did the owner of the cafe even search what the name hussy meant? Well, let me give you the English definition and tell you how ridiculous this name is. 

Hussy (noun): An impudent or immoral girl or woman

The word "hussy" is just a little less offensive than the word "slut". Yes, this name is that bad...

Who came up with this crazy name??

2. How about a really weird name like Psycho Barista? Koreans already know the meaning of the word "psycho" (insane person), so maybe they thought this name would be funny or maybe they wanted it to be a bit edgy since the outside looks very dark. Perhaps. But let's add a slogan to creep you out even more: "We will coffee you." Ummm okay.....

3. I really don't know what to say about the following one. It has two MAJOR problems behind it. First, the word "anle" does not even exist. Secondly, it sounds too much like "anal". Do they have that expensive poop coffee that is so famous and expensive? It honestly made me wonder that. Non-Koreans will have a field day with this one every time they walk by this coffee shop.

4. Although I was thinking of putting the next one into the funny category (and it certainly IS funny), it's still a horrible name for a cafe.  I'm not sure why any cafe would be called "bump and grind" since this is a kind of dance that makes it look like you're having sex with your clothes on. But then again, maybe that's how this coffee affects you? Well, probably not.

So there you have it. If you found other ridiculous, funny, cute, or random cafe names, please leave a comment below! 

Scott Worden (The L.A./Seoul Guy)

Instagram: l.a.seoulguy