Incidents of In My Language, That Sounds Like... specifically involving the Korean language.
- nun (눈) means "eyes" but sounds like the English word "noon".
- In Korean, ai (아이) means "child". In Japanese and Mandarin, ai (愛/爱) means "love". All sound like the English word "I". To further complicate matters, in Hokkien Chinese, it means "want" (要), but depending on the context it can also mean "love".
- The Korean word-phrase Nalgae (날개) means "wings". It was supplied by North Korea to be used as an international name for storms in the Pacific typhoon season. When it is transliterated into Chinese (尼格), it often sounds dangerously close to the N-word (Mandarin: Nígé; Cantonese Yale: Nèih gaak).
- Korean and Japanese have some words which sound similar but differ in meaning:
- The Korean dish kimchi sounds similar to kimochi-ii ("to feel good"). This is nodded at by a Japanese brand of kimchi, which released a song called "Kimchi no Kimochi-ii" ("Feeling Good with Kimchi").
- The Japanese name Saeki sounds similar to saekki, which more or less means "you son of a bitch".
- Korean oppa ("older brother") sounds similar to oppai (Japanese for "big boobs").
- Not dirty but still amusing: In the Korean martial arts style Tang Soo Do, a bo staff (a long, smooth staff intended for striking) is referred to as a bong.
- In Korean, sarang means "love". In Malay, it means "nest". Romantic connotations about starting a family aside, it is confusing to Malay-speakers in Korea.
- "susu" means "millet" in Korean, "milk" in Malay and Indonesian, and has a much more offensive meaning in Hindi: "piss".
- Korean has several different words for "you". They include nega (네가, pronounced like “nay-ga”) and niga (니가, pronounced "nee-ga"). Cue the offended Americans. One YouTube commenter heard one of these words used in a K-pop video and got so offended that they said Koreans should change their word for "you". (Another commenter suggested Korea should adapt "anata", one of the Japanese words for "you". Which, if you know anything about Korean–Japanese history, is incredibly offensive to Koreans.)
- Be careful travelling to Korea in the winter. 'Shiver' sounds very close to something else there.
- The personal name of King Sejong the Great of Joseon was "I Do"note , pronounced something like "ee doh".
- For that matter the royal family of Joseon was The House of I, which to English speakers looks like a grammatically-incorrect way to say "my house".
- Korean royal families in general fall into this trope: the royal family of Goryeo was The House of Wang, the royal family of Balhae was the House of Dae, and the royal family of Goguryeo was the House of Go.
- In Korean "kaka" (까까) is a child's way of saying "snacks". In Japanese kakka (閣下) is a suffix meaning "Your/His/Her Excellency", while kakka written in hiragana (かっか) means both "to burn hotly" and "to lose your temper". In Swedish, "kaka" means "cake". And in Italian, caca means "to shit". Aaaaand in Swahili, "kaka" means "brother".
- The Mandarin Chinese phrase "你吃饭了吗?" (nǐ chī fàn le ma?) means "have you eaten yet?". It sounds very like the Korean insult "니씨팔놈아" (nissipalnoma), meaning "you bastard".
- One Reddit user noticed that in Britney Spears' song "Lucky", Britney's enunciation makes the lines "Early morning, she wakes up/Knock, knock, knock on the door" sound like the Korean sentence "오랜만에 집에서 바나나 먹었다" (oraenmane jibeseo banana meogeossda). Which means "It's been a while since I ate a banana at home".
- "nya" in Japanese is the sound that cats make. "-nya" in Korean is a suffix used when the speaker is rudely asking a question to someone their own age or younger. This means that a Korean speaker could be trying to be rude, but to their Japanese listeners it sounds like they randomly started meowing or trying to be cute, as some girls in the country tend to suffix their sentences with a “-nya” when talking to someone they’re close to.
