A question

[Angela Reyes]

I also went to the site. But under "gook", they write "thought to be
a corruption of 'Hankook', or Korea". I guess we're back to where we
started...

Angie

Angela Reyes
PhD Student in Educational Linguistics
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
reyesa at dolphin.upenn.edu


>Well, I put "mee-gook" into the Google search engine and came up with the
>following link
>  http://newswatch.sfsu.edu/guide/m.html
>which is at San Fran. State U. and it seems to confirm what your student
>said.
>
>Ken
>**************************************************************
>America Works Best When We Say, "Union YES!"
>**************************************************************
>
>Ken Ehrensal
>Associate Professor
>Management Department
>Kutztown University
>(610) 683.4599
>ehrensal at kutztown.edu
>http://www.kutztown.edu/~ehrensal
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Bambi Schieffelin" <bs4 at nyu.edu>
>To: <linganth at ats.rochester.edu>
>Sent: Thursday, 04 October, 2001 11:18 AM
>Subject: A question
>
>
>>  One of my students heard the following, and was wondering if any of it was
>>  true - any ideas or is this a language myth?
>>
>>  Gook, a racial slur for Koreans comes from the Korean word for "America".
>>  Supposedly, when the troops landed in Korean during the Korean war, they
>>  heard local people saying "mee-gook" (America/USA) and assumed they were
>>  speaking English.
>>
>>
>>  Thanks - Bambi
>>
>>