Punishing Naughty Students with Ai-Sh-Yo! (아이셔)
Specially for Children’s Day! In every box of Ai-sh-yo, is an intensely sour gum. You can’t distinguish the gross one from the others in the box. If you want to punish your students or get some pleasure after they’ve pestered you all week for Children’s Day candy, you can do so in this random manner.
In Seoul you can’t smack them, but you can feed them an Aishyo
Yea, I know my Korean is shitty! And here are some photos capturing the moment.
aiiiii….
shhhhhhh…
yo…..
Further References
© 林東哲 2011 Creative Commons Licence.
A Candy for the Teacher
the tangy candy version
What’s that noise you make in your language when you’ve eaten something intensely sour, like lemon or a kumquat which isn’t sweet enough to rescue your distaste? In English-English it might be ‘shhh-it!’ In Korean it’s ‘ai-sh-yo’ (아이셔), though in practice it probably sounds more like ‘ ai-shhhhh-yo!’ The duration of the ‘sh’ a measure of intensity. Not sure what I mean? Let me elucidate; this is ‘sh-it!’ or ‘ai-sh-yo!’:
Apart from being the sound to accompany something unpleasantly sour, like munching on a lemon, Ai-sh-yo is also the name of a chewy confectionary. Kids love to give these candies to teachers and they can be considered the Korean equivalent, innocent and friendly, of spitting in your coffee or putting a tack on your seat. When I was first offered them I noticed a strange expectation on students’ faces, a twinkle in their eyes and the slight anticipatory twitch of a smile but took little notice; I’m orally fixated and the candy was quite nice, initially a little tart and tangy but quickly rescued by sweetness as you continue to chew. I’d eaten quite a few over the week until I discovered their more sinister purpose
I was busy chewing, waiting for the sweetness to curb the rapidly soaring sensation of intensified sourness… Then I realised, with a curse, ai-shhhh (the Korean equivalent of ‘fuck!’), that there wasn’t an iota of sweetness in it but a solely nasty sourness. My students were in hysterics by the time I spat it into a tissue.
Yes, in every blue packet of the gum, 450 Won (about 25 pence) exists one surprise candy that is simply revoltingly sour. The yellow packet is a tart candy that starts off sour but mellows.
an 'ai-sh-yo' face
and another...
the blue packet is the most entertaining
‘Ai-shhhhhhhh-yo!’ ‘Super sour flavour in it.’
Further references
Punishing Naughty Students with an Aishyo
© 林東哲 2011 Creative Commons Licence.
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