OLLEH!!

My kids love to say “OLLEH!” when they’re excited. At first, I was really impressed because I thought, Wow! They can speak Spanish, too!? and my kids are four (Western age), so I thought it was pretty cool, right? Then I noticed that my elementary students were doing it, too – and all of them would sing the “Ole, ole ole ole, ole, ole!” song that you hear at futbol games. Maybe it was them saying ole that made me want Korean to be Spanish and why sometimes when I was out in the world, away from school, I would find myself slipping into saying, “Si” and “Por favor” and the like, only to receive even stranger looks than I’m normally accustomed to.

Come to find out, they’re not saying, “ole!” but “olleh!” – which, yes, is “hello” backwards. Yeah. I know. What’s the deal with that? I asked Amy, and she said she didn’t know, but then again I think maybe she didn’t understand my question, because Koreans will always answer “Yes” or “I don’t know” to any question… I suppose the “I don’t know” is better than the “Yes” but it’s just as equally frustrating because you think that you phrased the question in such a way that it should be understood. I digress. So, I asked my kids and they said it means “Wow. Perfect”, whereas “Yay” is just “Wow” or “Wow” is “Wow” - whatever. “Olleh!” is some cell phone company, or if it’s not the actual company, it’s some sort of brand or plan, or something, but then again it’s on a building here in town, so yeah, let’s say the company. And there’s this commercial – where the shouting of “olleh!” comes from – that sings the song and after “Olleh!” flashes up on the screen, so do “Wow!” and “Perfect!” I still don’t understand why – kind of like everything Koreans do that is inexplicable to my Western ways – but at least now I know where it comes from… Also, thank goodness my kids aren’t saying it as much as they used to, so the popularity is dying off. They used to say “OLLEH!” for everything, and yeah, at first it was cute, but then it turned into me threatening to take away Play Room time if they said one more time. What have I become!?