This week I was teaching some of my advanced students the use of indirect object pronouns. Sure, you remember those, right? Of course, you do! Well, in case you’ve forgotten, those are where you refer to one person with a pronoun (I, you, he, she, etc.) and in the same sentence relate them to another person with the indirect object pronoun (him, her, them, us, etc.) An easy example is “He hit him.”

So, now that you’ve had your English lesson for the day, let me get on with the story.

We were discussing gift-giving and the use of the indirect object pronoun. We made sentences like “What did they give her  for her birthday?” We talked about what appropriate gifts were and I asked a fairly easy question, the answer to which blew me away.

I asked the students what you would give to someone who likes to watch movies. I figured the answer would be something simple like a movie pass, a DVD or something similar. Nope. I got a resounding single answer from my Korean students: “you should buy them a computer.” I figured they misunderstood. A computer? Just to watch movies? Wouldn’t a DVD player be much cheaper? Nope. Then they proceeded to teach me.

Korea is one of the most wired countries on the planet. More than 70% of the population has very hi-speed internet at home. With all the infrastructure in place, the content companies have setup websites and players that you can browse through the available stuff easily. They watch movies and TV shows all the time on their computers. And I’m not talking about downloading a movie through some file sharing pirate site and watching it later. I’m talking about real video-on-demand. I was able to do a minimal amount of that on my Comcast set-up at home, but it’s nothing like what the Koreans have. They have gobs of stuff just waiting to be streamed down to their computer.  For a buck or two you can watch almost anything. There’s more subscribers to it than Microsoft’s  Windows Media Player.

I used to think I was technologically advanced. I was a fairly early adopter of the Tivo technology back home. Tivo ain’t got nothin’ on this stuff.  I felt a little like an old fogey, getting schooled on the new technology that I knew nothing about. But then, after checking out the sites, I forgave myself. It’s all in Korean. I can read it, but I’d rather not work that hard just to be entertained.  Check it out. I gotta learn the language better.