Untitled

[thelingodingo]

A Detailed Explanation of Stray Kids' Korean in SKZ CODE Bedtime Bingo Hell

I have so many skz codes I wanna explain so I literally spun a wheel and it ended up being bedtime bingo hell so here it is!

the episode link

episode 2 link

~~~~

3:02

if you've read my low poolside post you'd already know this so lemme just copy and paste it lol

if you listen closely to what they're saying they're ending every sentence with "jirong" which is a very childish way of speaking in order to tease others.

it's kinda like when little kids talk about cooties or say the phrase "liar liar pants on fire" in english, ending sentences with "jirong" is just an annoyingly childish way of speaking in korean lmao

in this specific episode I think hyunjin and changbin are purposefully saying "mo-jirong it-jirong" as a kind of japanese/korean hybrid joke as the japanese word もちろん (mochiron) means "of course" and it-jirong means "I have it" in korean so they're saying "of course I have it" in a mix of japanese and korean

changbin ends by saying 메에롱 (meh-long) which is a sound korean children make when sticking out their tongue. it's like how in english children go "na na na na na" in a sing-songy voice when taunting each other.

~~

3:57

this is really nuanced so idk if i'll be able to explain it properly but i'll try

when Hyunjin asks "how do you do this?" (이거 어떻게 하는건데) the korean kinda gives off a vibe like "how the heck do I do this (and knock down the pins)?"

to which lee know's response of 잘해야지 (jal-hae-ya-ji) would, in my opinion, more accurately translate to something along the lines of "you better just do it well" and not the subtitle's "you do it well"

lmaoo i really don't know how to explain the nuance of the sentence in a more sophisticated way but it's basically Lee Know brushing off Hyunjin's worries about knocking down the pins while simultaneously semi-threatening him to figure it out somehow

I wanted to explain this part cuz Han laughs at them right after which I thought wouldn't make sense from just reading the english subtitles

~~

5:04

i'm sure a lot of people already know this

there are multiple honorific suffixes that can be added to the end of names in korean in order to indirectly show a variety of casualness/formality between two people (which many of you probably already know about).

for example, the suffix "-ah" is added to names of people that end in consonants and who you are very close to (and can only be used age hierarchically horizontally or downwards)

one, two, three in korean is "hana, dool, set" and so when you add the korean name suffix "-ah" to Han's name it becomes pronounced "Hana"

when Lee Know says "HAN! Two, three!" in the subtitles he is actually saying "Hana, dool, set" in a way that made it sound like he was calling Han's name which is why Han was like "huh?"

it's because of this honorific name suffix stuff that you often hear the members' names as (for example) channie hyung, seungminnie, hyunjin-ah, iennie (i.n), lino-ya (lee know), etc etc etc

~~

5:29

instead of "just go easy" as the subtitle says, hyunjin is actually telling felix that since he's a fairy he can just blow the pins down with his magical ass breath or something lmao idk

hyunjin tells felix to just 호~ (ho) which is onomatopoeia in korean for when you're blowing air

so then at 5:38 the caption [should've just taken it easy] actually says [should've just 호 (ho)] as in [he should've just blown air]

~~

8:50

the caption actually says [didn't even fart, just got angry] which i thought was funny

~~

8:54

korean has a lot of nicknames surrounding the word "fart" such as bboongbboongie (which is what hyunjin calls lee know) and bangwi-jaenggi (what seungmin calls lee know)

seungmin goes a step farther and combines the name lee know and bboongbboongie, calling him "Lee-bboongie"

~~

10:29

it's not translated in the subtitles but hyunjin says 아 까비 (kka-bi) which is slang that means like "oh so close!"

~~

13:19

if you read my other posts you'd know by now that the rest of the members love having moments where they can get away with referring to bangchan informally as "chan-ah" lol

~~

16:06

not in the subtitles but seungmin referred to himself in third-person as Seung-chan lmao like the japanese cutesy honorific

i think felix calls lee know "know-chan" like twice throughout the skz code too

~~

17:55

five in korean is "oh" so when i.n says ohhh they literally put 5 next to him lol

~~

18:48

the topic is actually "body parts that are two syllables" which is why it took some time for members to think

so changbin says legs (da-ri) and ears (gwi) but obviously gwi is one syllable

i guess the translator didn't wanna have to write out each body part in korean so they just went with "earwax" as changbin's incorrect answer

~~

19:33

and again the topic is actually "skz song titles that are one syllable" which is why they were struggling as not many of their songs are one syllable in korean

but for example: 's-class' is called 특 (teuk) , 'lalalala' is 락 (rak), and 'my side' is 편 (pyeon)

~~

20:12

it seems like hyunjin was trying to say a different term but accidentally said "free" (무료 mu-ryo) so I assume the word he was trying to say sounds similar and he just mixed it up

maybe the word he was trying to use since the others were fighting was 무승 (mu-seung) which means "draw"

~~

episode 2

~~

7:46

whereas in english sarcasm can be expressed through over exaggerating the intonation, in korean a way of expressing sarcasm/attitude/sass is to suddenly use formal speech towards someone you usually would speak informally to.

in this part of the video Lee Know tells Han that the object is long which Han already knows. Lee Know then tells him it's thin which Han replies with "I can feel that it's thin too" 얇은건 나도 느겨져요 (yal-beun-gun na-do neu-gyeo-jyeo-yo) which is in a formal register.

in this case it's clear that Han is using that tone to lee know as a way of being sarcastic/sassy. like in english the equivalent would be like saying "yes captain obvious I already know that 🙄"

I talk about something quite similar between Lee Know and Hyunjin in my 2nd skz family post

~~

8:39

I don't think I see this much in international stays but in korean the members and fans tend to call Felix by just "Lix" (which I'm sure is already common knowledge)

the timestamp is just an example of seungmin calling Felix "Lix-kun" lol

also I.N in korean is pronounced "ah-ee-en" 아이엔 (it's separated into 3 syllables) so the members and kstays tend to just call him "ee-en" which is the last two syllables of the full pronunciation

this is the same thing that happened with Felix's name becoming Lix since in korean Felix is pronounced as "pil-lik-seu" 필릭스 (also 3 syllables) so the last two syllables is what creates his nickname of "Lix" (lik-seu)

you see this happen really commonly in korean with anybody that has a 3 syllable first name as the majority of korean full names are 3 syllables (one syllable surname followed by a two syllable first name)

so whenever somebody's first name (in the case of foreigners) or stage name (like I.N) is 3 syllables koreans tend to only pronounce the last two syllables of the name since they're used to 3-syllable full names with the first syllable being a surname.

for example, the entertainer Jonathan is usually just called "Nathan" by Koreans (you can hear the stray kids members call him that in this interview and also in this interview). another example I can think of is Joshua from Seventeen being called "Shua" and Kang Daniel being referred to as "Niel".

sometimes the nicknames become even shorter into 1 syllable which is why Changbin gets called "Bin". I remember Changbin calling Chaeryeong from Itzy as "Ryeong-ah" and I thought "damn the name got even shorter wtff"

~~

and i think that's all for this skz code!

~~~~

people seemed to show a lot of interest in my low poolside post on reading posts about other content such as their song lyrics which is great cuz i feel like so many skz songs have wordplay and linguistic nuances that international stays aren't able to get due to the korean not translating well into english.

so I have started working on a draft for it but it may take me a while to get through it

I think in general the skz codes take me the least amount of time / are the easiest for me to do so I will continue putting more of my focus on them but as I said I will definitely do other content as well!

I did start working on an explanation post of this year's 2 Kids Room but I felt like it would be better for me to wait until all the episodes come out in order to give a better analysis if that makes sense..? idk I think waiting for all the episodes first might provide me a better direction in explaining things both more generally and in detail.

so in the meantime I'll continue posting on other content!

~~~~

links to my other posts in this series:

skz family

skz family part 2

bremen music club

low poolside

i.n's dialect

[thelingodingo]

A Very Detailed Explanation of Stray Kids' Korean in SKZ CODE Low Poolside

so once again here is my attempt to explain the linguistic and cultural nuances of the korean used by stray kids! thank you to those who keep up with my very inconsistent posting lol

I did both episodes in one post this time

(the video) (the second episode)

~~

the title of the episode itself "저~ 물가의 스키즈" (juhhh mul-ga eh skz) has a double meaning in Korean. at 1:56 Han says the name of the episode is "low prices" and as you can see the name of the episode is "low poolside" in english. this is because "low prices" in Korean is 저물가 (juh-mul-ga) and "waterside/riverside/poolside/etc" is 물가 (mul-ga).

the elongated juh in front of mul-ga in the korean title basically means "the poolside over thereeeeeee" and you can see an example of this in the subtitles at 2:14 with changbin saying "shall we head over thereeeee, everyone?" and at 2:18 as well

(the subtitle translator seems to make an attempt at explaining the double meaning at 2:18 and 2:21)

~~

2:06

when Seungmin says "low price" and then "one seo changbin" it can actually be seen as him saying "one seo changbin at a low price" or "I see a seo changbin by the water over there".

for "one seo changbin" he also specifically says "seo changbin hanmari" in korean which is crazyy because mari is a counter word used specifically for animals whereas myeong is used specifically for humans.

so Seungmin should've technically said "seo changbin hanmyeong" but referred to changbin as an animal instead lmaooo as expected from the savage

~~

6:22

i've noticed this with other Kim-surname idols as well but kpop editors seem to really like making puns(?) with Kim idols.

like "perfect score" in korean is "mahn-jum" and you've probably noticed by now that most korean full names are three syllables so the caption literally says "Kim Mahnjum 70 points" like Seungmin's name literally turned into "Kim Perfectscore" (김만점) lol

~~

han and felix at 9:45 to 9:50 is cute because if you listen closely to what they're saying they're ending every sentence with "jirong" which is a very childish way of speaking in order to tease others.

it's kinda like when little kids talk about cooties or say the phrase "liar liar pants on fire" in english, ending sentences with "jirong" is just an annoyingly childish way of speaking in korean lmao

~~

22:33

when i.n says "stop with the weird bidding already" he speaks using a certain grammatical speech style that makes him sound superr boomer lol like grandma i.n

if you're familiar with korean speech levels, he specifically uses the hao-che

so usually one would phrase the sentence like "그 애매하게 올리지 좀 마세요" (geu ae-mae ha-ge olliji jom maseyo) but i.n said "그 애매하게 올리지 좀 마쇼" (geu ae-mae ha-ge olliji jom masho"

~~

26:19

I think lee know laughed when Han said busan seagull because it's not a baseball team but an old korean trot song from 1982 thats extremely well known in korea (which i.n actually sang a cover of before)

~~

27:27

since Han thought the question was just asking to name words ending in "gu" he started saying districts in Korea (which always end in "gu")

so he named Gangdong-gu (Gangdong District) and then Yeongdong-gu which the editors put (?) beside because a district named Yeongdong-gu doesn't even exist bro was just yapping lmao. I think he might have meant to say Yeongdo-gu which is an actual district that exists.

~~

27:44

Han and Changbin actually kinda have a point because even though the question in english is just "name 5 sports that end with gu", the question in korean specifically uses the word "운동" (undong) which means any form of exercise in general whereas the word "스포츠" (seu-po-cheu, konglish for "sports") holds the same meaning as the english "sports". since there's not an exact translation for undong in english the subtitles just say "sports" whenever they say undong and seu-po-cheu.

which explains why they're saying the only undong they know is weightlifting and thus the question should've specified 스포츠 seu-po-cheu (sports)

like at 28:07 changbin says "what kind of undong ends in gu?" which is honestly very true lol

~~

episode #2

~~

11:06

I think Hyunjin is saying "Why is their body fit?" (mom-i wae joeun-de gyae-ga) and not specifically mentioning crabs like the subtitles say. this is because crab in korean is "geh" but "gyae" (which sounds very similar) is a third person pronoun which can mean their/his/her/they/he/she/etc

the korean caption on the video emphasizes the fact that out of all words hyunjin decided to use a word that sounds very similar to crab and you can see the small white text the editors put on him that says "dummy..." in korean which wasn't translated in the subtitles lmao

but anyways that explains why none of the other members called him out because it just sounds like a normal sentence

~~

24:48

if you turn off the subtitles the korean caption underneath says 돈 아끼다 똥 된 촬영 (don aggida ddong dwen chwal-yeong) which means "filming turned to poop by saving money"

don means money and ddong means poop so the editors used both words together in a sentence as a kind of pun?? idk what you'd call this type of joke but its super common in korean and you see it in pretty much every single kpop variety show and other korean variety shows

the word ddong is blurred on the video not necessarily because it's a swear but because it's not exactly a very pleasant word either lol

~~

and I think that's pretty much it for this skz code!

links to my other posts in this series:

skz family

skz family part 2

bremen music club

[thelingodingo]

A Very Detailed Explanation of I.N's Dialect (and some other members)

I actually wrote about two fifths of a draft for this topic but it literally ended up becoming so outrageously detailed to the point it became a half-assed 2000 word essay since I really focused on the language side rather than the I.N side. sooo I restarted and made this much more simplified post that is actually centered around I.N and is (hopefully) more interesting to read as stays.

~~~~

I'll start by laying out some background information that I think would be useful to not cause any misinformation/misconceptions lol (but feel free to skip if it's too much reading)

i.n was born and raised in the city of Busan, which is in the South Gyeongsang Province in the veryyyy southeastern part of South Korea (so quite far from Seoul). Busan is also the second most populated city in Korea after Seoul so there's a lot of korean celebrities in general from the city (which means this post can apply to other Busan-born kpop idols such as bts' jimin and jungkook and seventeen's woozi). therefore the Busan/Gyeongsang dialect in general is BY FAR the most well-known and famous dialect outside of standard korean, not just within korea but also internationally.

each province in korea has its own unique dialect (eg. Gyeongsang dialect) but you'll usually hear Koreans refer to dialects by individual cities/towns rather than the entire province. this is because even within a single province there tends to be key differences in the dialect between different cities that Koreans find very important to distinguish.

so for example, Busan and Daegu are both major cities in the South Gyeongsang province but it's not very common to hear anyone refer to their dialect as the "Gyeongsang dialect" even though both cities obviously use that dialect. instead, people specify and say "Busan dialect" and "Daegu dialect".

also, different individuals will have varying levels of dialect, with some people having stronger accents than others. Jeongin's Busan dialect isn't super strong as it seems like he got used to speaking in the Seoul dialect quite adeptly. (which also means there isn't a whole lot of content I can go off of for this post..)

people outside of the Gyeonggi province (the province that Seoul is located in) are expected to and in many cases forced to lose their hometown's dialect and assimilate into the Standard Korean Seoul dialect if they want to be able to work/live there which explains why many non-Gyeonggi idols' dialects tend to become weaker.

I.N is the only Korean-born member of skz that wasn't born in or around the Seoul area which means the rest of the members all naturally speak the Seoul dialect only.

~~~~

the main characteristics of the busan dialect

1. it is a heavily pitch-accented dialect: whereas the seoul dialect is more soft and flat the busan dialect moves up and down a lot tonally. overall, the dialect is very fast-paced and aggressive sounding which is what gives people from Gyeongsang an image among Koreans of being always angry/scary/strict. specifically, men from the area are seen as really manly, cool, and sexy lol. this is why sometimes when jeongin says something in the busan dialect the other members lose their minds - it makes him sound more "alpha male" i guess lmaoooo. on the other hand, I think busan girls are generally perceived as being fierce but cute??

in this clip and this clip you can see the other members lose their shit when i.n pops out his dialect lmao

~

if i recall correctly, seungmin has mentioned in his and jeongin's interview with kkon daehee that his father is actually from busan and therefore he knows a little bit of the busan dialect. i like how the host (who speaks in a veryy strong busan dialect) was able to tell that Seungmin may have some Gyeongsang influence from the tiniest difference in how he pitches his accent at the 3:19 mark.

I think Seungmin's dialect became more noticeable during the interview since he was being spoken to by someone with a strong busan dialect so his half-busan side naturally came out even though he was born and raised in Seoul and therefore speaks in the Seoul dialect most of the time. other than that both i.n and seungmin speak more in the Seoul dialect during the interview.

~

THIS ENTIRE VIDEO is just i.n and seungmin talking about the pitch accent of the busan dialect and how it differs from the seoul dialect. the video is only in korean but literally just from listening and looking at the arrows edited on the screen you can clearly hear that they're repeating the same sentences with different intonations to differentiate between the seoul and busan dialect.

it starts at 0:38 when they keep repeating the sentence "where does this go up to?"

and at 1:45 they start saying the phrase "blueberry smoothie"

2:24 they say "mister, where does the bus go?"

I really wish I could translate the whole thing properly but i'm definitely not tech savvy enough for that lol

2. different vocabulary/usage of vocabulary/way of speaking: like all dialects, the busan dialect has different vocabulary from the other korean dialects. so theres often times where a non-busan person won't understand what a busan person is saying since they're using completely different words. i think there are a few tiny clips of jeongin where he translates words from busan dialect to seoul dialect during his lives but im too lazy to find/compile them. but for example, "hey" in seoul dialect is "ya" but in busan dialect it's "ma" which you can hear i.n use in some clips of him speaking in dialect - i remember theres a clip of Lee Know saying this but i can't find itttt 😭

just like other places in the world there are also many variations to how certain dishes/games/etc are called. for example, the dalgona candy from squid game is called dalgona/ppoggi in Seoul but in Busan it's called jjokja.

the usage of certain words is also different. one example i can think of is that in the seoul dialect the word "you" is often interchangeable between "nee" and "nuh" whereas in the Gyeongsang dialect the word "you" is almost exclusively just "nee". not skz but i remember other Gyeongsang idols mentioning how using "nuh" in Gyeongsang sounds super cheesy and romantic so the first time they went to Seoul they hated how people always used "nuh" instead of "nee".

I think Busan people are also known to speak in a very out of pocket way while also having the tendency to joke around in a threatening manner?? lmaoo i remember talking to a person from Seoul before and he said that Busan people sound very threatening when they joke around.

I remember reading some Kstays talk about how it's interesting that Jeongin doesn't speak as cutely/softly as people expect him to even though he has the role of the maknae in the group. BUT at the same time kstays understand that since he's from Busan it's natural for him to have a sense of "roughness" when he speaks that doesn't fit the stereotypical kpop maknae image.

3. different grammar: the grammar of the seoul dialect and busan dialect are quite different but I won't get too into it since that would also mean explaining the entirety of korean grammar in general lmao. but for those who actually learn korean, here's a super basic explanation of just one part of the grammar:

interrogative endings are characterized by -노, -나, -고, -가

-나 (not -냐) and -가 are used for yes/no questions

-노 and -고 are used for who/what/where/when/how questions

~~~~

now to finally put all three of these characteristics together, here is a video of jeongin trying a gyeongsang dialect quiz. it's only in korean but it does show the pitch-accent, vocab, and grammar of the busan dialect.

i'll try to briefly explain the questions:

at 0:27 the first question asks which sentence correctly fills the blank and all the answers are just different amounts of "uh" with different tones.

the second question is the same thing but with "ga" in different tones and asks which question is incorrect. by the way, "gagaga ga gaga" (the 5th option) is a very real and actual sentence in the Busan dialect which translates to "the person with the surname Ga took it". so he got the first question right but the second one wrong.

the third question with the 2ᵉ e² is another tone question with the number two (which is pronounced "ee" in korean) and the letter E.

the fourth question is a long ass paragraph that's entirelyyyy in Gyeongsang dialect and asks what the occupation of the girl mentioned in the paragraph is. Jeongin had no clue wtf the answer was (but he got it correct anyway yayy)

the fifth question is yet another tone question but the answers are all in musical notes (do re mi fa so la ti do) which is crazy like who's supposed to know that???

question 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 15 asks for the correct translation of the gyeongsang dialect to standard korean (so a lot of vocabulary/grammatical stuff)

10 is another tone question

11 asks which phrase does not have gyeongsang dialect vocabulary in it

in the end he got 10/15 on the quiz which I thought is pretty good considering how insane some of those questions were but he was slightly disappointed lol. he jokingly says that he shouldn't consider himself a Gyeongsang person anymore and that his father was right about how his dialect sounds awkward after living in Seoul for so long.

~~~~

there are times where other members try to speak in the busan dialect by copying i.n which is always fun to see. most of the time it's very clear to a busan-native that the other members aren't from Gyeongsang cuz the intonation and stuff are wrong/off but other times they actually do a pretty good job at it lol.

like this particular clip of hyunjin speaking in busan dialect is pretty good in my opinion (but maybe my standards are just low lmao)

on the topic of Hyunjin: I remember reading somewhere that Hyunjin has a particularly strong Seoul accent (which now that I think about it it's kinda true lol)

most people assume that the Seoul/Gyeonggi dialect is the standard dialect, but in reality the Seoul dialect actually still has some differences from the Standard Korean dialect (but it is true that the standard dialect is based off of the Seoul dialect though)

so Hyunjin (and maybe the other Seoul members??) actually has an accent unique to Seoul (but maybe I can focus on that another day..)

~~

theres also a lot of clips of skz impersonating other korean dialects as well (it's like how americans do british or australian accents for fun). so I just wanted to clarify that just because a video says that they're speaking in dialect it doesn't automatically mean they're playing around with the Gyeongsang dialect as there are a handful of other provincial dialects in Korea (I remember there's a lot of very old clips of Changbin speaking in the Chungcheong province dialect and Han speaking in the Jeolla province dialect that were definitely very interesting to listen to..)

this video of Han, Hyunjin, Lee Know, and Changbin is them trying to sing stray kids songs in all the main korean dialects and as you can see they were really struggling lmaoo. I think them singing in the Gyeongsang dialect at 6:03 probably sounds the most decent since they learned some Busan dialect from Jeongin (and they keep mentioning him during that part of the video lol). the video is really chaotic to follow along if you don't know korean but all the korean comments really love how ridiculous they sound attempting to sing in different dialects.

for example, at 6:57 Hyunjin's iconic "ne sonim" got turned into "ye myeot bun-ye" in the busan dialect

~~~~

I think that's all I'll do for now but if I can find enough content I could definitely make a part 2 someday that expands more on how the other members speak and stuff like that if the demand is high enough lol

but first I should focus on the 2 Kids Room and song lyrics people were wanting posts on~

also if anybody would like more clips of skz using dialect for whatever purposes then pls just message me and I could probably find more (cuz I know this post is kinda lacking in skz content and I apologize for that..)

~~~~

links to my other posts in this series:

skz family

skz family part 2

bremen music club

low poolside

[puppyms]

👓+🐶

[250318]

[wolfchans]

BANG CHAN ♡ UNVEIL : 3RACHA

[puppyms]

It's a precious song that I've been cherishing and cherishing, and it's finally coming out to the world. It'll be revealed for the first time on stage in a few hours. I'll sing my heart out with my hyung and communicate with Stay.

[wizardarchetypes]

i think we as a community need to be done using terms like “bottom” and “pillow princess” negatively, even as a joke, because it’s not a joke anymore in so many spaces. I saw a young lesbian earnestly ask what a pillow princess is in a queer forum and all of the answers were negative, every single one. i’m so tired of people calling real people and fictional characters bottoms as an insult—again, usually as a joke—and it’s so common in fandom. why are you labeling characters bottoms as a method of mocking them? genuinely ask yourself why a queer character or person receiving sex is so funny to you and why the punchline is that it’s somehow demeaning to receive acts of queer sex and consider the many layers of homophobia and even misogyny that have built the foundations of that seemingly harmless joke.

[wizardarchetypes]

genuinely some of y’all make posts that read like hateful graffiti uncovered in Pompeii

[sleepisapriviligethatidonthave]

I'm reposting it here because some of yall here need to read this too

Especially since we get the best of both worlds and you are hellbent on ruining it

[the-haiku-bot]

I’m reposting it

here because some of yall here

need to read this too

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[blackr23]

250426

STAY Q&A JP • CB

👤: Question for Changbin! I think you've been on a lot of big stages so far. Could you tell us which performance you were most nervous about?

🐷🐇: The MAMA stage in our debut year

[pabokracha]

(250401) Chan grabbing Hyunjin's neck/waist during ESCAPE

[imfoive]

BANG CHAN x FENDI for HARPER’S BAZAAR Edited, Re-touched, Recolored

[pabokracha]

[tref0il]

WHEN ON PERIOD:

do not crash out

your feelings are NOT valid

do not send that text

don't kill yourself. lock in

do not act on negative emotions until at least 2 days have elapsed

[thememedaddy]

[boynextdoors]

JOOYEON: DIAMOND (2025)

[ruinedchildhood]

[anachronic-cobra]

Cyber truck people trying desperately to find a redeeming quality in their glorified cardboard box: it... It has doors. They open. Glov comportmnt

[kushblazer666]