Warning: I’m not Asian and I’m prone to overthink things. I received five marriage proposals in my whole life, from Peter Pan, Robin Hood, my first boy-friend in kindergarten, xx, and my husband. In the scheme of things then, I’m definitely not an expert.
I took a screenshot of OhGong’s offer of marriage in Episode 13. He asked SunMi:
To be on the safe side, I also checked the recap in dramabeans. OhGong said this: “Should we do it one more time? You said it was fake those two times. Should we do it a third time for real? Do you want to marry me?”
My question is: do you see any difference between OG’s question Do you want to marry me? and the standard form, Will you marry me?
In my opinion, there is.
With the first marriage offer, there’s a sense that OhGong was sounding her out and gauging her reaction to see if she was open to the idea of marrying him. Does she WANT to? You see, he noticed that she was putting on a brave face and that she actually DID mind that their past two weddings were purely pretend. His suggestion for a third wedding was meant to mollify her. He would oblige her and would do whatever SHE wanted, unhesitatingly, because that would make HER happy. He was doing this for her.
To me, the nuance is different from Will you marry me? For me, this one is THE actual proposal. If and WHEN he asks SunMi this question in the future, he’s essentially telling her that HE wants to marry her and it’ll give HIM great joy if she agrees to marry him. He was asking for his sake.
Do you see the difference? 😀
I’m not Korean and I was hardly a femme fatale receiving a marriage proposal every other week. But I do know that if I were SunMi, I would prefer OG to utter those four words, rather than offer me the sun, moon, and stars and everything else.
Let’s see if this comment make through.. been trying leaving comments but always fail!! 😭😭
I thought maybe I should try to make an account @ WordPress.. (see I go distance just to leave comment on your blog.. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 )
Ah Yes.. I’m not some linguistic expert, and my English is just enough for casual conversation, this is only my personal opinion, but on Do you want to mary me? the focus is on the person receiving proposal, while on Will you marry me? is more on the person who proposed.
pwahahaha. I checked. None of your recent posts ended up in my spam box.
Same here. For me, “Do you want to marry me?” is a cop-out of a proposal. It’s like the GUY is making the GIRL decide whether or not to get married to him. Ordinarily, I’d be fine with giving the girl a choice, but here I want the guy to be proactive and say that HE wants her to marry him. This one is less risky for the guy. If she responds, “NO, I don’t want to marry you,” the guy can always excuse himself, and come back with, “Okay. I won’t ask you then.” See? He avoids humiliation.
Here in the US, “Will you marry me?” is the standard proposal. The guy is on tenterhooks because the girl can reject him. This one is riskier for the guy but as they say around here, “No guts, no glory.” The lover has to take the risk of being turned down.
I don’t understand Korean unfortunately (though I’m slooooowly learning bits here and there – I’m new to this kdrama thing, 1 year) but it does seem like all translations use variations of that “Do you want to marry me?” and it does seem like he thinks more of what she wants here. Not an expert in marriage proposals either but “will you marry me” does seem to be more about the one asking. But what Son Oh Gong says is only about her. Especially since the scene continues with her asking “Is that possible?” and him answering “I said I would do anything you want to”. I actually found it super nice that he noticed, it surprised me. “You see, he noticed that she was putting on a brave face and that she actually DID mind that their past two weddings were purely pretend.”
Anyway, now I have a problem because I’m listening to that scene over and over again trying to understand exactly what Oh Gong is saying but it’s so hard for me. Ermm..
Hahaha. I notice that many people who frequent this blog are obsessive too, like me. “Will you marry me” versus “Do you want to marry me?” 😅😍 Most people will probably not notice the difference.
I spoke with a principal of a high school about this whole phenomenon of PROMPOSALS. (Oppa’ Goddess mentioned it too in one of the posts here.) In the past, guys had an easy time asking girls to the prom. Flowers and chocolates, and the simple question, “Will you go to the prom with me?” The girl can either say yes or no.
But in recent years, the promposals have become an event themselves. The guys will ask their buddies to stage a show or a stunt and the whole school is invited to watch the proposal. As you can expect, the kind of event becomes a high-risk venture, too.
If the guy gets rejected, it becomes a nightmare, and a very public nightmare at that. He’ll never live down that embarrassment (at least until graduation).
So, to mitigate this potential shame, the guy asks the girl’s girlfriends to ASK for him if she’s willing to go out with him. 😂🤣😂The fix is in! It’s all pre-agreed upon before the actual proposal. There’s a safety net.
For me, when a guy asks “Do you want to marry me?” he’s trying to sound her out. Like, “Hey, what do you think? Should we start dating? Do you think that’s a good idea? Will you like that? Will that please you?”
It IS sweet because he’s taking into consideration the feelings of the girl. However, the flipside is there’s also less danger to the pride and ego of the guy being bashed by a rejection. Because if the girl says no, the guy can still shrug it off. He truly hasn’t RISKED a rejection because he’s only asking her opinion, or HER feelings about it. All’s good. They can return to status quo. The safety net is there, too.
Yes, the Hong sisters are good at creating “sensitive” boyfriends, or boyfriends who LISTEN to what their girls are saying as well as what they are NOT saying. In the beginning, the Hong sisters write their hero as this big, spoiled, needy, annoying man-child. But love will transform him into this devoted, reliable, selfless, loving adult. 😂 Their heroine is usually a saint who can see the diamond in the rough and stick with the guy while he undergoes this transformational love.
“But in recent years, the promposals have become an event themselves. The guys will ask their buddies to stage a show or a stunt and the whole school is invited to watch the proposal. ” those are the worst proposals in my view. I would say no probably just out of annoyance that the dude is trying to add public pressure to the thing. I think those kind of proposals are only ok if you are SURE the person you ask will say YES (you’ve asked before one way or another – for example you know the person will be ok with that kind of proposal). But this is not what I came here to say
What I came here to say is thaaat I was listening to Hwayugi scenes – the ones on youtube – and just noticed the description of the video with this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV5dv13G35I) contains the exact line Oh Gong is saying: 나한테 시집올래? So this made it easier to figure out what exactly is said.
나한테 = to me
so I had to look for 시집올래
That is 시집오다 + the termination talked about here: https://secure-hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/7/9/5/79579558858c1ee1/ttmik-l4l2.pdf?c_id=2842015&expiration=1519209767&hwt=aa4646b9501f192491963369df4dac87
-(으)ㄹ래요 is used when you want to express an intention or a will to do something. If you put a question mark at the end of the sentence, you can ask about someone else’s will or intention to do something. It can mean “I want to…” or “I’m going to…”, or it can also mean “Do you want to…?” when it is used in a question sentence
시집오다(sijiboda) is to get married.
So the translation is really Do you want to get married to me.
What I liked more (though I’m not sure it means something that this is the word chosen) is that sijiboda literally seems to mean to come (오다=to come) to sijib(시집) = “one’s husband’s home; the family a woman marries into” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EC%8B%9C%EC%A7%91)
I know exactly what you mean. Do you know those proposals done during baseball games? There IS public pressure for the girl to say yes to the guy’s proposal. If I were the girl, I’d say yes to him then in a quieter moment, break up the engagement.
I remember writing about this gif Reply 1988. I said when that boy (oops! I forgot his name. The one who isn’t Taec) proposed to Dukseon/Hyeri in front of their friends, he was also using public pressure on her to get her to say yes. And I disliked that. 👎
Ooooh, lovely lovely information! I agree, I like your take on the word, “sijiboda.” That is romantic, to be asked to JOIN his house.
Especially for SunMi who’s an orphan and always wants to belong to somebody.
Btw, you know what I’m dreading? So far, SunMi had not dined yet with OG’s “family” (that is, Mawang, PK, Sec Ma, CEO Sa), or gone to a bar with her assistant Hanjoo. When she does these things, then it’ll be a sign TO ME that she’s saying goodbye and getting ready for her death.