Bias wrecker

“In this small way, the English language is gradually growing and expanding.

“For someone who works with words, just imagine how becoming familiar with K-English can be quite confusing.

Quite often I have to go through news briefs about the latest Korean boy band groups. One of the eccentricities of the K-pop world is the jargon it uses.

The first word that caught my attention was “comeback.” Almost every month, a K-pop group makes a “comeback.”

In my understanding, “comeback” means a return from a hiatus — a long one, to be precise. When I hear the word, I always think of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard who denied she was making a comeback. “I hate that word,” Norma declared. “It’s a return.”

So, I asked a colleague who is wise in the K world — K referring to anything Korean. How can this boy band be making a comeback when they’re not even in retirement?

“It means they’re releasing something new.”

“Even if they just dropped their last single two months ago?”

“Yes, that’s how they call it.” So every time any K-pop group releases something new, it’s called a “comeback.”

And there’s that other word: “dropped.”

Nothing is ever released nowadays. They are all “dropped.”

That word doesn’t even figure in all things K. It pops up in announcements by the latest Top 40 acts.

For someone who works with words, just imagine how K-English can be quite confusing.

Then, there’s that bewildering term “bias wrecker.”

First, you have to know what “bias” means to even understand the concept of “bias wrecker.”

Let’s say a K-pop boy band has seven members, and one of them stands out to you, then he is your “bias.”

Twenty years ago, he would be the crush of some school girl or boy. Now, they are known as “bias.”

Then, there’s the “bias wrecker.”

Let’s go back to our seven-member K-pop group. If in that group, you fancy another guy other than your “bias,” then, he is your “bias wrecker.”

He’s No. 2 in the charm meter when it comes to you.

And your “bias” and “bias wrecker” are sure to have “refreshing visuals,” meaning they’re probably pleasant or good-looking.

This may all sound cute, but when these concepts enter the mainstream, it can be quite confusing.

As it is, many of our school children and young adults are struggling with the rules of standard English, and here they are learning it colloquially. Can you imagine Shakespeare writing about Juliet calling Romeo her “bias?” Does that make Paris to whom she is betrothed her “bias wrecker?”

The popularity of Korean-flavored English shows how the world has turned eastward to Asia.

When I was growing up, our ears were glued to Top 40 acts — Top 40 referring to acts that made it into the weekly Billboard Top

40 chart.

On most days of the week, we would be watching American TV series, other than the daily fodder of Filipino programs. The Man from Atlantis was quite big that time that we would all attempt to swim like him, like a dolphin shimmying in the water. We would all fancy to be like Steve Austin of Six Million Dollar Man

fame, pretending to have bionic legs that would also make us run at 60 mph and bionic eyes that made is see far and away.

Who could forget Voltes V, that classic Japanese anime series, which even kids nowadays know?

Of course, the Korean wave has changed all that. Hallyu,

the Korean wave, has swept aside the incursion of Japanese culture worldwide, becoming a cultural force to reckon with.

It started with soap operas, K-drama as it is called, that brushed aside our love for the big-haired women of Mexican telenovelas.

Here, we have characters who resemble us a little bit, whose moments of hysteria are quite different from those of Latin temperaments.

While most people would date their familiarity with K-drama to Goblin, also known as Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, many of us who were dependent on terrestrial cable knew Jenny and Johnny in Endless Love and Jody and Cholo in Stairway to Heaven, which aired almost 20 years ago. Don’t forget Jang Geum in Jewel in the Palace. It seems the switch happened, although much delayed, because of Netflix. Liberated from the confines of local TV channels and cable, the entertainment platform made available a world of programs in other languages other than English with subtitles.

And this slowly happened in the past five years, reaching its peak when the pandemic struck last year.

K-pop slowly seeped into the cracks, unleashing a torrent of Korean pop music in the past decade. Of course, that torrent, which hit its first wave with Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” reached tsunami proportions when BTS shifted gears and came out with English language stuff. They have three consecutive No. 1 hits on the Billboard chart in less than a year.

Now what?

I no longer hit a road bump when I see the words “bias” and “comeback” in a sentence. I just mentally flick a switch inside my head to access a dictionary of K-pop terms to get through a sentence about the latest K-pop group.

In this small way, the English language is gradually growing and expanding.