English/Korean mis-translation with a co-worker

Kind of funny situation and I don't know where else to ask this. I'm a software engineer and we recently got a new team member who I was onboarding. She is Korean-native but has been in the US for a few years now. Amazing English skills (never any misunderstandings) but she is very anxious/insecure and apologizes constantly for asking questions or making negligible grammar mistakes. My company is still working from home (thx covid) and returning to the office next month but I am leaving my current team for another team internally within the company and will be in the same office location so I have never met any of my team members in person.

Here's the situation that lead to a possible mis-translation: During small talk a few weeks ago at the end of a meeting where I would explain things to her about our software, I said I would say "hi" to her if I saw her in the office. She sent me a huge apology message today like she did something terrible because she said "we can see each other" in the office after I said I would say hi to her. I am American (i.e. native English) and know some Spanish/Italian and don't know much about Asian language/slang.

I want to ask her directly but I can tell she is very embarrassed and I don't want to keep asking her about it on the chance that it was. I am very confused why she would be apologizing so fiercely; is "we can see each other" something that is romantically suggestive in Korean, before/after translation to English?

submitted by /u/athrowawayb21
[link] [comments]

from Language Learning https://ift.tt/iKc9Cnu
via Learn Online English Speaking

Comments