# E ri ko?



## airelibre

I was at a Korea football match and heard a chant, something along the lines of e ri ko. Could you tell me what this means? (I'm assuming ko means Korea?)

Many thanks


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## 조금만

It's a field where I'm totally ignorant, but there isn't by any chance a Korean soccer player called Eric Oh, is there? Soccer players who play (or hope to play) for clubs in Europe often Westernize their names, with the family name last. 

"Ko" most certainly doesn't mean "Korea". The crowd chant for supporting the (South) Korean side at international events is an umistakable rhythmic TAE-han :: MIN-guk, a group of two rapid fire monosyllables with a longer gap between them and a huge emphasis on the third syllable

Er... I don't suppose they were trying to sing "''ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go" were they? Stranger things have happened in the wacky world of the ferocious battle waged between Koreans and the English language...


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## airelibre

It was by far the most common chant which is why I am fairly sure that it was a chant egging on the whole team, not a player. I also strongly doubt the ere we go theory. Maybe I have slightly misheard it but it was so common (almost constant in fact) that I think it was either eh ri ko or ye ri ko. The last syllable was unequivocally a ko and this is where most emphasis was.
I only heard the tae-han min-guk chant 3 or 4 times so it was also not that.
Thanks for any more help.


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## alice313

hmm.. or, Aiko?(아이고?)


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## 조금만

Ah no. That's the noise_ I_ make when I want to watch something Korean on Korean TV, only to find they're screening yet another soccer match from Manchester or somewhere like that. I didn't know my anguished complaint was loud enough to be heard above a match crowd, though.


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## 경상남도로 오이소

한국 사람들은 코리아를 "코"라고는 축약해서는 말하는 일이 거의 없어요.


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