I'm leaving the office at about 7:30 at night. I wasn't working hard, don't get me wrong, I just had a seminar.

The department smells strongly of roasted garlic. No. Even stronger. It smells of roasting garlic.

I knock on Park Jong-yook's door and look in to see if he is cooking garlic in his office. "Are you cooking garlic in here?"

"No," he says, quickly showing me his hands. There is nothing on them, but also, I'm not sure what evidence of one would expect to find on a someone's hands that would prove they had been cooking garlic. Despite his clean hands, something in his eyes makes him look guilty. But then he sniffs about with fake nonchalance and says, "It does smell like someone has garlic."

I don't trust him. But there seems to be nothing in his room that he could be cooking garlic in. So I slam the door and leave.

Koreans love their garlic. I don't care who hears me say it. They love it! Cooking it. Eating it. Smushing it up. Decorating with it. Hearing mysterious stories about it.

That's why when I get home, I tell my wife that when I left the office, it smelled like someone was cooking garlic in our department.

"Why?" she asks.

"I don't know." I say, "Maybe someone was cooking garlic."

Perhaps "왜?" doesn't really mean "Why?" Or perhaps my wife just doesn't know how to use the word. But in English if someone tells you that it smells like someone is cooking garlic, then "Why?" isn't the response. Clearly it is because someone was cooking garlic.

Perhaps she was asking, "Why was someone cooking garlic?" But that question really only has one reasonable answer: "To eat it."

Now, you will not believe this is how a someone will talk to so someone they love, but I think her "Why?" might have been a "Why are you telling me this?"

This is the real point of this whole post. I'm furious on two accounts. Not only is it infuriating to have to justify a conversation to your family, it also doesn't seem like a proper way to use that word. How can I learn a language if the people I am learning it from are mis-using it?