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Bibara bibara is a Japanese song, so you might be wondering why I am asking on Korean SE. At a certain point, the lyrics go:

ヨボセヨペゴパヨチキンピリョヘヨ

Yoboseyopegopayochikinpiryoheyo

And further on, a slight variation:

ヨボセヨペゴパヨメロンピリョヘヨ

Yoboseyopegopayomeronpiryoheyo

I recognize "yoboseyo" as 여보세요, "hello". Also, I saw a translation somewhere going 私はチキンが大好き or the likes. That means "I really like chicken". "chikin" is recognizable, and indeed 치킨 means chicken. And 멜론 (mellon, Elvish for "friends" :) ) means melon, which is what the other line had in its translation 私はメロンが大好き. Then I found 필요해요 (piryo haeyo) means "[I] need". So I have all the reasons in the world to think this apparent gibberish is actually Korean. I partially Hangul-ify it:

여보세요 ペゴパヨ 치킨 피료해요

Yeoboseyo pegopayo chikin piryo haeyo

여보세요 ペゴパヨ 멜론 피료해요

Yeoboseyo pegopayo mellon piryo haeyo

But pegopayo? The best I could come up with is paego (Conjunction form of paeda, "to chop/split") + payo (Informal Polite Indicative Present form of pada, "to dig"). But does that make any sense? If so, what does it mean? And do these whole sentences make sense or am I forcing an interpretation to actual Gibberish which only by chance resembles Korean words?

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  • Well I'm not really sure about a lot of it, but I can tell you that 치킨 is just a pronunciation of the English word chicken, and it's only used in some cases. The korean word for chicken is 덝 Jun 21, 2016 at 20:40
  • @MaxEhrlich As in this case for example :). Anyways, that Korean word. "dalg" in direct transliteration. How is it actually pronounced?
    – MickG
    Jun 21, 2016 at 20:42
  • it's pronounced 덕 in isolation, your transliteration is not correct (I don't like romanization but i guess it would be deok). Jun 21, 2016 at 20:43
  • Whoops I actually miscorrected that. The individual jamo are d-eo-l-g. The l is mute. So we get deog. But perhaps ending stops are transliterated with voiceless consonants, so deok, not deog.
    – MickG
    Jun 21, 2016 at 20:47
  • And the miscorrection is Wiktionary's fault.
    – MickG
    Jun 21, 2016 at 20:48

2 Answers 2

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I recognize "yoboseyo" as 여보세요, "hello"

This is correct, within the context of answering the phone.

But pegopayo?

This is most likely 배고파요, "I'm hungry."

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  • Oh right, yeoboseyo is the phone-answering hello. The greeting is annyeonghaseyo. The songwriter probably confused them.
    – MickG
    Jun 21, 2016 at 20:45
  • The standard Korean romanization suggests to be always b, on the other hand, phonetically at the first of a sentence sounds /p/, which is voiceless (unvoiced). So it's technically not a wrong transcription. Sep 17, 2018 at 16:52
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To add to dotVezz' answer, 치킨 필요 해요 would be 'I need chicken'! 필요하다 means 'there is a necessity of', or 'I need...'

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