If you have spent any amount of time watching hockey games, you would have heard of the "Green Men" of Vancouver, two men in green body suits who mock the opposing team players in the penalty box. Some take the insult better than the others, and undoubtedly, the performance given by the Green Men has some of the hockey players fuming as they leave the penalty box. This is what they do:
Apparently, it is not good enough to be just good at hockey to become the top player of the team nowadays; you have to have that unwavering determination and concentration, regardless of what is going on around you. If the Koreans saw this clip, they would say:
와, 저사람들 정말 강철멘탈이네 (Wow, those people have nerves of steel.)The word "강철" means "steel," and "멘탈" comes from the English word "mental" (although "mentality" is perhaps a better translation), so quite literally "강철멘탈" means "nerves of steel." As usual, you can replace "강철" with any hard and durable object, such as "다이아몬드멘탈" (nerves of diamond.)
The opposite of "강철멘탈" is "유리멘탈," where "유리" means "glass." That is, they are so easy to rattle that their ego, their self-esteem, or whatever is holding them together at the moment (this is really the correct nuance for the word "멘탈") could shatter easily like glass. Once again, you can be creative, and use other easily shattered objects in place of "유리." Some of the most commonly used words include "두부멘탈" (mentality easily shattered like a tofu), "쿠크다스멘탈" (couque d'asse is a the name for a thin cookie you can get in any grocery stores in Korea, and it is notorious for almost never keeping shape because of its thinness,) "종이멘탈" (mentality like a paper.)
When these people of glass mentality have a meltdown, the Koreans call this "멘붕," which is short for "멘탈붕괴," or "destruction of mentality." As a verb, you can use various forms, such as "멘붕을 일으키다," "멘붕이 오다," or "멘붕하다." As it is a neologism, people seem fairly generous with what kind of conjugation you can use!
Some examples:
다연이는 너무 유리멘탈이라 교수님이 이름을 호명하자마자 한마디도 못하고 멘붕을 일으키더라. (Dayeon had the mentality of glass, so that as soon as the professor called on her, she seemed completely destroyed.)
파티가 끝난 후 어지러진 집을 보고 멘붕했다. (I went through a mental breakdown after seeing the messy house after the party.)
와, 그 스캔들은 정말 장난 아니더라. 진심 멘붕. (Wow, that scandal was no joke. Seriously, a total mental breakdown.)Although this is a neologism, it's been around for a while, at least a few years at this point. It seems that the mainstream media also picked up on this expression, so it is not that weird to use this in most context, except in formal writing.
Note that an English word (멘탈) is combined with Korean words (강철, 유리, or 붕괴) to form these neologisms, so when this word first came out, there was a strong undertone of intended humour. However, as this word is becoming more and more accepted in mainstream language, the nuance of humour is on the decline towards just a neutral word. Of course, all that depends on the context. If your friends are joking around and you use this word, clearly there will be some humour. If you talk to your boss about your last episode of 멘붕, there isn't a lot that is funny about it!
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