Non-fiction / Learning Korean

 I didn’t bother trying to learn Korean in my first five or six months here. It seemed like a mammoth task that just didn’t appeal to me. Sure, I hated being the idiot foreigner that couldn’t express himself or ask for anything he wanted, but I didn’t realistically see that changing within my time in Korea anyway. Whenever I heard a Korean person speaking English, they’d say things like “I’m learning English for eight years,” and I’d wonder what the point was in even trying. Why learn another language if after eight years you were still making such fundamental mistakes. I’d hear other foreigners saying “It took me two years to learn Japanese,” and I’d feel put off because I never saw myself staying in Korea for two years, and there seemed to be no real point in knowing Korean outside of the motherland.

But then, like I said, I also didn’t want to be that idiot foreigner. I speak French and have been to France about a dozen times, and every time I’ve been the majority of British people there can’t speak a word. They mine and asked for things in exasperated English, totally oblivious to the fact that French people aren’t obligated to know what dumbass Englishmen are talking about all the time. I’ll always be reminded of the one time I saw a women in Super-U mining that she wanted Rocket Lettuce, by putting her hands above her head and zooming about the produce aisle. I don’t want that to be me in a country less tolerant of differences than France.

So when I came here I did what all the guidebooks said and learned the alphabet, and I’m so glad that I did. It meant thatKorea very quickly stopped feeling like a foreign country. I couldn’t understand what the words meant, but I could read them out and make them sound familiar. It wasn’t such a strange language after all.

Over the weeks and months, certain phrases stuck in my head as I heard them over and over. 안녕하세요 was the most obviousexample. I heard it every day and it stopped sounding like something I wouldn’t hear at home, and instead became just another part of the world around me. 감사합니다 was the first word I began to say myself, as I tried my best to sound polite. I didn’t want to be one of those Englishmen barking at French shop assistants. Numbers, too, sunk in, as I went about the usual routines of life.

But after that, there was no more learning. It was difficult. I’d study and nothing would stick in my head, so I gave up. My friends had all been in Korea for almost a year, so they spoke for me in restaurants and bars. I didn’t need to ever speak because I was never alone. All the daily routines of life I knew and never had to ask for help, and so Korean was just not something I spoke for the first five or six months.

Eventually my foreigner friends disappeared to other parts ofKorea, or back to their home countries after their year long stints as teachers, never to return. Whereas I’d been the new boy for my whole time, I was quickly thrust into the ranks of seasoned foreigners, and expected to know things. Indeed, I new how to work the subway, and my geographical grip on Daegu was excellent, but I was still at a loss when a Korean would speak to me. I couldn’t even explain that I didn’t speak English. I had to shrug my shoulders, which even after a few days in Korea had been an embarrassing thing to do.

But now things were different. Without really realising it, being inKorea for so many months had changed me. I didn’t know much Korean, but it was slowly sinking into my brain, without me even trying. The language sounded familiar, because I heard it all day, every day, and certain words were repeating themselves. I decided to ask people, from time to time, what these words meant, and suddenly these weren’t just pieces of information going in and out of my head. They stuck.

I went to the Kyobo bookstore, downtown, and bought a book called First Step in Korean that has served me well. It starts with teaching the alphabet, and then moves very quickly on to the complex conversations, meaning that some of it was far too easy and most of it far too hard, but nonetheless I have come to grips with the difficult parts. I’d sit and study between classes at work and find that the next day the lessons would sit be in my head. I was finally learning Korean.

However, I was embarrassed to learn from anywhere except the book. I really dislike looking foolish, and even though I’m learning quickly, I’m still at a remedial stage in the grand scheme of things. I’ve heard enough hilariously bad attempts at English to know that hearing someone make mistakes in another language can be funny, and this has discouraged me from asking for help. But recently I have gotten over this barrier and begun asking my co-workers and random people in coffee shops for advice. Indeed, at first they find the idea of a foreigner learning Korean to be hilarious, and they assume that what I’m learning is too difficult. But after a little explanation, I find these lessons to be invaluable. You can’t learn pronunciation from a book, after all.

But I still find myself shy to speak Korean in public. Foreigners draw incredible amounts of attention when being quiet and reserved, and trying not to stand out from the crowd. But learning Korean sees to amuse anyone nearby, and I don’t like being the centre of attention. I find myself still saying little more than 감사합니다 and 안녕히 계세요 in public, even when I want to ask questions as a way of practicing. But when I do I inevitably find myself belittled for my inabilities. This is not a good confidence booster.

It’s difficult, too, to talk to Koreans in Korean. Firstly, as soon as I approach a person they initially make judgements based on the fact that I am a foreigner, and they don’t listen to what I say. I know my pronunciation is poor (it’s not that poor), but I am always amazed that it takes two attempts to get the first sentence across. Immediately I can see the eyes close as the person I converse with thinks back to their English education, or searches for a basic phrase in Korean that I might know. Then it registers that I am speaking Korean and they have not been listening, and I have to repeat. After that it’s usually fine. But the initial judgement makes the introduction embarrassing.

Secondly, there is a Lost in Translation factor that we native English speakers find hard to come to terms with. Britain andAmerica have been multi-cultural societies for a long, long time, and consequently we have become accustomed to hearing our language spoken with many foreign accents. We hear terrible grammar, accidental innuendo, and all kinds of wild pronunciation. But we understand most of what we hear, because we hear the language misspoken so often. But in Korea it is incredibly rare to hear bad Korean. Most foreigners are like I was when I first arrived, trying to get along without the language. Also, there aren’t that many of us and we haven’t been here for that long. Korea has been an isolationist nation going back through its history, and it is proud of its language. They have no equivalent to our immediate understand of the mix ups between ‘r’ and ‘l’ or the ‘ee’ sound replacing an ‘i’.

If I could go back and try a little harder I would, because learning another language is a valuable experience. But it’s not easy, and it’s a road fraught with humiliation. Indeed, if all foreigners tried a little harder, maybe we’d become a little more accepted into Korean society. 

Reviews

There are no reviews of this item.