Today for you I bring two stories about me and speaking Korean. In the event that you can’t see my picture in the right hand corner, I am caucasian (or white to the uninitiated). Also for those who don’t know me personally, or haven’t read all of my writings, I have studied Korean both in university and independently (which was while I was living in Korea) for over 3 years. This being said, though I have studied for quite some time, and can handle most basic conversations. This brings up my first story.
Last night (Sunday) I enter a convenience store outside of my neighborhood. I grab a coffee and some cookies. I walk up to the cash register, put my loot on the counter, and the girl rang it up. She then pointed to the display without saying anything. I asked her in Korean how much it was, as I couldn’t see the display (and I thought she was being rude). Anyhow instead of telling me how much it was, she turned the display towards me, and pointed again. I am aware that the majority of foreigners in Korea can’t speak Korean and make no effort to do so, but after I asked her (in Korean) she could have had at least humored me and responded in Korean.
For a point of comparision, when I went to Japan (a country who’s language I really don’t know beyond a couple simple phrases) people would approach me and launch into dialogues in Japanese, assumming I could understand exactly what they were saying.
For my second adventure, I go from the “He can’t possibly speak Korean,” to the “He is a master of our language….I can tell from that simple greeting he gave.” Today I met my boss for lunch prior to work. We then drove in together and parked in the Goyang town parking lot. She said before we went to the school she needed to pick up some alterations, so we went to the tailor together. I greeted the lady, with the standard “안녕하세요.” This expression is the most basic of all Korean phrases. Go to your local bookstore, pick up any Teach Yourself Korean book and this expression will be on the first page of instruction. Take a Korean language course and this will be the first phrase taught to you, but I digress. So I greeted her, and said nothing else. She then tells my boss, “와! 그분이 우리말 잘 해요.” (Wow! He speaks our language well.) She was able to tell this from the one phrase I uttered. Using this logic, all the middle school girls and kindergarten boys who yell things like “Hello everybody!” and “Oh handsome man!” and “How are you?!” are masters of the English language. While it’s nice to be complimented on my skills, I know I say stuff incorrectly, and want to be corrected. One of the reasons I came to Korea was to learn the Korean language, which is hard when no one corrects my mistakes (since they are all of the school of thought, “At least he is trying…let’s just tell him how good he is and send him on his way.”) Anyhow now these things annoy me a little less now that I will be attending Korean language school in a few months.
