Remember your childhood secret language? Or Pig Latin, the silly way kids say words backward? Well, think about the time before you learned how to understand that secret code. Frustrating, right? There was a whole world of communication going on among the other kids that you weren’t a part of.
And once you figured it out—voilà! The world is your oyster.
Well, unlike what you may think when you look at those non-Latin-based symbols used in Korean, the Korean alphabet is just that—an alphabet (unlike the crazy-hard Chinese characters!). They are phonetic letters. They work differently than our ABCs, but once you figure out the letters, you can read anything... or, well, at least sound anything out!
The first week of my 11-week intensive Korean course at Sogang University here in Seoul was focused only on getting the sounds right. And Korean sounds are not the same as English sounds! For one thing, there is no way to end a word on a hard consonant like S or T—hence some Korean English speakers adding a “suh” or “tuh” on the end of many words (i.e. “gohl-puh” for golf).
In class, we chanted something similar to “Ahhhhhh, awwwwwww, ohhhh, uuuuu…” as though we were those weird mystics in The Dark Crystal (see video if you don’t get the 80s-fantasy-muppet reference).
But it worked! Pretty soon I was driving Joe crazy by sounding out the signs around town: “Joe, what does this mean? What does this mean?”
I’m so grateful to have a patient husband.
The best thing, though, is sounding out Konglish signs. Like, for example, on my way out of the subway one day, I sounded out this word: “에스컬레이터.” It sounds something like: “eh-suh-kohl-lay-ee-tawh.” Oh! Escalator.
Since there is Konglish everywhere, this is one of my new favorite games.
Take American movies currently in local theaters; I’ll roughly sound them out for you (again, the sounds are hard to transliterate):
맨 인 블랙 3 = Mehn een bul-lake 3.
어벤져스 = Awh-bayn-jyawh-suh
스노우 화이트 앤 더 헌츠맨 = Suh-no-uu hwah-ee-tuh ane-dawh hawhn-chuh-mayn
Can you guess them?
Shortly after learning the Korean alphabet, I was riding in a taxi and sounding out the store signs around me when I noticed the driver was talking under his breath: “Een-tuh-nay-shun-al keen-dah-gah-den.”
I looked out the other side of the car and saw a yellow bus with the English words “International Kindergarten” plastered on the side. We were doing the same thing, but opposite. That taxi driver and I were totally simpatico.
The class got far more complex very quickly. As proof, here’s my notebook from week 1, then week 3, and then week 9:
Whew. I honestly can’t believe how much I learned! While I’m not confident enough yet to boldly strike up conversations with strangers (it’s hard for me to understand when people speak quickly!), I really am proud of what I learned. My teachers were amazing—they took our class from not even knowing Korean sounds to conversations about our families, vacations, the weather, plans, hobbies, shopping, food, and more. Basically, we really rock the small talk.
And the class itself was a unique way to make friends from all over the world. Of course it was easiest to make friends with the other English speakers, but it’s amazing how much you can communicate without a common language. And then, it’s also amazing how much you can communicate when you all know a little bit of a third language.
I joined my classmates for several extracurricular activities—excellent chances for us to practice Korean conversation:
Cherry-blossom gazing, ...
...a picnic in a park, ...
...random lunches here and there, and even a visit to Asia’s favorite cartoon cat at the Hello Kitty Café (which, as you would imagine, feels just like being at a 4-year-old girl’s birthday party).
As I mentioned in a previous post, continuing class got a little tricky around week 8 or 9 since my pregnancy hit trimester 3 and Seoul’s weather suddenly shifted to hot, but I’m glad I stuck it out—and passed with flying colors! Ok, ok, I know it doesn’t count for much in the scheme of things since I was doing the course for fun, but it is still nice to know I have the capacity to learn such a difficult language.
I wish I could keep going with level 2, but… well… I plan to be happily busy with the new baby come July. And now I will be able to read him baby books in Korean!
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