Speaking The Language

One of the most common questions people back home ask me is whether or not I know the Korean language. I don't yet, not really. I do know some basic phrases, and my pronunciation is apparently rather impressive for a beginner. That's thanks to some Korean friends back home, who were enormously helpful teachers. I'm looking forward to seeing one of them again next month when she returns to Seoul. But despite the help, I can't say much beyond "yes/no," "hello/goodbye," "hurry!," "please/thanks/sorry," "may I have...?," "do you have...?," "how much does it cost?," "can you cut the price?," and some basic vocabulary. However, even this much is helpful if you want to be able to, for example, ask for more water in a restaurant--or a fork, for those dishes that are too hard to eat with chopsticks!

I can sort of read Hangul, and that's enormously helpful. Here's an anecdotal example. Until recently, I stayed in a motel. There was a dispenser on the wall in the bathroom, which dispensed three liquids. The first, reading phonetically, sounded like "sham-pu;" the second was "rin-see;" and the third was more or less "cleanser" (the sounds are difficult to replicate in English with the Roman alphabet). So I figured out which one to use to wash my hair. Obviously, knowing how to read isn't going to help you if the Korean words are completely foreign to you, but it does help from time to time. And, at least in my case, it's hard not to desire to learn more.

안녕하세요!

The title translates, roughly, into "Hello!" It's romanized as "annyong haseyo" and it's pronounced, roughly, like "ahn yawng hah seh yoh." But faster.

I'm doing a language swap with a Korean student at the U of S Language Center. The Korean language is surprisingly intuitive. It was specifically designed that way, actually.

Oh! By the way, contrary to the assertion of the linguist I linked to in my last post, Korean is not a tonal language. It's a minor point, but I thought I'd mention it.