Here I am at the beginning of my fifth semester of teaching at Handong. When I first was thinking about teaching abroad, (more than three years ago) colleagues who had done so strongly urged me to make the most of my experience by learning the language of my host country.
But, I've never been very good at learning, and even worse at speaking, modern languages. Give me Koine Greek or Classical Latin -- you know, those dead languages that no one speaks any more!! "Semper ubi sub ubi!!" I still remember that maxim from my high school Latin teacher at St. Paul's in Concordia.
So . . . I've resisted the counsel of my colleagues and the advice of my loving spouse, who, by the way, started her language lessons within two weeks of arrival here in the Spring of 2010. Within one semester, she had already excelled far beyond my "An yong ha se yo" and "Gam sa ham ni da!" -- which have been my main stays for the past two years!
I've resisted that is, until now. This evening, I experienced my first lesson in Korean!
And while I've been told that Korean is one of the most difficult languages to learn, and even with my built-in, hard-wired, left brain-right brain-disability with language-learning (primarily, I would contend, because I'm a visual rather than an auditory learner) I found my lesson this evening to be exceptionally fascinating as well as intellectually stimulating.
Korean is a very "scientific language" -- that is, the formation of both the consonant and vowel sounds follow a very rational, logical progression. My tutor demonstrated how the vowel sounds progress from those made with the mouth wide open to those made with it increasingly closed. As I saw the sounds being produced and heard them expressed, they began to make sense even to this lingua-dumbie!
Korean is a very "scientific language" -- that is, the formation of both the consonant and vowel sounds follow a very rational, logical progression. My tutor demonstrated how the vowel sounds progress from those made with the mouth wide open to those made with it increasingly closed. As I saw the sounds being produced and heard them expressed, they began to make sense even to this lingua-dumbie!
Now, I must confess that I find other Asian languages, such as Chinese and the Chin language of Myanmar, to be much more melodious. But, the precision of Korean is beginning to rival what I had previously believed to be only the province of the ancient classical tongues.
There was, however, one very disappointing discovery. I say disappointing, but it was also a very enlightening insight into how language shapes our view of the world. I asked my tutor to tell me the Korean word for "dove." The word is 비둘기 (pronounced "bi dool gi"). It means "pigeon."
There is no separate word in Korean for "dove." So if I were to quote the Song of Solomon to my beautiful wife telling her that she had "dove's eyes" (see Song of Songs 1:15), I would say in Korean, "You have pigeon's eyes." Not as romantic as Solomon's words to the Shulamite.
So, in this case, it might not work for me to advise my young male Korean students to master the poetry of Solomon as they make their preparations to woo the woman of their dreams. Well, so much for Korean as a language of love; at least that is, in translation.
I hear, though, that I still have much to learn both about and from the Korean language, which admonition I readily accept and yield to. So . . . . off to start my homework! It is indeed about time that I started!
