Intercultural Life

Month: April 2024

Museum

We often go to the Natural History Museum near us in Seoul. It’s always fun for the kids and they enjoy the animal displays. Yul has started copying what Hugh does though, which is commenting on what animals he would like to eat. However, they are not the only ones who do it while there! I definitely hear others talking about what sea creatures, in particular, taste good. At least these just the taxidermy animals. I think it’s more annoying when it’s at a zoo or wildlife park.

There are cultural and historical reasons why Koreans seem obsessed with food. I can’t go into all the detail here, but it’s less weird to me now, after living in Korea for 10 years. But I have seen comments from those part of the Korean diaspora who can get quite angry at older relatives who make comments like this.

This comic has the English and Korean combined as that is how the moment is in real life. The bigger font is always the language that it was spoken in. This is a conversation in Korean but I am responding in English.

Also, a reminder that the majority of the conversation around my comics, now happens on social media rather than comment section here.

Reading English

Yul is learning Korean reading and writing at school but I am teaching him to read English at home. I wasn’t raised bilingual so when I was learning to read as a child, I didn’t have this awareness of different languages that Yul has. The Korean language is almost completely phonetic and is quite easy to read but in comparison, English can seem like a mess. Koreans also know their history about King Sejong and the development of Hangul, so perhaps that’s why Yul was also asking about who invented English. Maybe when he is older he will learn to appreciate all the influences English has and how it grew and changed over time.

A challenge for parents raising kids to be bilingual is maintaining the interest in both language, so they continue learning both. As Yul is now in elementary school, there is a big focus on Korean, so he possibly feels like learning to read in English is much slower and more boring. I also try not to pressure too much because I want him to discover how amazing reading is for himself. I was a voracious reader as a child, and I want my children to also have that escape from the world too. We are lucky to have an English kids library close by to where we live in Seoul and Yul enjoys visiting it. Hopefully it is just a matter of time before English seems a bit less stupid.

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