Intercultural Life
Learning Korean and discussions about language
So while I was thinking that those boys shouldn’t be drinking like that (must have forgotten I was in Korea! haha) Hugh had only thought about bribing them so they wouldn’t call him ahjussi. He doesn’t like to be faced with the reality of his age and how the younger generation now view him. I understand it, I hate being called ahjumma…. but he’s going a lot further to still feel young!
You know when someone is trying to count or memorize a number and it’s really obnoxious to yell random numbers to make them lose track or forget? That’s what I was doing but my Korean number skills are atrocious so it sounded ridiculous. Korea has 2 numbering systems which can be confusing if you are bad at even the single numbering system in English… like me… I have maths phobia.
He has so little faith in me… haha.
Actually I’ve had insomnia lately so he knew I was sleep deprived and likely to dissolve into tears at anytime. But the lesson was fine! It’s all in Korean so of course it’s hard for me to understand everything the teacher is saying, but it wasn’t a traumatic experience.
You know the feeling of being a student again and it’s terrifying??? Traumatic school flashbacks haha.
Since I’m married to a Korean man I’m allowed a free Korean tutor through government services. Unfortunately we had to wait a year or so before one was available for me. Being in the countryside it’s a tutor that comes to people’s houses, which is good for me because I don’t have time to travel to a class twice a week.
Yesterday was the first evaluation to see where my Korean level is. My Korean is very basic and although I can follow some conversations, my speaking level is very low. People mistakenly think that by simply being in Korea that it should be very easy to learn Korean, but it’s not at all. Everyone has different skills and experiences. For example, someone who has already learned another language will likely learn faster, whereas I have never learned another language before. Also whether your relationship developed in English or Korean or a bit of both will affect it. When I first met Hugh, I couldn’t even read Korean.
Another aspect is what language who have to work in, and of course our work is mostly in English. Teachers, full-time bloggers and others working in English environments in Korea have this problem, and it’s a very different experience to someone who is learning Korean in a Korean university for example. What type of work or study you are doing in Korea will really influence the opportunities you have for learning Korean. (Not to mention extra things like dialect!)
Due to time limitations and knowing that I’d be getting a tutor later anyway, my Korean study stalled a lot. But now I’ll be learning Korean in Korean, which the tutor said is the hardest but fastest way. It’s kinda terrifying but I’m really glad as well.
Just a reminder that these comics are an accurate representation of our life. Haha.
I think this is the first time I’ve used a fart joke on the blog, I guess I’m being influenced by the Korean type of humour that I see constantly on dramas and gag concerts etc.
I still don’t know if there is a Korean equivalent of the word ‘whatever’ in English that has the same versatility.
We made a silly video about the new slang word “Bae” in English and what Korean words are romanised as “Bae”.
Have you been confused about this? When I first started seeing it on Twitter I thought people were saying a Korean name…
I also made a comic about this:
Have you seen and heard people using the word “BAE”? Did it confuse you? Do you speak languages other than English and it means something else in your language? It is said slightly differently in Korean, but since mostly I see people using it online, it makes me think of Korean words.
AND we also have a drawing from Chloe! (Chloe is Daniel’s girlfriend and does awesome art here and here).
In this Ask Us video we tackle some more serious questions! Two questions seem to pop up all the time so we answered as best we could. There are always way more things to say that don’t fit into a video and already this video was quite long.
As I mentioned in the video, we can’t reply to all the emails we get where people want relationship advice, but we can sometimes do videos like this where we discuss topics like this.
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