Korean classes in Korea

So I started taking Korean lessons about a month ago. We found out that there are free classes at the  Multicultural Family Support Center near our home . I didn't even take the placement test, because there was no way I could possibly end up in any other group than beginner, even though I have learned a thing or two over the past years. So here I am, taking two two-hour classes a week, plus a one-to-one extra class with a volunteer teacher. And I'm very happy I'm in the beginner group, because it's actually quite difficult for me to keep up already. There are about twenty students in my class, most of whom
1) are Asian women (from Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, or China)
2) already have a certain command of Korean, unlike me.

These two points don't make things easier for me. First of all, as suggested by the many signs in Vietnamese and Thai at the multicultural family center where the classes are held, the class and the textbook we use are designed for women from these Asian countries who married a Korean man. This could be explained by the high number of marriage agencies arranging international marriages between Korean men and women from Southeast Asia (whom the press refers to as "mail-order brides", see this article from the Washington Post). This doesn't mean that all my classmates' marriages have been arranged, but our textbook has clearly been designed to speak to these married women. So a lot of the vocabulary I learn and the situations described in the book are a bit far from the life of a French man in his forties. I also learned how to talk about my in-laws : 시아버지 and 시어머니, until Her pointed out to me that this is how women talk about their husband's parents. As a man, I should use other terms (장인어른 and 장모님), but the textbook doesn't even mention them.

Women are foreigners and men are Korean.

No French flag?

Just as a side note, I feel a little uncomfortable when I see how society and the family are described in that textbook. Basically, foreign wives like shopping and having coffee with friends, they take care of their in-laws and are in charge of all the housework while their Korean husbands bring home the bacon and never even help around the house. I can't help but find this a little stereotypical and outdated. I'm sure even language textbooks could play a role in the fight for gender equality in Korea.

What about sharing the housework?

Still, I'm learning a lot of basic vocabulary, useful expressions, and basic grammar (which can be quite a bit of a headache). I'm a diligent student and I'm getting good grades. The problem, so far, is that I am unable to reuse what I have learned in my everyday life, and my comprehension of spoken Korean is still terrible.  I can't recognize the words I have learned at school when somebody else than Her or my teacher uses them...

To make things worse, as I said earlier, many of my classmates know much more about Korean than me. That's where the shoe pinches. I understood that some of them already took that class last year, so they're not beginners per se. They can make sentences in less than five minutes. Or complete a drill before I have figured out what the instructions are. Some are even able to joke with the teacher, or even make phone calls in Korean. The problem is that with such a heterogeneous group the class is going fast...VERY fast! And I must confess that on a good day I understand about 25% of what's happening in the classroom. Plus, the teacher speaks Korean 90% of the time. As a language teacher myself, I find it great that the class is taught in the target language, which is the best way for students to make progress. But teachers sometimes forget how little the students understand. So I'm having a hard time trying to keep up in class and I have to review all my notes at home with Her to catch up with the group and not lag too far behind during the following class. Her is very helpful, even though she sometimes makes fun of me when I make mistakes. One in the picture below (which she even posted on her blog) is apparently very funny. Go figure...

So on the plus side, I can tell that I have made a lot of progress in one month, but on the minus side I'm also realizing how long it will take before I can actually communicate in Korean. I need to work on:

- my pronounciation and comprehension of sounds that are identical to me when they're not (allegedly). For instance 바, 빠, and 파 .
- my vocabulary : there are so many words that sound alike (or vey similar), and I'm really mixing them all up. When I learn a foreign language, I usually use mnemonic devices that help me remember the meaning of words, but it's difficult in Korean as words just sound so unfamiliar there's nothing I can associate them with.
- my grammar : when exactly do you use 이, 가, 을, or 를? Should I say 예요 or 있어요 (this one drives me crazy!)

- how to count : when  should I use "하나, 둘,셋, 넷,다섯" and when should I use "일, 이, 삼, 사, 오" , and why?
The list  goes on and on. And to make things worse, Korean has apparently seven different speech levels (not all of which are commonly used, fortunately). This means that assuming I can make a perfectly correct sentence, there's a chance it will still sound inappropriate to the person I'm talking to, depending on the situation. Sigh...

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy learning Korean. Class is fun, and it's good exercise for my brain. I'm always a bit upset when I hear five-year-old kids speak fluently, but I know one day I'll be as good as them!

With a little help from a wizard, maybe?

Getting to grips with Korean

I've been living in Korea for about six months, I've known Her for over five years, and yet, as I said in my first post on this blog, I can't speak Korean. It's not for lack of trying. But I must confess I should have tried harder. In fact I am eager to learn, but so far I have learned in a haphazard way, which means I know a few complicated things like conditionals but only recently have I learned the days of the week. This makes Korean a confusing language to me.

And yet, things had started off easy, as not everything is crazy complicated in Korean. Hangeul (the Korean alphabet), for instance, is comparatively easy to learn. It works exactly like the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This means one symbol equals one sound. 

In French for instance, one letter can be pronounced in so many different ways. Not in Hangeul. So Korean is pretty easy to read. I remember an article in The Economist calling Hangeul "fantastically easy to learn"  which is not untrue, only slightly exaggerated.

So when I started "learning" Korean a few years back, I tried to read or decipher everything I saw, and I was surprised to see that oftentimes I could actually recognize the word(s) I was reading. That's because a lot of words you can see on signs or ads in the streets, are English words transcribed "phonetically." With one big difference though : Korean is a syllable-timed language, when English is based on stress and reduction. This is one of the reasons why Koreans tend to add an extra syllable when speaking English. They will also add syllbales to French words with silent vowels or final consonants. So for instance my first name in Korean changes from Vincent (2 syllables) to 빈센트 or "Bin-sent-eu" (3 syllables). Some people's names undergo even greater changes, like French writer Bernard Werber (4 syllables) who becomes 베르나르 베르베르 or "Be-reu-na-reu Be-reu-be-reu" in Korean (8 syllables). The "v" in my name and the "w" in Werber's become /b/ because /v/ and /f/ don't exist in Korean. Add to this the fact that the "er" (or /ɚ/) sound is often pronounced more like "or" (or /O:/) and you'll see why this famous tennis player's name  sounds a little different in Korea

로저 페더러 or 

/‘lQdZO: ‘pedO:lO:/

Here are a few funny ones that I have come across over the past years :

캐치 미 이프 유 캔 ("Catchi me ipeu you can")

도리토스 ("do-li-to-seu")

스파클링 (seu-par-keul-ling)

Tetris, aka 테트리스 ("Te-teu-li-sseu")

Mixing French and English : "Ca-mang-be-leu mo-shu-loom whoppor"

"on-to-cho-beul" (note that the name of one of the actors, Omar Sy (/si/) is pronounced /sai/ in Korean)

I haven't only learned the alphabet, I have also learned a few chunks that I can use in my everyday life, but at the end of the day I don't know much more than a two-year-old kid (I can say hello and goodbye, talk about eating, sleeping, and that's pretty much it). So in order to go a little further, when we were in France, Her had the very good idea of labeling all the furniture, appliances, and room doors in our apartment with their names in Korean. We also put up posters made for kids to teach them how to read or count. But to little avail. I ended up living in this apartment full of Korean words and signs without really paying attention to them.

화장실 = Bathroom

Having moved to Korea now, all this is far from enough for me to be able to live a normal life, by which I mean not having to rely on Her whenever English isn't enough to make myself understood. Last year, at the time of the Pyeongchang Olympics, I came across this ad at Incheon Airport.

I beg to differ...

Although the idea is great (multilingual information and assistance for foreigners), I really do think that not speaking Korean in Korea is a problem. I already mentioned emergency messages. I also hate it when I want to use this app to collect points when buying something and I get this pop up message and I don't know where to click so I give up on using the app unless Her is around.

That's why I have started taking Korean classes. There are free classes at the  Multicultural Family Support Centers in Busan ( https://english.busan.go.kr/bslearning ). Two classes per week, two hours each. I've been going there for three weeks now, so it's quite recent but I have already reached two conclusions : 1) I like it, 2) Speaking Korean will be an uphill battle... I'll post more about that in a while when I've found my bearings.

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