Category: East Asia

This one’s for you, Jenny.

On Tuesday, with the day off for Korean Independence Day, I made my way to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central branch, at Grand Army Plaza, and came home with an armload of books, among them Roadmap to Korean by Richard Harris (not the actor), a student of the Korean language, a resident in that country for five years at the time of publication, and a kindred spirit. His book is a compendium of useful concepts that he wishes he had, and now I wish I had, upon first arriving in Korea (example: an appendix with translations of typical ATM screens).

When we were in Korea, our school’s assistant director and our primary boss, James, was fond of prefacing every statement with “Maybe,” which led to much bafflement. “Maybe tomorrow is a holiday.” “Maybe you teach one extra hour tonight.” “Maybe I have to go to Seoul tomorrow.” Maybe? What the hell does that mean?

In a chapter about how Korean is a high-context language, meaning much is said indirectly or left understood based on context, Harris has this to say about Korean maybeism:

Another example of Koreans not being direct linguistically is the only-too-common, seemingly ubiquitous ‘maybe.’ Though some visitors to Korea don’t ever pick up on this, even after years of interaction with Koreans, the fact is that the Korean language itself is ladled with grammar structures that imply that something is not definite, when everyone knows it clearly is. That’s why Koreans, when speaking English, say things absolutely baffling with regards to the use of maybe.

Harris feels my pain!

He goes on to give a few examples of phrases that make sense in Korean but translate bizarrely into English, like “Maybe I can’t go to class” and “Maybe your sister’s tall.” They make more sense to me now, knowing what I know of Korean grammar. At the time, though, they left us completely at a loss. This is why I want to learn Korean so badly. Just as I needed to go back to Nepal and India a second time to find out what had so completely addled my mind on the first go-round, I feel now like the only way to work out what Korea was really about is to get inside the language.

No easy task, that, but I’m working on it.

When you start to learn a language with the intention of really understanding it deeply, you quickly discover that there are many more aspects than the few taught by formal pedagogy. Most teaching systems will give you the writing system, grammar, standard vocabulary and a certain amount of listening comprehension. Beyond that, everyone wants to learn the slang and dirty words, which are rarely included in Beginning I textbooks.

But languages have further corners and byways, and one that is often overlooked is the handwriting of ordinary folks. In America, kids are drilled (or at least were when I was young) in cursive writing, which is disappointingly free of any curse words, but which is helpful when you’re trying to scrawl notes fast enough to keep up with someone speaking.

Korean has its own cursive writing, but unfortunately I’ve been unable to track down any books on the subject. As it is, my Korean handwriting is slow and laborious and earns compliments from people here in the office for its tidiness — like a second-grader’s, basically. In an effort to change that, I downloaded some Korean handwriting fonts and have been attempting to parse and apply them.

For now, I’m stuck with a bit of a hybrid style, one that allows my writing to flow more easily, but that doesn’t change the shapes of the letters so much that I can’t read them easily. After all, part of what makes a morass of loops identifiable as a word in English is our ready knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar, and even then, we regularly find ourselves squinting at scribbles as we try to decide whether that’s answer or cursives.

Learning Korean is hard work, but continually fascinating. I’m now on the first chapter of the Beginning 2 textbook, which means I’ve begun my second semester of self-study after taking off a couple of weeks to torment myself with vocabulary drill, and it’s nice to get back to the part I like best, which is weird grammar.

In the Korean language, verb endings do a lot of heavy lifting. As opposed to adding entire phrases or clauses, Koreans can change the whole character of a sentence just by manipulating the verb form.

For example, ka- (가-) is the root of the verb to go. The simplest sentence you can make with this verb is Kayo (가요), which literally means Go, with an implied subject. (For simplicity, we’ll assume the implied subject is you.)

Here are some of the variations you can make by changing the verb form:

Kaseyo. (가세요.) = Please go.
Kal keoyeyo? (갈 거예요?) = Do you intend to go?
Kalkkayo? (갈까요?) = Should you go? or Shall you go?
Kajiyo? (가지요?) = You’re going, right?
Kago Shipeoyo. (가고 싶어요.) = You want to go.
Kaneundeyo. (가는데요.) = You’re going. Do you need any further assistance?

Note that all of this is in the present tense, and all at the polite informal level of formality. I find it incredibly interesting that you can pack so much meaning into verb forms. It’s just a very different way to approach communication.