Language Laughs

It has been awhile since I've posted so I thought I would share some of my recent thoughts.
I am currently enrolled in an TEFL course (that's: Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and it requires me to reflect about the difficulties in learning another language.

I'm a little disappointed about the progress I have made in learning Korean. I guess I naively hoped that Blake and I would be fluent by the end of this year (hear the chuckle), but we are far from even competent in our language skills. Korean is a really hard language to learn! To start with, there are two languages within the one. There is a formal and informal way of speaking and the words are sometimes entirely different. Korean society is based on a Confucian system where age is extremely important. It is a horrible thing to address someone who is older than you in an informal way. To maintain sanity with our learning, Blake and I just try to learn the formal way of saying things so we seem polite, but it puts us in a position of hilarity when speaking to kids or people younger than us.

I have a fairly good grasp of the alphabet which is largely phonetic- thank goodness! I can't describe how incredible it felt when I finally figured out how to sound out the words and could read the signs around me. (I don't remember this experience when I was learning English so it was really cool!)

We have had some pretty hilarious moments while learning the sounds of words. Korean does not have a symbol for the word 'f' and consequently, many Koreans have difficulty pronouncing this sound. I was buying a muffin the other day at Paris Baguette and noticed the wording on the package (in Korean letters) spelled out 'muppin' instead of muffin.

The other quite hilarious situation had to do with Blake trying to get a cell phone. He was trying to communicate with the guy at the counter saying he wanted a phone. The sales guy seemed a little intimidated to be dealing with us and couldn't seem to figure out what we wanted. Blake finally hung his head in shame and said 'we want a pone.' The guy lit up and said, 'Ooooooh! a PONE!' I couldn't stop laughing at how defeated Blake looked when he called it a pone. We teach kids how to use correct English and call out the 'Konglish' (that's Korean and English words mashed together like 'sangu' for 'thank you') when we hear it. I bet our kids would love to know we make use of the Konglish outside of school.

In any case, we now have a new pone! :)

P.S. Less than 4 months!