Korean...It's All Greek to Me

As I have shared with many of you over the past weeks, probably the most challenging thing about being in Korea for us thus far has been the language barrier. It doesn't seem to matter how many times we listen to the elevator in our apartment
complex "announce" the floors as we travel up and down...it just never gets any easier to understand. You might say that Korean is all Greek to me!

In an effort to help assist new faculty members learn some of the basics of Korean, GSIS requires all new employees to take 10 hours of language lessons. Brian and I opted for the 2 hour sessions on Saturday mornings. It was a month ago we found ourselves in Room 302 waiting for our first lesson with Mrs. Sarah Kim. I couldn't help but feel like a kid again sitting at my desk with my sharpened pencils, binder with empty sheets of paper waiting to be filled, and a bit of a butterfly churning in my belly. I guess facing the unknown does that to me.

With a big smile on her face, Mrs. Kim welcomed us to Korean and proceeded to pass out worksheets with cartoon pictures of milk cartons, kittens, ducks, and other kid-friendly drawings. No doubt about it...I felt like I'd just be transported back to first grade. With no time to waste she proceeded to introduce her new charges to the Hangul alphabet.

Our patient instructor started with the consonants and demonstrated for us the correct order of writing...left to right and top to bottom. We practiced our letters in our workbooks, carefully tracing the pre-formed script one letter at a time while sounding out the letters as we wrote. Guh Guh Guh Guh , Ah Ah Ah Ah, Oo, oo, oo, oo. Simple enough, I thought, as I continued to draw row after row of vertical and horizontal lines.


Consonant and Vowel Combinations

By the end of our first lesson Brian and I were equipped with just enough information to make us "dangerous" out in the real world. Wanting to test our new language skills, we made our way to Holly's Coffee to order their "famous" sweet potato lattes. Don't ask me why on earth we chose to learn that as one of our first sentences. Wouldn't something like "Where's the bathroom?" or "Help! I need the police!" have been more useful? Brian and I practiced our new vocabulary over and over as we walked the busy streets of Suwon that afternoon. Soon we found ourselves standing at the counter at Holly's wondering if we would be able to fulfill our mission of ordering something in Korean. Slowly the words tumbled out..."Go Goo Ma Latte Doo Gay Jue Say Oh." The baristas behind the sleek,shiny espresso machines eyed each other, giggled and said "American." Yes, that was us...The CaucAsian Pair...aliens in a foreign land. After paying 10,000 won for our lattes and recovering from sticker shock, we spotted a table in a cozy corner where we sat down to taste the fruit of our labor and to celebrate our first successful attempt at speaking Korean.

Since that first lesson we have built upon the basics and are now facing some of the frustrations of "exceptions to the rules", double consonants, and honorific forms. I stumble through most lessons and hope my awful accent does not offend the ears of my tutor. Attempting to learn Korean has caused me to ponder the power of the spoken word. The tongue can cause wounds so deep as well as offer words that heal and offer encouragement. In speaking with friends, family, or co-workers no matter how carefully we choose our words, sometimes we can still be misunderstood.

Fortuntely for me, my prayers are not like my Korean. No matter how awkward or muddled they may sound to me, if they come from my heart, I believe that in God's ears they ring perfectly clear and He knows what I meant to say. I'm understood...and isn't that what we all desire in the deepest part of our heart and soul...to be understood?

Until next time . . . an-yeong-hi-kye-se-yo from South Korea

HANGUL
In 1443 King Sejong commissioned a group of scholars to develop a script which would enable Koreans of all classes to express themselves in writing in their own language. What resulted from this scholarly effort was Hangul, which consists of twenty-four letters (fourteen consonants and ten vowels) and is considered by many to be one of the most scientific phonetic alphabets in existence.