Human Beings behind Activism

Korean Adoptee … Learns Korean! Part 3

Posted on January 10, 2011 by jjtrenka| 2 Comment

As you know, I’m the world’s laziest blogger (can’t be bothered to put up pictures), but here are some links to the four books I use all the time.

Book recommendations

Seoul National University Textbooks – Easy to learn by yourself, well-organized and laid-out. CDs and workbooks avail. Of the books that I’ve tried, I rank them like this:

1. Seoul National – They are known for being a good program for writing.

2. Sogang – Good, but as a book person, their font kind of bugs me. I know that is a weird hang-up. Sogang is known for being a good program for speaking. I heard it said that they are the first program to drop 느 from 느냐고 when asking a quoted question using a verb, since people don’t say 느 anyway! At Seoul National, we diligently write 느 and get all tongue-tied when trying to say it (which is why people drop it in the first place.)

3. Yonsei – Their new books are nicer than their old ones. Their old ones were just blocks of texts, whereas their new ones visually have too much going on on the page for me.

4. Ewha – dead last. Wow, I really disliked those books. If you missed something once, it was just gone forever. I frankly have not met anyone who likes the Ewha books. I know they are trying to rewrite them.

Korean Grammar for International Learners – This is a Yonsei reference book. Most of your elementary to intermediate grammar questions can be answered in a flash thanks to a good index in Korean and English explanations.

A Guide to Korean Characters – It has a great index for looking up hanja by the Korean syllable. I use this one to complete my homework.

Handbook of Korean Vocabulary – A nice book for perusing hanja words, but the “index” (which consists of the letters of the alphabet, each with a page number) is totally useless. I use this one as bedtime reading and have many “A-ha!” moments.

And of course, the Naver dictionary is great! You can look up anything on this but use with caution. Sometimes you can tell when some smart-ass foreigner convinced a Korean to write a strange translation because the foreigner thought it was funny.

http://dic.naver.com/

I’ve heard that Daum is better, but now that I know how to get around Naver, I also can’t be bothered to learn a different website.

What Koreans think about the Korean language that I disagree with as an adult language learner

1. Hanja (Chinese) is hard.

In my opinion, hanja is the only thing that makes sense. Hanja is systematic and you can safely stick “하다” to just about anything and make a verb out of it. What is hard to me is pure Korean verbs. Why do they all seem the SAME and so hard to pronounce!?

2. Ethnic Koreans can learn Korean faster than other people.

If they were raised by Korean people who speak Korean and heard it growing up as the language at home, that seems to be the case. In the case of adoptees, not so much.

3. You can learn hangeul (the Korean writing system) in a day.

Yeah, but can you remember it the next day? I had a lot of trouble with compound vowels for a really long time. BTW hangeul = the writing system. 한국말 is the Korean spoken language. 한국어 is the Korean language language.

4. Hangeul can make any sound

It can make any sound in Korean, but don’t let them tell you that its sounds exactly as it is written. At Seoul National we get pronunciation worksheets in which the correct pronunciation is written below the actual writing. And there is no such thing as “f” or “th” in hanguel, so there.

5. Get a Korean boy/girlfriend and you’ll learn Korean fast!

I suppose, but do you really want to pimp yourself out like that?

6. Go and drink with Koreans and you’ll learn Korean fast!

To a point. After that, you’re just drunk and stupider than before. However, I gotta say, drinking with Koreans can be very fun whether you are practicing your perfect grammar or not. Then again I am kind of past the age where my liver can take it anymore.

7. You should learn Korean from a Korean.

Just as English speakers can’t necessarily explain their grammar, neither can Koreans. Also, I think in the beginning it was nice for me to learn Korean from people who could speak English well, usually meaning other adoptees or Korean Americans. That’s because if they were English speakers, they could understand how I was thinking and explain in a way that I could understand. Sometimes Koreans who only speak Korean have absolutely no idea why something might be confusing to a non-native Korean speaker. Like coming and going, for instance. I still make a lot of mistakes with this very simple concept. I want to say, “Can I come over to your house?” whereas I guess in Korean I would “go,” not “come,” to my brother’s house. There is a real reason for this confusion and it is apparently something about the “speaker” and if you are speaking from your current position in Korean or where you imagine yourself to be in the future in English, but anyway, now my head is turning inside out … and my brother totally doesn’t get it because he only speaks Korean and he does get a little irritated with me about this point.

8. Some grammar or words are hard

I think they’re all equally hard because they are all equally new. A word that is “hard” to a Korean because it is seldom used is, to me, just another word that I’ve NEVER used. Like people’s names, for instance. Every one is a new vocabulary word, and every one is hard to remember (unless I already know someone with the same name). Some grammar has multiple parts that have to be used together, so that can be a brain buster, but it turns out that 이/가 은/는, the first grammar that you learn and that you cannot live without, might be the hardest one of all the more complex the language gets. It’s so hard that although they explain the first eight rules, they say that the other 50 are too hard to remember and that we should just guess.

Tool Kit

An electronic dictionary is worth it.

Because my electronic dictionary broke, I tried using the paper dictionary for about a week. It was very, very bad. There were lots of words that weren’t in the dictionary, never mind hanja or particles. Luckily, I got my dictionary fixed for 60,000 won at the Casio A/S center instead of having to put in 300,000+ for a new won. Mine is a 6-year-old model with neither bells nor whistles.

Flashcards

A lot of people have been telling me about flashcards that you can put on your computer. But I like my old-fashioned paper flashcards that I can just stick in my purse and use while I wait or ride the bus. Plus that, once I make my flashcards, they are already 50% learned. It is so satisfying to sort my flashcards into stacks of ones I know, ones I don’t know, and ones I need to review. Mmmm… project completion. Love that.

Korean stationery

Korean stationery and pens, mechanical pencils, etc. are dirt cheap and cuter than anything and they can bring you much happiness even if you are a boy. You should definitely splurge and tell all those old splurty Bics where to go.

BTW I thought that Japanese bear 리라쿠마 was really cute and I wanted him to be my new favorite character. So I found a comic book and started reading it … and it turns out he is just a lazy bear with a bad attitude who only does what he wants to. Not good for a study companion! Rilakkuma, I’m so disappointed in you! BAD LAZY STUDENT WORTH NO INSPIRATION! I BAN YOU Rilakkuma!!

MP3 Player

I transfer all my CDs to MP3 and do my listening on that and also record myself talking. My player also has a radio function so that I helpful to gauge how much I understand in real life, as opposed to just on my textbook CD or on TV where you have a lot of visuals to help.

Study Tips

There is no shortcut, at least not one that I’ve found. You have to put the time in, just as you would practicing the piano or memorizing your multiplication tables. I should put some time in now! So I will continue this at a later time …

From Korea

Korean adoptee … learns Korean! Part 2

Posted on December 31, 2010 by jjtrenka| Leave a comment

Last time I wrote, I said that I would write next about “How I ignored my emotions and oppression long enough to learn some grammar.”

Fugitive Visions is a lot about my very real emotional struggle for the first years coming to Korea and how that has intersected with my engagement or lack thereof with the Korean language, and how painful and rotten that was for a long time. I’m not going to barf my guts out and write that all over again here, so I’m going to just talk about some things here that are working for me now or that worked well for me in the past. I don’t think that I have by any means gotten it all figured out, and there are adoptees I have met whose Korean is far, far better than mine. I am also in the lucky position of having a good relationship with my Korean family, and never having had to search for them because they found me first. I honestly cannot imagine how difficult it must be to embark on the Korean language learning process if you have not been reunited. Adoptees do it, and I salute them! I really don’t know how they can, but they do. Anyway, in my particular situation, I’ve figured out some things that work for me, and you can take what’s useful to you and leave the rest.

1. Ignore people who interrupt your learning

As an adoptee living in Korea, various situations have come up time and time again with

–white people who speak better Korean than me (nothing like that to make an adoptee clam up in a hurry);

–people who use adoption as a metaphor for their own experience but who have no concrete understanding of adoption as a reality (I had that one today: ”It’s like I was adopted.” Yeah right. Ha.);

–Korean people insisting on my foreignness or Koreanness and not just letting me be an internationally adopted Korean (“When are you going back to CHINA?” “You have Korean blood — you should be able to learn Korean fast!”);

–people telling me what I am or what my experience has been and then asking for confirmation later, (“Well you’re American … aren’t you?”) etc.

Hurtful conversations have hurt my language learning in the past because my learning would be interrupted by my anger at people’s ignorance and wrong assumptions, my jealousy at those white guys who speak great Korean because they are married to Korean women while people look at adoptees like “What the hell is wrong with you?” or just my overwhelming sadness about not being able to communicate with my own family in a meaningful way — to talk about our experiences, our feelings, our disappointments and our dreams together. When the use of the phone is a anxiety-provoking event (“Sis!! SLOW DOWN!” “Big brother, your accent is crazy!! I can’t understand a word you’re saying!”), then it means you generally don’t use the phone and even though your family is so close, you are still so far …. How screwed up is that?

Well, I still have the phone frustration (though it’s getting better), but one of the keys that I’ve figured out is just to IGNORE OTHER PEOPLE. Really. Could it be that simple? It is hard to ignore people when they get under your skin, but if you let them get to you, then you waste a lot of time. Wow, I have wasted a lot of time! There are always going to be annoying jerks in your class or your program, so since you can’t get rid of them and you definitely don’t want to be friends with them, you might as well just ignore them.

1a. Exception: You cannot ignore your Korean language teacher.

Korean language teachers can be just as ignorant about what an adoptee is as anyone else, and can proceed to say whack things about adoptees or adoption treat you in a way you don’t like in class without knowing that they just made you space out of class for the next 45 minutes while you try to hold back tears or anger. I have unsuccessfully tried to challenge teachers when this has happened to me before, but last semester I was so proud of myself and felt very empowered because I talked with a teacher THREE TIMES and then she finally got it. I guess when you are presented with any new, awkward situation, you have to have some practice at it.

Also, those textbooks are all written for foreigner-foreigners, not adoptees. Especially adoptees who are reunited need to learn certain things like family words and casual language first, not after all the formal language and chatting about the weather as the books teach. So this is a difficult point, and maybe if I master the language one day, I’ll write my own little slim book for adoptees with all that family stuff that we need to know right off the bat. I’m in Level 4 now and there is STILL a lot of language that I’ve just picked up by myself that has never appeared in the book because I am interacting within a Korean family.

2. Have an emotionless stock phrase that you can say in Korean to explain your existence to get people off your back if you want, or to open up conversation further.

I struggled for a long time with my limited Korean trying to figure out how to give Koreans I encountered in everyday life the information they want (to get them off my back) in a way that was also dignified to me. Now I can spit out my phrase quickly and like a robot and decide, depending on how they respond, whether I want to continue the conversation. I often do because I want to ask them questions about what they think about adoption, etc., and because they usually seem like good people who are just curious, and whose cultural idea of privacy … well, they don’t really have one. Usually I encounter people whose services I need in daily life: the beauty shop lady, the taxi driver, the shoeshine guy, etc. They are all free language tutors. And each time I decide that I want to engage, I have a chance to share ideas with another person.

3. Play mind games with yourself if you need to.

I don’t need to do this anymore, but I used to pretend I was white to get through the learning, since it seems so easy for white people to study Korean as a hobby. (A hobby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IMAGINE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!) I want it to be easy for me too. So you know, for an adoptee raised in rural Minnesota, pretending you’re white is not really a big stretch.

4. No drama, no drama, no drama

This one is hard, but I can really say that since I have taken some steps to decrease the drama in my life, the learning and productivity have increased significantly.

5. Talk to supportive adoptees who are studying well

I met a cute little someone who had taken Korean classes for years growing up, and she tested in at Level 4 when she went to the Inje program six years ago. I was so impressed with her that I decided to make my goal Level 4, and happily, I’ve achieved that goal finally this semester! I remember what she said when I complimented her on her Korean, while I was feeling so inadequate. She said:

“Everyone’s Korean sucks. Some people’s Korean just sucks less.”

Another adoptee I met, who has been in Korea for years, speaks pretty great Korean — enough to translate for other adoptees. I asked him what his secret was, and he said:

“Don’t compare yourself to other people in your class. Even if you have to repeat a level, as long as you’ve improved, you’re doing OK.”

Another adoptee who does not live in Korea at all, but who confidently put on her attitude and went to Yongsan with no Korean language skills at all and helped an adoptee who actually lives here purchase a computer, put it like this:

“People who make their living by selling things want to sell things to you. So they make it easy for you.”

Another adoptee who studied her face off for years and who would not come out to play with me often, but in exchange is now very comfortable speaking Korean, told me:

“You just have to decide that you can do it.”

Continuing READING AT JANE"S BLOG

The insightful life of a Prominent Korean Adoptee

Korean adoptee … learns Korean!

With courtesy of Jane J. Trenka (author of: language of Blood)

Posted on December 23, 2010 by jjtrenka| 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about my process of learning Korean lately, so in order to stop thinking about that process and get back to actually studying (which is why this blog has been dead basically since I started studying in September), I thought I’d jot some thoughts down.

A lot has been said about how difficult it is for Korean adoptees to learn Korean as compared to other people, such as Korean Americans or even the white partners of Korean adoptees. I think there’s a lot of truth to that, and I have experienced that. However, if you’re a Korean adoptee like myself and you want to take back what is rightfully yours, then you have to find some way to grapple with the emotional issues that come along with learning the language. You also have to find a way to access the language education, because it’s not like your white mom is going to teach you Korean while she cooks up a hot batch of kimchi chiggae for you. And if you’re an adoptee like myself who was more or less afraid of Korean people until quite recently, you have to summon up the courage to talk with them.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

A: Trilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

A: Bilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A: American

A little about my language learning: I did not have ANY exposure to the Korean language at any time growing up. The first time I heard the Korean language was the first time I met Koreans, which was when I was 23 years old. I did a poor job of learning Spanish in high school and German in college, so I have never been wired to be bilingual. So I started from scratch, like probably a lot of other American adoptees. (I think most younger Europeans at least have studied a second language seriously, so they know better how to go about learning a foreign language systematically.)

I was living paycheck to paycheck in the U.S. while I worked in musical non-profit, so I never had enough money to take a Korean class at the university. So, in 1995, when I fell off the airplane in Korea on an adoption agency Motherland Tour, all I could say was “Hello” to my mother in the most formal way that I had learned from those Barron’s diplomat tapes. Despite trying to study with tapes and so forth by myself, and traveling numerous times back and forth to Korea to visit my family, my Korean continued to completely suck until I came back to Korea for an adoptee program at Inje University in 2004.

You seem very nice, and I like you, but I don’t want to talk to you

I think I made a smart move at Inje by hanging out mostly with Korean students. I felt it was my last chance to grab the language, so I didn’t want to waste what I thought was going to be my first and last prolonged time in Korea by speaking English with adoptees all the time. (Little did I know I would still be here six years later!) I made some Korean friends, and they took such good care of me in teaching me the basics. They were so patient. My guy friend ate a lot of ice cream with me while teaching me how to say, “I eat.” “I ate.” “I want to eat.” “I will eat.” My female roommate enforced 10 minutes every day in which I was not allowed to communicate in English. Then she actually taped a children’s poster of numbers above my bunkbed so I could practice counting before bed. (I had the bottom bunk). At the time I was 32 years old.

Why dramas are no good

A lot of Korean people try to give helpful advice by saying that you should watch dramas to improve your Korean language. I think that maybe that works if you’re a gyopo and you grew up at least seeing Korean faces and hearing Korean language in your home, even if it was only among adults. If you’re an adoptee, I don’t think that is helpful for you until you’re at least Level 3 or 4, which is I suppose the level that a lot of 1.5 or 2nd generation gyopos would test into without even trying (such as my Korean American husband, who tested into Level 4 at Yonsei without even trying.) I’m now doing Level 4 at Seoul National University, and I think that dramas are still only helpful to me an extent. I have to watch them on my computer and rewind them and listen again and again and again. If you have to learn textbook Korean like most adoptees do, then anything that is not a perfectly grammatical sentence is hard to understand in the lower levels. That means a lot of language used in dramas, movies, comic books, and songs is hard to understand. Just think about it — even in English, we do not use perfect sentences or pronounce everything the “correct” way. If you have no background in Korean, then anything that deviates from what you learned in the textbook is a big “Huh?” And of course, there is the problem of regional dialects. Imagine if you are learning English and suddenly you are supposed to understand a Texas accent, a British accent, and a Minnesota accent. Forget it! Incomprehensible! Same goes for a lot of Korean gangster movies.

I want schnapps. There are no (is no?) schnapps in Korea.

For every Korean word I learn, I think I lose five in English and some grammar rules fly out of my head. Anyway, I have a lot to say about this, so this little thoughtstream on language learning for adoptees will be continued … in the meantime, have the happiest of holidays! What I would give for a hot girlie drink with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles!! All of you people who live in the land of peppermint and raspberry schnapps, have some boozy hot cocoa for me!

Next up: How I ignored my emotions and oppression long enough to learn some grammar

Read als the interesting posts of Mei Ling on this article