school news

One of the things I like best about being a student again is the fact that I can wear sneakers and my favorite hoody without feeling guilty for looking like a bum. I’ve had this hoody for years and years and year. I love it and it’s borderline raggedy, and I know this. It has tiny holes in the sleeves from the time I worked as a dog walker and Little Puppy with the razor sharp teeth hadn’t yet learned the concept of toy vs. not toy.

I’m a student therefore I can look like one! Nevermind the fact that students in Korea (most female Korean students anyhow) come to school dressed in high heels and clothes that I’m certain need to be dry cleaned, carrying designer bags and hardly any books.

Moving on …

One of my favorite things about the Korean language is the fact that I no longer have to fuss with pronouns as they don’t exist in Korea. Also “you” and “I” are implied; hardly used. And admittedly, the language structure is not that complicated. It’s rather simple the way the thoughts are strung together to form sentences. I have a love-hate relationship with the markers though. I love the idea of post-marking the subject and object with an inconspicuous syllable (which is often dropped btw, in normal speech). I feel some vague familiarity to such practice, perhaps from my computer science or math days. Anyhow, damn if can’t remember which marker to use when and how to recall it quickly at the moment of speaking. That’s the hate part of the relationship. Further complicating matters is the fact that the marker syllable is different whether the word to which it is attached ends in a vowel or a consonant. So I get to drop the thought of pronouns but pickup the concept of markers. It’s a fair trade I guess.

Officially the worst word in the Korean language is the word for face: 얼굴. Romanized it would look something like this: eol-gul. My mouth hates this word because saying this word requires all parts of it – lips, tongue and throat – to perform choreographed acrobatics the likes of which it has never done before. Practice makes perfect, yes, but I’m totally cool with the fact that I’ll never be able to say this word correctly until the 5th time saying it.

My favorite Korean word … well I haven’t one yet. In Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth’s favorite Italian word is Attraversiamo, meaning let’s cross over. Sometimes when I’m texting or talking with my non-korean speaking friends I have the tendency to use a Korean word because I find it to be easier to write or say than the English equivalent, like 도서관 (doe-soe-kwan) which means library (which some English speakers can’t even pronounce correctly, anywho …), and 여행사 (yeo-hang-sa) which means travel agency. Those aren’t my favorites but I’m clearly favoring them at times when Korean language isn’t the context from which I’m thinking. I haven’t yet dreamed in Korean. I remember when I was studying Spanish in high school I had part of a dream in Spanish. But very often I wake up in the mornings and the very first thing I hear in my head is a Korean word or expression that I’ve heard a thousand and fifty-three times in class, like 여러분 (yeo-deo-boon) which means everybody.