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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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 Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject: I used Korean as a language of international communication! |
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Can you believe that? For the first time in my life.
Last night I was walking to the gym when a guy came up to me introducing himself as a Russian. Expecting him to know at least some English I kept patiently waiting for him fumble along and explain himself when all of a sudden he asked 'oh-dee-gai-oh?' and there, in the middle of Hicksville ROK, a Canadian and a Russian proceeded to have a conversation in god-awful broken Korean.
So to all Koreans everywhere so proud of your phonetically perfect alphabet and cultural wave (to say nothing of your employment opportunities for unemployed English-speaking degree holders, strong hardworking men, and white-skinned prostitutes) way to go! Your language is slowly gaining more relevance by the decade. |
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Young FRANKenstein
Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| Can you believe that? For the first time in my life. |
Happened to me in a Tokyo Starbucks a few years back. German hotty at the next table didn't speak English well and other than "you have a lovely bellybutton" my German is nowhere near conversational. Tried Japanese, but she's a tourist and didn't speak any. She came back with Korean... holy crap! Ends up she was a German teacher in Seoul on vacation in Japan. Had quite a decent conversation that night, and ended up showing her around the city the rest of her trip. |
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SeoulFinn
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: 1h from Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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I've noticed that when I have to speak Korean with other foreigners we understand each other quite well. I admit that the sentences we use may not be 100% correct on either side and grammar might be so-and-so, but the message gets through and that's what matters, right?
The same happens when I'm speaking to a Korean who has only basic/lower education. Some of my best conversations in Korean are with taxi and bus drivers, grocery store clerks, older ajummas and ajeossis, homeless people and waitresses. We just seem to understand each other really well. Anyway, when I have to speak in Korean to a person with higher education (university graduate, Ph.D, professor etc.) being understood comes really difficult! Why? |
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albazalba
Joined: 27 Dec 2006
Location: Hongdae
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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Happens all the time for me and other members of my Korean class, and I'm not talking about just in the classroom, but when we go out for drinks afterwards. It's quite an eclectic mix of Japanese, Chinese Thai and some Europeans and granted the Euros can speak English, Korean is the only language we all have in common. We get some funny reactions from other Koreans when we are all out. Actually I would describe the reaction as just plain shock  |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| SeoulFinn wrote: |
| Anyway, when I have to speak in Korean to a person with higher education (university graduate, Ph.D, professor etc.) being understood comes really difficult! Why? |
The nervousness might set in. I find it much more difficult to talk to my principal for example. He is significantly older than me, well educated, and my boss. |
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Juregen
Joined: 30 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 8:32 pm Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| Young FRANKenstein wrote: |
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| Can you believe that? For the first time in my life. |
Happened to me in a Tokyo Starbucks a few years back. German hotty at the next table didn't speak English well and other than "you have a lovely bellybutton" my German is nowhere near conversational. Tried Japanese, but she's a tourist and didn't speak any. She came back with Korean... holy crap! Ends up she was a German teacher in Seoul on vacation in Japan. Had quite a decent conversation that night, and ended up showing her around the city the rest of her trip. |
German and English is really not that much different? |
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jdog2050
Joined: 17 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 10:32 pm Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
Can you believe that? For the first time in my life.
Last night I was walking to the gym when a guy came up to me introducing himself as a Russian. Expecting him to know at least some English I kept patiently waiting for him fumble along and explain himself when all of a sudden he asked 'oh-dee-gai-oh?' and there, in the middle of Hicksville ROK, a Canadian and a Russian proceeded to have a conversation in god-awful broken Korean.
So to all Koreans everywhere so proud of your phonetically perfect alphabet and cultural wave (to say nothing of your employment opportunities for unemployed English-speaking degree holders, strong hardworking men, and white-skinned prostitutes) way to go! Your language is slowly gaining more relevance by the decade. |
I was in Mongolia traveling with some random girls I met in the airport. One of them communicated with our driver in broken russian and korean. Came in pretty handy. |
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Young FRANKenstein
Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 12:17 am Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| Juregen wrote: |
| German and English is really not that much different? |
Different enough when you'd like to have a discussion with a stunning young lady and put the moves on her.  |
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kiwiduncan
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 12:57 am Post subject: |
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I remember spending an evening with another kiwi guy and a Japanese student in a bar in Chongno speaking Korean. We got some pleasantly surprised looks from the nearby tables.
Another time I met a Bangladeshi at the bank. He was new to Korea and while his Korean was pretty low (well, he'll be fluent in a year - you know these South Asians  ) his English was even worse. We ended up using Korean and, again, I think the nearby Koreans were happy to see it.
People often don't realize that Korean is, I believe, the tenth biggest language in the world. I know that about 1 in 100 people in NZ now are Korean, so for me personally studying Korean is of more relevance than studying French or Spanish |
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bosintang
Joined: 01 Dec 2003
Location: In the pot with the rest of the mutts
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 4:19 am Post subject: |
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| kiwiduncan wrote: |
People often don't realize that Korean is, I believe, the tenth biggest language in the world. I know that about 1 in 100 people in NZ now are Korean, so for me personally studying Korean is of more relevance than studying French or Spanish |
As much as Europeans may slight the French by saying it's a dying language (and therefore no longer valid as an international language), French is number four I believe, after English, Chinese, and Spanish. It's a long way to ten from there.
And as exciting as it may be to speak to someone in a second or foreign language, I still don't think it's particularly useful in the business sense of the word in a country like New Zealand, unless you really do need an extra $1.50/hr tacked on to your call centre wage to deal with Koreans who have problems with their internet or whatever in their own language. (How frustrating would that be?) If you're from a country like Bangladesh or Cambodia, learning Korean might be more opportunistic. |
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Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 7:21 am Post subject: |
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Well, Korean can be the Lingua Franca here in Korea at least anyway. I have used it before to talk to other foreigners. Not likely to be too terribly useful outside of Daehanminguk though.
Cool story though, Yu_Bum_Suk. |
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HighTreason
Joined: 15 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 7:51 am Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| Juregen wrote: |
German and English is really not that much different? |
As a speaker of both German and English, I can say that they are quite a bit different! They have a lot of common roots such that a speaker of German would have an easier time learning English and a speaker of English would have an easier time learning German than speakers of other languages, but they are certainly not mutually intelligible or anything.
| kiwiduncan wrote: |
Korean is, I believe, the tenth biggest language in the world.
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| bosintang wrote: |
| French is number four I believe, after English, Chinese, and Spanish. It's a long way to ten from there. |
I looked this up because my curiosity got the better of me after reading this thread and here is what I found:
Korean is the 16th most spoken language in the world, not 10th.
French is the 18th most spoken language in the world, not 4th and lower than Korean!
The top 10 are as follows:
1. Mandarin Chinese
2. Spanish
3. English
4. Arabic
5. Hindi
6. Portuguese
7. Bengali
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. German
Pretty interesting... |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 8:30 am Post subject: |
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| bosintang wrote: |
| kiwiduncan wrote: |
People often don't realize that Korean is, I believe, the tenth biggest language in the world. I know that about 1 in 100 people in NZ now are Korean, so for me personally studying Korean is of more relevance than studying French or Spanish |
As much as Europeans may slight the French by saying it's a dying language (and therefore no longer valid as an international language), French is number four I believe, after English, Chinese, and Spanish. It's a long way to ten from there.
And as exciting as it may be to speak to someone in a second or foreign language, I still don't think it's particularly useful in the business sense of the word in a country like New Zealand, unless you really do need an extra $1.50/hr tacked on to your call centre wage to deal with Koreans who have problems with their internet or whatever in their own language. (How frustrating would that be?) If you're from a country like Bangladesh or Cambodia, learning Korean might be more opportunistic. |
If you're talking about the UN survey about language importance that's right about French, thought German was in third. I guess the GDP per capita and the stability of all the countries that use it keeps it up there. Korean was ninth:
http://koreabeat.com/?p=14
Spanish was 6th. I don't know what criteria they used to judge that though.
This might be a good thread to plug this page again just in case somebody knows a few other places to use Korean. I'm still trying to find out just how useful it is in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan because apparently 0.5% or so of the population there is ethnic Korean:
http://wiki.galbijim.com/Using_Korean_abroad |
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yingwenlaoshi
Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Location: ... location, location!
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 8:32 am Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
Can you believe that? For the first time in my life.
Last night I was walking to the gym when a guy came up to me introducing himself as a Russian. Expecting him to know at least some English I kept patiently waiting for him fumble along and explain himself when all of a sudden he asked 'oh-dee-gai-oh?' and there, in the middle of Hicksville ROK, a Canadian and a Russian proceeded to have a conversation in god-awful broken Korean.
So to all Koreans everywhere so proud of your phonetically perfect alphabet and cultural wave (to say nothing of your employment opportunities for unemployed English-speaking degree holders, strong hardworking men, and white-skinned prostitutes) way to go! Your language is slowly gaining more relevance by the decade. |
Never has there been so critical a man that gets along so well in the land of the morning sun. I salute you. |
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Young FRANKenstein
Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)
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| Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:12 am Post subject: Re: I used Korean as a language of international communicati |
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| HighTreason wrote: |
Korean is the 16th most spoken language in the world, not 10th.
French is the 18th most spoken language in the world, not 4th and lower than Korean!
The top 10 are as follows: |
How is this list being measured? By total number of people who speak it, or total number of countries that it is a 1st or second language? (On second thought, it must be the former with Mandarin Chinese at the top).
French would be much higher in the rankings if we looked at the latter stats. |
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