Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Saxiif]

I think there's a big combination of a few things:

1. Because jobs are (relatively) plentiful and (relatively) high paid here, you get a lot of people in Korea who really don't much care for the place and certainly didn't study the language for years before coming here. I'm sure the situation is different in say, South America, since you're not going to stick around working for peanuts unless you love the place.

2. Koreans generally going out of their way to help people who can't speak Korean (kind of the anti-French) and doing their best to communicate in English.

3. Koreans being very bad at understanding mispronounced Korean and generally being bad at accomodating people who mangle the language but are trying the best.

[nateium]

[Colorado]

[nateium]

[Saxiif]

[nicholas_chiasson]

It would be possible to live your entire life in the Soviet Union and not learn Russian. In fact people did. Now granted, in Korea EVERYONE speaks Korean so it is harder to find that little spot where your life doesn't suffer for NOT knowing Korean. But if you can manage to put in a decade here and not be fluent, you're a rather odd case.

[Privateer]

^Some people actually do think it's strange if you're here for a long time and don't speak the language, and will even let you know in no uncertain terms. It's been mentioned on a couple of other threads.

[Ruraljuror]

For the record, Hangul is considered by many (most?) linguists to be the greatest alphabet ever created. Not only does it manage to capture the spoken language perfectly, but it is SO SIMPLE to learn. I certainly don't know of any other alphabet that can be learned in 1 night.

In addition, the more you study the history of Hangul, the more you learn all of the amazing little details that do indeed result in it being a "scientific" alphabet. There are many little hidden meanings...I'm am FAR from an expert, but it's something like half the vowels are considered "male" and half are considered "female" and they all correspond to specific virtures of Confucian thought/Yin Yang/Chi and all are symetrical blah blah blah. I read something about it and being blown away by all the deeper symbolism in the characters. Obviously this is a crap job of explaining it, but there was far, far more thought that went into the characters than is immediately obvious.

But here's the big one: The shape of the vowel and consonant characters are specifically shaped to be a representation of the shape your mouth/tongue makes when it forms the sound. I mean, you have to admit, that's pretty amazing right?

Korea certainly has it's problems, and I could talk about the evils of the hagwon industry for hours, but c'mon don't take your frustration out on poor Hangul. It really is fantastic. Let's give credit where credit is due please, and not be so close-minded about the acheivements of other cultures Nateium. Hangul is without a doubt the most scientific alphabet, and I'm pretty sure there isn't another alphabet that could even be *claimed* to be scientific and challenge that assertion.

[whatever]

[Cheonmunka]

You are quite right, Whatever, that's why it's important to learn more so you can tell them strongly that they are wrong. If they use panmal - 선님한테 왜 반말 써! 아있 키가 막혀서.

나쁜사람들한테 정신있게 영문을 알려줘야돼요. I think we learn to be too soft from the start and during our Korean language learning. We get armed with vocab but still have that problem that we mostly learned from ajumas and girls. Break out of that and start getting tougher in your manner of speech.

[tomato]

[regicide]

[nicholas_chiasson]

[quote="Ruraljuror"]For the record, Hangul is considered by many (most?) linguists to be the greatest alphabet ever created. Not only does it manage to capture the spoken language perfectly, but it is SO SIMPLE to learn. /[quote]
no linguist would ever argue anything so MEANINGLESS. What is the meaning of a 'great' alphabet? THe whole point of ANY alphabet is it is simple than pictographic writing and sounds like the spoken language. Lastly, as everyone has pointed out, the Alphabet is new, and thus has had less shift than the Latin Alphabet which has been forced into use by both Romance and Germanic languages. In otherwords the really 'GREAT' alphabet was the phonecian. Cause it was the first!
ps. This is not to badmouth Korean. Badmouthing languages is stupid. but so is your argument.

[bassexpander]

[ernie]

does anyone else find it rude when koreans are surprised that you can say 'annyeong haseyo' or other basic BASIC phrases? does anyone have any sarcastic responses i can use in this situation?