Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Steelrails]

[Dodge7]

[LHolter]

Wow. This could have been a really neat, kind of comical thread about what living in another culture has taught you. Instead, it turned into some lame thread about men with superiority complexes. Just evidence about how a small percentage can ruin it for the majority

[lithium]

[optik404]

[big_fella1]

Dodge I thought like you regarding English only in the home, but the reality is different. Your wife will speak Korean to your child, its called mother tongue for a reason. Your wifes' family will speak Korean to your child, should your child enter daycare, they will speak Korean.

Now if you can afford to go home every 6 months for a few weeks, your daughter will make great gains in English but I know I'm not really in a position to do that but I probably will anyway, just to make sure my wife doesn't get the idea that living in Korea is cheaper than living in Australia where salaries are much higher. Yes I know when we live in Australia we'll be flying back, so I guess it's business class from Korea and economy to Korea.

I do read to my daughter in Korean to practice my reading and she finds it hilarious. She must have recently told her friends how funny dad sounded when he read Korean because the kids started to make fun of her 바보 father who coudn't speak Korean. She came home and asked my wife why can't dad speak Korean? I don't think my wife gave her my official line of the higher the IQ the lower the ability to learn new languages she might of mentioned it was because he was Australian.

Learning Korean is very difficult and the rewards are not there financially if you stay in Korea, "oh you're a foreigner with a doctorate in Economics from Cambridge and fluent in Korean, you'd make a great English teacher". Yes there are non-teaching western foreigners but the quote was made to a non-teaching friend of mine while we were at a bar. Depending on where home is, Korean may not be much use their either, I know in Australia some Korean speakers jobs are available, but nowhere to the extent that jobs are available for Chinese speakers.

But for your kid some level of Korean is necessary if only to find out what your wife and kid are saying about you, oh and talking to the in-laws, although thats not a strong advantage.

I'm trying to get my wife to leave Korea now, but she's being stubborn and to be honest she doesn't want to go. She'll go for me and for our daughter in 2015 but she doesn't want to leave Korea. For someone that packed up and moved halfway around the world its difficult to understand, especially when you're from the greatest country on Earth, if you ignore the excessive taxation, the high living prices, the floods, fires, and all the animals that can kill you.

No, even if you don't ignore those things its still the best country on Earth.

[wishfullthinkng]

[Steelrails]

[Seoulman69]

[Dodge7]

[Steelrails]

Dodge, where people like me and Seoulman are coming from is from experience.

I have known MANY mixed-culture kids and kids from "immigrant" or "foreign" or whatever term you want to use families.

The native language of the land they are living in usually triumphs UNLESS they live in an ethnic "town". IF you send your daughter to international school and the majority of her friends are native English speakers and all of your family friends are English speakers, then yes, it will probably work.

Barring that, practical experience dictates that the child drifts to the culture and language that surrounds them.

I'd move back home ASAP if you are deeply concerned about this.

[radcon]

I respect people who don't repeatedly misspell the word deity.

[Dodge7]

lol Steel, you act like my daughter will think of English as the big scary monster that hides under bed. English is respected in this country and she will be praised when she speaks it in and around school and outside in public. That will probably make her want to learn more and keep using it, not shun it and run away from it like you are implying.

And of course I will positively enforce English through games and movies too, but it will also be the language of the household. Why can't both of those ideas work together under one roof? Why would a kid rebel against that?

If it gets too bad I'll move home for a year and stick her in an American school. There's ways around it, but you are acting like English is doomed to fail while living in Korea when I have Russian friends back home as living proof that speaking a different language while living in another country can and does work. The whole family speaks Russian in the house--no English, and they've been in America longer than they have lived in Russia. And do you know why? Because the father can't speak English (Yes, even after 15 years he still cannot speak English). I admire that man.