My Reason for Learning Korean
I’m half Korean. My mother is from Busan, South Korea. For most of my childhood I didn’t know I had a full Korean older sister. One day when I was a teenager, my cousin, my mom’s sister’s daughter, called me. She didn’t start with any of the usual chit chat or small talk. She blurted out, did you know you have a Korean sister? Not processing what I had just heard, I replied no, no I didn’t. Then as it sunk in, my excitement grew. I had always wanted an older sibling.
I learned my mom had been married before. She got pregnant when she was young and did what was common in those days. She had a shotgun wedding. When I was little, I found a sepia photograph of my mom wearing a wedding dress. When I asked her about it, she said she wore it as a model. I didn’t have a reason to doubt her. She’s really pretty and carries herself like a model. She frequently talked about wanting me to be a model, and did things like put me in pageants and applied for modeling jobs for me. Oddly, at the same time she complained bitterly that I walked like my dad (not sure what that meant, but it wasn’t a compliment) and criticized my appearance incessantly.
I found out about my sister about five years before I had my first computer. This was before Facebook so there was really no way for me to contact her. My mom told me she had lost touch over the years. I went on with life, knowing in the back of my mind that I had a sister living in Korea.
25 YEARS LATER
Two summers ago my cousin, the same cousin, called me. She didn’t start with any of the usual chit chat or small talk. She blurted out, did you know you have a Korean sister? I told her I did because she was the one who told me. Oh really? She said. Well, anyway, she found your mom and is coming to the States to see her.
She is? I said with excitement. When?
Next week.
Next week? I had so many questions. How did she find her? How long is she staying? How is she? What is she like? What’s her name? Can I see her? When did my mom first hear from her? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
My relationship with my mom and my aunt is complicated so I wasn’t entirely surprised I wasn’t alerted about my sister’s trip until a week before her arrival to North America. The only reason I found out was because they wanted me to help pay for her and my niece’s airfare. There was no point in asking why the trip couldn’t be postponed so we could coordinate all of us seeing each other and at reduced airfare. I still tried though. After a lot of back and forth and a bunch of excuses that didn’t make sense, my aunt, sister, and niece ended up in Oklahoma to visit my mom without me.
I settled for a FaceTime call. We awkwardly said “hello” to each other in English and Korean. She doesn’t speak much English, and I speak about fifty words of Korean and know a children’s song the equivalent of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Not super helpful. The words I knew were things like hello, goodbye, eat, bathroom, come here, go, and the equivalent of “annoying” and “too noisy!” The last two I learned from my Korean grandmother when she used to live with my cousin and I and our moms when I was little.
I couldn’t get over how much she looked like my mom. The lower half of her face is identical to our mom’s, but her eyes are different. I saw a photo of her holding her right forearm with her left hand. My mom does this and so do I. It’s kind of a resting position. Now whenever I do it, I think of her.
Since that FaceTime call, I have wanted to learn how to speak Korean more earnestly. I’ve tried learning off and on most of my life. Learning to read it is actually pretty simple. It’s phonetic so if you memorize the 24 letters, 14 consonants and 10 vowels, you will be able to read Korean by simply combining the sounds. The history of its creation is pretty fascinating. I plan to go to Korea next year. I’d like to ask my sister about her childhood and tell her about mine.
I started learning Korean with a few apps and have met with a couple of tutors, one live and another online. Preply is a great way to find online language tutors. As far as apps go, I’ve learned more that I could retain with Memrise, but the level is too long. I’m ready for the next level with new words but have lost interest in doing the same drills for the same words and phrases. I’m not sure what it is about the FluentU app. I can’t seem to figure out what I should be learning first. It’s a bit too self-directed. I think it’ll be good to come back to when I’m not so new. Duolingo is the easiest to come back to daily. I was told by someone I was recently introduced to who is a polyglot that breaking the streak is liberating. He said Duolingo gives you a false sense that you’re learning. I didn’t believe him initially and was still diligent about keeping my streak.
Then it happened. I was reading in bed at 9:30pm and fell asleep. I woke up at 12:16am the next morning and realized I had broken my Duolingo streak after 116 consecutive days. It was actually liberating. I felt like I had a blank slate and should take the time to reexamine my approach to learning Korean. So I called up my new polyglot friend to map out a plan. He had tons of great tips. I’ll share them with you in my next, next post. Feel free to follow me to be notified.
