By Alice Lapuerta
The things one finds when one rummages through the attic. An old shoe box with dusty cassette tapes, for instance. The sweet voice of a little girl babbling away, telling stories, singing songs. That was me, when I was 5 years old. How surreal, listening to one’s childhood self.
What totally flabbergasted me was that I was speaking Korean! Fluently and without the trace of an accent. My parents were right when they said that we used to speak Korean like native speakers when we were little.
See, the thing is, we never spoke Korean at home, only German.
When I was younger, my father, a Korean, attempted several times to speak Korean with us. He eventually gave up because we resisted him and would not react whenever he addressed us in Korean. Should he have tried harder? Should he have forced us to speak Korean?
My response is: no. No regrets. It just did not feel right to speak Korean together. We felt awkward, and so did he. We would have resented it greatly if he had forced us.
We spoke German with our father because it allowed us a closer, more intimate relationship. German allowed us to meet our father on the same hierarchical level. We could address him as “Du” (informal “you”), whereas in Korean, it felt as if he had stopped being our familiar Papa and had become “aboji” (formal: father), suddenly towering high above us, aloof and distant. This we simply could not accept as kids.
Our father did read us children’s books in Korean, and he taught us how to count and sing simple songs in Korean. As long as he kept it on a playful level, we did not mind.
Then we moved to Korea.
My father, without much ado, enrolled us in a local Korean kindergarten. And this broke the ice.
Before we knew it, my brothers and I were babbling away in Korean as if we had always spoken it. I made friends quickly, and interacted with ease with my Korean grandparents and cousins. Speaking Korean became like second nature to me. I remember how I had no problems at all speaking Korean with my cousins and friends. The cassette tapes that we still have are evidence of this.
After two years of living in Korea we returned to Austria again. This is when something interesting happened: I apparently “forgot” Korean.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Why learn a language if you have no one to talk to? I learned French in school and how often did I use this language? Never. I do not know Spanish – do I miss it? No!
I started to learn the constructed language Esperanto back in 2004 – an apparently useless language, according to the opinion of many. Now how often do I use this language? Nearly every day! There are so many opportunities over the Web and over clubs.
The point that I want to make is: if you know a language, then you’ll also find a context to apply the language. I am just thinking of a few former students of mine, who chose to speak Spanish in school to each other (for the fun of it), in a school where everyone else speaks German and English.
Regarding the earlier comment about why learn a language if there is no one to talk to? Korean must somehow be attached to your identity, and somehow your frustration lies in that. I bet you are a lot more fluent than you think, and you are being harder on yourself.
Melanie´s last [type] ..Should My Students Read the Same Book in Both Languages
Oh, but Korean can be so useful!
Of course teachers thought it was just gibberish on a paper, squiggles and pretty lines, but it got him through the exam!
My dear husband, who wasn’t very keen on studying for his university qualification exams (in Spain, at 18) learned the entire Korean alphabet from a Korean roommate in his boarding school, and wrote entire cheat sheets, using the equivalent Korean letters
Jokes aside, I think I’d be frustrated too, and I am proud of you for remembering it when the need came, and for passing on the nursery rhymes to the kids!
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