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| Courtesy of Lacie Slezak |
By David Tizzard
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And what a world for those that enjoy multiple languages. They double, triple, even quadruple their understanding of the world around them. They know love, sarang, amour, tresna, and liebe; the colors of more trees, the sounds of more birds, and the aching numbness of more gut-wrenching depression. If language is our window to the world, these people have an apartment with sea-views and balconies.
So then what of those that walk through life deprived of such visions? Those in the basement apartment? What of the mute and dumb who, when presented a lithe and supple melody, a mouth-watering ice-cream on a summer's day, or whispered sweet nothings from a loved one, cannot respond with little more than a grunt? I'm not talking about those who experience cognitive difficulties in life. I'm instead referring to the people who inhabit a country and, for whatever reason, choose not to learn the language of their environment.
It would be nice if the Korean language were easy. But it's not. You can learn to read everything quite quickly, probably even in an afternoon. The barrier to entry is incredibly low. The trouble is that after that things get very difficult, very quickly. You pronounce the symbols, enunciate as best you can, but you still have no idea what you're saying. Everything looks…foreign. The sentences start blurring into a page of indecipherable mess. You don't get one word, then another, and the next. Before you know it your mind is elsewhere and you give up.
But it doesn't matter. You can just hope that other people will speak English. You will also probably lament that lack of development in your students, wondering why they get so many things wrong. And yet, from a completely different perspective, the little children have already passed you in a different language. Half your size and double your capabilities.
This is not simply a case of white privilege. Or male chauvinism. Such attitudes transcend gender and skin color. There is also the idea that Korean people are more than happy for this to be the case. There is a push for people here to learn English. The onus is on the hosts to speak the language of their guests rather than vice-versa. A less-charitable person would say the country has it twisted.
In a recent conversation on the Korea Deconstructed podcast, the writer Colin Marshall expressed confusion as to how people could choose to live in a land and yet not be able to experience its literature. It was, for him, both incomprehensible and unacceptable. An unconscious sign that the person was not truly living here but rather still emotionally, culturally, and linguistically tied to a land in which he or she no longer lived. A verbal refugee; a lingual nomad.
Of course one can enjoy a rather pleasant life without knowing the language in South Korea should one choose. It can actually be rather liberating to not understand what is going on around you. You don't have to listen to the mundane drivel coming from the table next to you in a coffee shop or the offensive political opinions blared out over beer in the local chicken joint. It's all just sound and occasional fury. And you can choose to interpret it how you please, either positively or negatively. Korea becomes your own personal looking glass. As long as you know how to say thank you and get a taxi back to your place, what does it matter if you can't read a newspaper, understand the radio, or communicate with your next door neighbor?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter much. But one will always remain, to use Donald Richie's wonderful phrase, smilingly excluded. The third-wheel on the bicycle or the dildo in a nunnery. Nice to look at perhaps, but ultimately useless.
Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
