Choose Your Language! Korean Versus English
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Whenever we have those classic college icebreakers about who we are and how we identify, I always prioritize my Korean ethnicity. I’ve become very proud of my culture as a Korean-American throughout the years — from the tasty morsels of Korean sushi (김밥 “kim-bap”), the beautifully intricate traditional clothing (한복 “han-bok”), to the highly organized recycling system (종량제 “jongnyangje”). But there’s one question I get asked that always stumps me: Can you speak Korean?
The short answer I can give now is a simple yes, but back then, I would grapple with this question frequently; I was quite embarrassed to think that as a Korean so proud of my culture, I could only speak little to nothing. I got impostor syndrome just thinking I was less of a Korean since I didn’t know how to speak my own language.
Looking back, these internal thoughts I had pondered over for the last twenty years have brought me to the place I am now, one where I can comfortably say I can speak, read, and write Korean. However, I want to revisit how I’ve come to re-bond with Korean alongside my journey with English from an educational standpoint. Therefore, I’ll start from the beginning.
From the mere age of four years old, I became accustomed to Korean directly from my parents. They were from the motherland of South Korea, so it was in their nature to converse with me and my twin sister in their home language. While I didn’t have a traditional education in the language per say — like how to articulate grammar (I mean, I was only four years old) — I had acquired the art of speaking Korean solely through experience in chattering with my parents on the daily.
It’s much like how James Gee renders the difference between “acquisition” and “learning.” According to his article “What is Literacy?” acquisition refers to “a process of acquiring something subconsciously by exposure to models and a process of trial and error, without a process of formal teaching. It happens in natural settings which are meaningful and functional in the sense that the acquirers know that they need to acquire something in order to function and they in fact want to so function. This is how most people come to control their first language” (Gee 20). Especially when it came to the trial and error process of Korean, it was all very subconscious when I was acquiring the language. In other words, I didn’t know at the time that I was passively acquiring a whole language by ear. Though it sounds simple, it was all about attaching words with sounds to objects.
My mom used to point at a bowl of rice and say “밥” (“bap”). In my small little head, I was able to render that visual bowl of rice and connect it to the label of rice in Korean. I don’t think I was extremely wary when I asked my mom for some rice to attach it to some sort of daily life function; but I guess I understood to a certain extent because whenever I used the word “rice,” I would walk away with my belly full. From those first few moments in need of food, I was able to expand on this experience and thus string my first few sentences — not gonna lie, it was a very simplified version of the Korean language.
While I was happy and quite comfortable in only speaking Korean from then on, it was a comfort that would not last long within the American school system. I remember the day my mom told me I had to attend kindergarten and it wasn’t exactly my happiest moment when I also found out I had to learn English. I thought to myself, “there’s no way I’m learning English, I wanna stay in this nice bubble of Korean!” With determination, I firmly believed I would not learn the English language at all and rather go through schooling without this change. But as expected, and disappointed at that, during the first few days of school the teacher instructed I was not allowed to bring Korean into the classroom since it didn’t fit the English curriculum.
I was clearly upset the school system was set up this way. Why would they only want us to speak one language? “That’s not nice,” I thought. Well, according to Gloria Ladson-Billings “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” my experience with this separation between my home discourse of Korean and secondary discourse of English within the school system was not a unique occurrence. Ladson-Billings mentions a Native American educator, Cornel Pewewardy, who “asserts that one of the reasons Indian children experience difficulty in schools is that educators traditionally have attempted to insert culture into the education, instead of inserting education into the culture. This notion is, in all probability, true for many students who are not a part of the White, middle-class mainstream” (Ladson-Billings 159).
Let’s see, I’m definitely not white, I am in the middle-class, but I’m sure as hell still not in the mainstream. I’m possibly the perfect candidate for Pewewardy’s statement. But all jokes aside, it’s true when he states that educators usually attempt to insert culture into education instead of inserting education into the culture. Was it enough when my kindergarten class performed a play where we dressed as Native Americans, Chinese farmers, and German yodelers? How come we couldn’t learn about Korean culture? (Note: In retrospect, the blatant cultural appropriation was not okay).
We were merely dressed in other’s clothing, but had no idea what prompted this clothing to be created and didn’t even get anywhere near learning that each country and culture had their own language. My school had sprinkled pieces of various cultures into plays and cultural celebration days, but like I said, it only felt like a performance and only went so far in reinforcing a child’s identity, my identity. It was like we were asked to leave a part of ourselves at home and play within the boundaries of other cultures, specifically the mainstream white American identity.
Nevertheless, I was only a child and could only accept the views of those superior to me and more knowledgeable within the school system. We had to accept the way it was.
I was now nine years old and it had been about five years since my first encounter with Korean and the limitations to using it at school. I had completely forgotten all of my acquired Korean besides the menial words like mom (엄마 “umma”), dad (아빠 “appa”), and of course rice (밥 “bap”). It was at this time my mom realized the distance I had created between myself and Korean. As a result, she suggested I attend Korean School every Saturday from 9am-12pm.
Ugh. To think I had to use up my Saturday mornings to learn Korean when my American school didn’t even require it was appalling to me. But it was important to my mom and by proxy it was important to me. Thus, every Saturday I attended Korean school and there I found myself in another squabble between English and Korean. Which would be the forerunner? Why couldn’t it be both? During class sessions, the teachers would have to constantly remind us not to speak in English. “We’re in Korean school which means Korean only,” they would say. But during the break times, where we were unsupervised and open to do whatever we wanted within the ten minute span, the cacophony of children’s voices would go straight to English.
This reminds me of Lev Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development: A New Approach.” He proposes that “an essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers” (Vygotsky 13).
This is all good and well, but clearly tension existed between socially learning within the Korean classroom setting versus socially learning in English during break time. I was sitting in that cold classroom every Saturday morning to learn Korean, but even those small ten minute breaks in between made all the difference.
No matter how much I wanted to nail Korean syntax and vocabulary words through social interactions with my peers, the abrupt switch to English that would occur once we were outside made it difficult to reach this development. I was provided all the pieces to learn the Korean language puzzle, but none of them matched with each other. Moreover, the peers I needed to assist me in Korean language development were colliding with the same peers who were assisting me in English vernacular — all within the same day.
For the longest period of time after my two years at Korean school, I wondered if I would ever find a compromise between the two. But with every compromise comes a loss of a part of each language, something that I didn’t want and couldn’t afford to do, especially as I was moving through middle school to high school. I was thrust back to the beginning of my nine year old self — knowing a little more Korean than I did before — but still not having that intimate relationship with the language that I had initially protected at four years old. Now it was just a waiting game, a short amount of time before I would lean on English again after all that time learning Korean.
I was now eighteen years old and it had been around nine years since I attended Korean school. I was attending Colby College at the time, a predominantly white liberal arts college in the rural city of Waterville, Maine. It was within the confines of a school that did not cater to my Korean cultural background that I felt myself actually drifting closer to my Korean-ness in my own time. Even without proper Korean school, I was able to create a positive learning experience with the language without the need of other students and teachers to assist me. It sounds silly, but Korean-pop music (Kpop) became my new teacher, my new peer, and my new gateway back into my language.
In Franco et al.’s “‘Castillo blueprint’: How young children in multilingual contexts demonstrate and extend literacy and numeracy practices in play” they seek to understand “how [multilingual] children use literacy and numeracy skills together in ways that draw on their linguistic and cultural resources” (Franco et al. 3). They additionally explain how “the skills and knowledge brought forth by the children [become] visible when they [are] given a space to explore through play” (3). While I was not a child at eighteen nor “playing” in the sense of child’s play, I was still able to draw upon my own linguistic and cultural resources through my own version of play.
My “play” consisted of listening to Kpop everyday while I was cooped up in my dorm, specifically listening to BTS (방탄소년단 “bangtansonyeondan”). I remember one cold winter night, I opened the Spotify app to listen to a song called “Mic Drop.” I started to bust out my best Korean reading skills, following along with the fast-paced beat and lyrics to the best of my ability; but if I’m being honest, I didn’t really understand what they were exactly rapping or singing at times. I discerned the basic words and phrases, but some of them were too complex or too embedded into Korean slang that I was unfamiliar with.
Although this was a little blip in the midst of my own singing performance, I knew that I could search up a translation of the Korean words. On the website, there was a side-by-side of the Korean lyrics and English translations, a combination that I never would have actively found myself if it weren’t for BTS. I was finally able to combine the best of both worlds through play of listening to Kpop, but also allowed English to be a part of this newfound activity. It was a revelation to see that when I gave myself time to explore my own play without feeling restricted by the American and Korean school system, it ended with great coexistence between English and Korean.
Most of the time, people who grow up in bilingual or multilingual environments are expected to learn English because it’s within the American school system. But the fact that I had managed to find a medium that caters to my English and Korean side is empowering in itself; I can finally say this with confidence. I learned to embrace my own cultural language utilizing English and although it may not be the perfect whole of each, I still get a part of it that works for me.
I am now twenty years old and am still learning, still re-bonding with Korean through English, but it’s all the better now.