As a white-skinned English-speaker, it's pretty easy to peg me as a "foreigner". I've written before about children screaming "외국이다!" (It's a foreigner!) to their friends as I walk past and hanging out of bus windows to say "hellooooo!" from across the street. Just yesterday, I ordered some delivery food and completed the money-for-food swap at the door. As it shut, the delivery boy (probably a high school student or a recent graduate) called out in a timid voice, "Bye bye!"
However, for the first time ever, I fooled a Korean.
Being tight on money, DY offered to buy a few groceries for me when he went food shopping. Determined not to be too much of a burden, I ran around the place comparing prices and products with him. We carried the conversation in Korean and were still talking when we went up to the counter to check out. He was buying about 10 two-liter drinks, and after they were swiped, he asked me if I could help him carry them. I laughed and said, in Korean, "No thanks, besides, you're a soldier. It'll be good exercise for you. Have strength, soldier, you can do it!"
A little girl standing near me was listening to our verbal exchange. After a few thoughtful seconds, she looked at me with a curious expression and a shy smile. "한국 사람이에요?" (Are you Korean?)
The next day, DY and I went camping at this big park. The camping area was tent-to-tent packed with families taking their young children to the Great Outdoors. DY and I were speaking our Konglish mix of Korean and English -- about fifty-fifty of each. Jolie was with us, and she only knows Korean, so as I brushed my teeth at the big, stone public water fountain, I was telling Jolie to stop barking and sit. Again, a little girl was watching me, looking ALL too adorable with her giant toothbrush in one hand and a mouth full of toothpaste foam. "Can you turn the faucet on, please?" she asked me in Korean, without the usual pausing or hesitating that happens after most Koreans realize I'm white and therefore Not Korean.
Little things like that (mistaken identity, not little girls) make me feel like maybe my Korean is not so bad, that children assume I can understand them, despite what the Test of Proficiency in Korean tells me about my language ability.
2 comments:
sometimes, tests don't necessarily mean real-life conversations. in HK, they test u on ur english by asking u wut is missing in a sentence. for example "this elevator for members only". rili? i dn't think that rili proves ur english is good...
but the two lil korean girls, adorable.
Most the English tests are crappy English tests. Like the mock college seminar lectures? Chances are, if you're not strong at English, you read the book or looked over the notes before class so you wouldn't walk in blind. And you'd have a dictionary. w/e I don't make the tests... I just have to teach to them...
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