Hangul - Vague and Mysterious Still

“Hangul mal moteyo ?”
This is how Koreans ask if you can speak their language.
“Anieyo.” - is always my response, meaning “no”.

I’ve been having the hardest time trying to understand anything at all these days. There are peaks and valleys, I guess.

One day you feel like you’ve had a breakthrough. Someone asks you something. You get it. You can’t respond but at least you know what they want. And it feels good.

Then the next day, even the easiest words that you learned on the first day have faded away completely. So you just say, “ok. Thank you,” to whatever it was and hope that works.

One thing I figure that I have learned about Hangul (the Korean language) is that it’s vague.

When we tell stories in English, we need all the details if we’re going to follow. We don’t always listen carefully. We don’t always have to. We miss words but get the gist, so long as the essential ones are emphasized.

I could be completely wrong on this but Korean seems like a very economical language for the speaker and hard work for the listener. So much seems inferred.

For example: (I’m translating directly into English)
- Weekend, how?
- Mountain, went.
- Ah

This seems to be enough information. It’s possible that because Korean people all tend to like and do the same things, that you should know the rest. The next question would be “what did you eat in the mountains?”

False assumptions might be made but as the listener, you’re given the blocks and you put the story together for yourself.

This works perfectly fine for them. They fly with it. It becomes confusing when a foreigner is involved in the conversation.

I noticed this problem again recently when some of my students asked me if I had done my military service. (Koreans have to do two years of it.)

I responded with, “No, I didn’t go” – which was all that I knew how to say. What I wanted to say was that in Canada I “didn’t have to go”. So naturally, they then asked the Korean teacher why I didn’t do my military service, thinking I had skipped out on it.

Another example:

Suppose you ask a woman, “where’s your husband?”
And she says, “opsoyo”.
That could mean – I don’t have one.
Or - He’s not here.
Thinking like a North American, this is a bit ambiguous and I need more information. But really, her message is the same either way.
What is there to clarify?

Another Angle

Looking at this from another angle, it’s not discouraging at all but rather motivating me to try to learn it. When you realize the mileage you can get out of just one word or phrase – it can apply to so many situations. You may not be very interesting but you get by.