This woman speaks Korean better than you (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

This woman speaks Korean better than you
Tags: Native Fluency \| Korean
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6246 days ago
663 posts - 941 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 17 of 19

02 March 2012 at 5:05am | IP Logged

Ignore this post, not sure what happened.

Edited by IronFist on 02 March 2012 at 5:05am
1 person has voted this message useful

IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6246 days ago
663 posts - 941 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 18 of 19

02 March 2012 at 5:06am | IP Logged

Raincrowlee wrote:

druckfehler wrote:

I like how she describes that the feeling of learning Korean was like falling in love for the first time. I think that probably explains her achievement and it's a good thing to keep in mind when studying languages.

IronFist wrote:

These white people learning Korean to this level of fluency blows my mind. Fantastic work, you two!

Why don't we read that kind of statement about people from other language families who speak Indo-European languages well more often? Maybe because there are many of them who do and we're so lingocentric that we don't realise how difficult our own language can be? And by the way, what does being white have to do with anything?

Possibly because, as native Indo-European-language speakers, it might come off as a bit patronizing to cheer on someone speaking one of 'our' languages.

At the same time, for those of us coming from the IE sphere, Asian languages are among the hardest, and are an aspiration and challenge for many of us 'white' (Western) folk. When Iron Fist complements these people, I get the feeling there's the undertone of "I wish I could do that," (since he studies both Japanese and Korean) rather than any lingocentric notions.

This.
1 person has voted this message useful

IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6246 days ago
663 posts - 941 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 19 of 19

02 March 2012 at 5:21am | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

Raincrowlee wrote:

Possibly because, as native Indo-European-language speakers, it might come off as a bit patronizing to cheer on someone speaking one of 'our' languages.

Right. Go talk to an Asian person on the bus and say "wow, you speak our language very well" and see how they react.

This, too.

Let's cut the PC nonsense.

America is a melting pot. It is not "weird" to see someone of any ethnicity speaking English. When I see an Asian, if they have an accent or if they speak perfect English, both of those seem "normal" to me. Same thing with black people, Latin people, white people, Indians, whatever.

I was a little surprised the first time I saw a black person speaking German because I had never seen that before. I'm sure PC crew will be like "so, what's wrong with that? Black people can speak German or any other language they want. Why is that weird?"

It was weird because German is not like English where it's commonly spoken by people of all ethnicities.

"White people speaking fluent Korean." Alright let's remove the politically correct gasps and shocked reactions from this for a moment.

First of all, "white people" (read: Americans) are known for only speaking English (and sometimes not even speaking that very well). So a white person (read: American) speaking any other language fluently is impressive. I know a decent number of white Americans who can speak Spanish fluently, but very few who don't have a horrible American accent. Seeing a white person speak unaccented Mexican Spanish is very rare, and my brain takes note. It's impressive.

Second of all, Korean is hard. There are many threads here that are over a dozen pages long about why Korean is hard. It's not uncommon to hear people say they studied it for years and barely made any progress. While Korean reading and writing isn't too hard, speaking Korean is right next to impossible on the difficulty chart for native English speakers. Many of the sounds don't even exist in English, and it's not a language like Japanese where even if you don't get the sounds quite right you will still be understood.

So when I see a white person (read: American) speaking fluent Korean with a good accent, it is super impressive. Not only is it impressive that they learned another language to fluency, but they learned one of the hardest languages they could've picked.

Now if your native language is not English (or other language the makes Korean difficult), then speaking fluent Korean isn't quite as impressive, but is still impressive.

I was just talking to someone the other day who is learning Korean and told me he doesn't have any problems hearing the differences between their different versions of the same consonants. I was like "omg, are you serious? I've been struggling with that for 15 years." Then he told me his native language has a similar multiple forms of the same consonant so it wasn't a big deal to him.

He still said Korean was hard, though.

So I stand by my statement. Seeing white people speak fluent Korean is extremely impressive.

And even ignoring Korean's difficulty, it's still uncommon to see white people speaking it. I was shocked the first few times I saw white people speaking fluent Japanese or Chinese, but you see that fairly often if you look so it's not like "omg that's crazy!" anymore. I have seen less than 5 white people speak fluent Korean in my entire life, and 3 of them still got subtitles when they spoke (presumably because their pronunciation wasn't very good, because Korean pronunciation is extremely difficult).

And yes, there is jealousy there, but also admiration. Exactly like Raincrowlee said, I wish I could do that!

I know this post wasn't very PC. Sorry, I'm not a very PC white person (read: American).

:)

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