I had 5 days in South Korea before my actual classes started to do whatever I wanted to do. Because of this, I had a lot of time to explore with my friends and was able to interact constantly with the native speakers, and during this time, I had to order a lot of food (since my program did not provide a meal plan). I learned in my Korean class at Notre Dame how to order food, but I didn’t really comprehend the differences between how I order food in America and how I order food in Korea. In America, to order a water for example, I would say, “Could I please have a water?” Using the specific word, please, communicates politeness and respect, and I would use the word, please, whenever I would ask for something. In class, we were taught to order the food in a polite way, like “물을 주세요”. In this sentence, there is no actual word for please, but the ending of the sentence implies politeness. I thought this was every interesting, as I always feel the need to say please when I am asking for something or a favor, but in Korea, there isn’t really such a word for these instances. Looking further from this specific example, in the Korean language, to change the politeness and respect of the same sentence, you don’t change the words, but you only change the ending of the verb. The vocabulary word is the same, but just how the word is conjugated changes the meaning behind the sentence, which I think is really interesting.
The next thing I noticed isn’t a specific word, but is the importance of pronunciation of the Korean language. In my Korean class at Notre Dame, my professor did a great job in pointing out the pronunciation rules when we came across it in class, but I didn’t realize how if some words were pronounced wrong, a native speaker would not be able to understand me, and I wouldn’t have been able to see this if I didn’t live in the country. For example, I was trying to ask my server if a tea they served was sweet, so I said one word, which means sweet? in Korean. I pronounced it like “dal a yoh?”, with a d sound in the first syllable. However, when I said that, the server looked confused and didn’t understand what I said. I know the word I said was correct, so I didn’t know why he could’t understand me. However, my friend next to me, who was familiar with the importance of pronunciation, corrected me and said, “tal ah yoh”, which a t sound instead, and then the guy immediately understood her. Even though my teacher drilled the pronunciation rules in our heads, I think that the most beneficial way to learn how to pronounce Korean words is the listen and practice with native speakers. It really is trial and error and takes a lot of practice until you learn the correct way, which is why I am so grateful for this experience.