Amanda Takes Off...

Relationships in Korea confuse the living daylights out of me. If you want a very long background to this story, go ahead and Read More, but here's the short post version.

I absolutely love Ghost. He's my favorite kid in class, in part because he teaches me words like "crazy" and "devil." He's 12 (Korean age) and I have a crush on him in the way I think a much-older sister would have a crush on a much-younger brother. Of course, my brother is only 2 years and 10 days younger than me and we mostly hated each other until we were adults, so this crush theory is all conjecture. I think Ghost will grow up to be a very nice young man* and I just hope he doesn't marry a shrew.

So tonight, during break, I started talking to Ghost. I said, "OK, opa, OK?" ("Opa" is "older brother.") He looked confused, I said it again and he nodded. I said, "남동생? 내 남동생...소방대원. OK?" ("Little brother? My little brother...firefighter. OK?") He nodded and said, "Yes, yes, namdongsang."

I said, "OK," pointed at him and said, "Ghost namdongsang. OK? Korean? OK?" He grinned and nodded and I said, "Ghost-namdongsang" in that whine that Koreans use to indicate that I was trying to call him my little brother.

He started nodding and smiling and said, "OK, OK." Some of the other kids who were watching then started off about who was crazy and who wasn't in the room and Master asked what was going on because I kept saying, "little brother" and we were getting loud. Ghost told him and Master started laughing and grinning too. It didn't seem to be that face-saving Korean laughing thing, and using familial names for non-family is seen as being a term of endearment, so I guess (hope) that what I did was OK.

Master then proceeded to use Ghost as his human kicking/kneeing/punching/blocking bag when he was teaching me more of my form.

Master did another one of his "link seventeen Korean words together and this is what it's called in tae kwon do" speeches and said, "Tae kwon do, easy. See?"

I said, "Hanguko, hard. See?" and stumbled through a string of words, wishing I'd had some wine before class to loosen my tongue.

(If you want to know how hard Korean can really be...read on.)

* Having taught kids about his age for the last four years, I know the different types of males at this age, at least in America...

Follow up:

Relationships in Korea confuse the living daylights out of me.

Hang with me for a (long-late-at-night-ruminating) minute. (You may deserve a prize of some sort if you actually read this whole post.)

We'll start with the fact that there are not only honorifics in Korean but also seven levels of speech. Really only four are used in everyday life, but this is at least two more than we have in English. You'll get glared at for using a too-informal form with older people but laughed at for using a too-formal form with young people. Thankfully, foreigners can tend to use the informal-polite form, Haeyoche, mostly across the board with a lot of understanding Koreans.

Now, let's look at social structure rules.

You're not supposed to call anyone older than you by their first name. This isn't a big deal because I don't normally interact with older Koreans where I'd need to know their names. (Master is just "kwanjangnim" no matter what. I don't even know his name.) But to further confuse me, the older Koreans at work ask us to call them by their first names—the English versions, that is. I don't know if the English version is supposed to be easier for me to say or if it's supposed to make them feel more comfortable with the fact that you're calling them by first names or what. Even people who have known each other for years often call each other by their full names (or title) rather than by first names.

Even within families, younger siblings call their older siblings, "older [whatever]" rather than "first name." There's a whole set of words depending on the ages and sexes of everyone involved. Parents are often called "so-and-so's mother/father" rather than by their own names. There are newspaper articles in America about these family nicknames to help people watching Korean soaps.

Confucianism makes it so that you can't be friends (I'm using the word Western style, here) with anyone too much older than you, younger than you, the opposite sex, of a different social structure...and so on. So what this means is that oftentimes people will call their older/younger friends/almost-friends the familial words: older brother, younger brother, older sister, young sister. Interestingly, young women will often call their boyfriends "opa," (오빠) which is "older brother." (Heidi also told me to use this with shop owners when I want to get a discount. "They love it," she said.)

When you approach strangers, you often call the women "ajumma" (aunt) and the men "ajoshi" (uncle) unless they're really senior, in which case you call them "grandma" and "grandpa." So, for example, when you're trying to get a waitress' help, you yell, "Ajumma!" However, many women don't like being called "ajumma," so this is changing, too. (Think of how many Western women hate the word "lady" or "ma'am.") The security guard in my building helped me yesterday and I got his attention with, "Ajoshi...."

I figure when you combine honorifics, speech levels, and Confucianism in the mixing bowl, then throw in my pitiful understanding of Korean, I have about a 2% chance of saying anything remotely proper here. It's discouraging and sometimes it makes me feel like an idiot.

Now, let's look at tae kwon do.

Master has told me that I should use the informal-polite with him. Fine, because I barely have a grasp of any of the levels, that's the one that most foreigners are expected to use, and the one I'm trying to learn. He then told me that I can use the most informal form with every other person in class because every single one is younger than me. However, in America it was driven into my skull that senior ranks should be shown respect, and excepting Heidi, every single person in class is a higher rank than me. So combining my lack of even basic fluency in Korean with this, I just use the informal-polite with everyone, even the little kids (who grin).

Now, about names. In class Master calls everyone by their full names during roll—except for me, who is just "A-man-da." (Everywhere, the bank, pension, health insurance, how nice that my first name has three parts!) Then, since everyone's younger than him, during class he'll either use full names or drop their family names. As far as I can tell, for the most the people in class call each other by first names if they're about the same age. To everyone, I'm just "A-man-da." To confuse matters, half the class is made up of Kims and we have several "Kim X Y" guys with the same name. Sometimes Master will call one and they'll both answer and I just can't keep anyone straight (I know that sounds awful). I call them all by their first names and they let me. I am pretty sure it's because I'm a (very confused) foreigner, but the fact that I'm older might have some influence on this.

Hence, I honestly have no idea if calling Ghost little brother was OK or not, although I sense it was more OK than not OK.