Amanda Takes Off...

At the end of class, as I was leaving, Master spoke up. "Amanda, 푸시업 했어요?" Did you do your push-ups?

I laughed and told him I'd done them. He told me to practice tonight again. I said, in a blend of languages, that he's never seen me do striking. So what if I'm not good? I was joking around, for the most part.

He looked at me. "다시..."

"What if my 격파 sucks?"

He titled his head and raised his eyebrows, "Sucks?"

I thought. (To be honest, my first thought was, Mom never liked it when we said 'sucks.') 나쁘다 is an amazingly useful word, used in various phrases to describe a bad temper, being a mean person, being in a bad mood, the weather being poor, feeling sick, having poor vision, etc. I decided that word might work. So I tried again.

"What if 격파 나빠요?"

Master and the boys laughed. I'm wasn't sure if that was because what I said was funny and correct or funny and incorrect, but I didn't care because I got my point across.

"Ah! Don't worry, 연습할거예요!" We'll practice.

As soon as I'm frustrated with vocabulary (how many times do I need to think I've learned "elephant" before I've actually learned it for real? Apparently, more than 6...), I go and ask some question and Korean gets itself worked right under my skin again.

During the break, Master and I were talking about the schedule of special events for the next couple of months. He kept saying June, but I couldn't tell if he was saying June or September. He explained that 6/육/yuk sounds like 유/yu when used as a counter, which explains why I have such a problem distinguishing that and 9/구/gu sometimes ku. I couldn't figure out why I was having such problems!

I asked him about a word I learned on Friday, 동님문. I showed him the word and he laughed with a sense of realization. "Amanda, perfect spelling, that's how say, but..." he wrote down 독립문. Korean doesn't have too many shifting sounds, but I'm still not used to all of the possible spelling patterns. 독립 means independence.

Break was getting a little long because of our chatting, so Master told the boys it was free time. As I once predicted, the boys didn't seem to mind. There were cries of "assa!" while they scattered to jump rope, play soccer, or spar. Master, meanwhile, sprawled out on the floor with me, looking at my notes.

I asked him a question about a conjugation H taught me this weekend (the ~는거 form to link two verbs). I wanted to know if I could use it with 좋아하다, and if so, how using it was different than just using 좋아하다? I know this may seem silly, but English is so darn inconsistent/irregular that I wonder about these things. After chatting for a bit, this is what I found out:

축구를 좋아해요. [I] like soccer. Soccer as a whole. Watching, playing, listening to on the radio, reading about, everything.

축구하는거 좋아해요. [I] like to play soccer.

축구 보는거 좋아해요. [I] like to watch soccer.

I'm going to double check with H this weekend, but I think those could also be translated as "soccer is fun" or "it's fun to play soccer," and so on. 좋아하다 is a very versatile word.

This made me wonder if I could use it with 싫어하다 (to not like something). See note above about seeming silly. Master said I could, so I said, "낚시하는거 싫어해요." I don't like to fish.

Master started teasing me, saying in Korean, "you don't like to go fishing, to eat fish, to smell fish, to touch fish, to cook fish, to see fish..."

I stopped him and told him, in Konglish, that my first word as a baby was "fish. Not 'mom,' not 'dad,' but 'fish!'" He understood the story right away. One day, I will tell him about the incident that I think made me hate fish. When my Korean gets up to that level, I'll be quite happy.

On the way home, I reread my photocopy of the thank-you note I wrote to Master and I understood why YJ put a "ㄹ때" at the end of one of my verbs. Why did I understand this? Because of my reading in Once Upon a Time in Korea.

And although I still don't know most of my words from English-Korean yet, I suddenly recognized Korean-English words that I didn't recognize last night. And during class, Brave's Brother yelled that the phone was on top of the shelf and I recognized the preposition.

And then and then and then...

I'm at such a low level—I really am—but this language just makes me hungry. The more I learn, the more I want to learn. While my oral fluency would probably be better if I were forced to memorize these grammar patterns (say, in a class) and I probably wouldn't drop my subject/object markers if I were being reminded not to (say, in a class), I dig studying this outside of a class. I learn grammar patterns and vocabulary that's not limited by a lesson plan. I learn slang and I get lessons that ramble on about Chinese roots. I get Korean history lessons, and when could I ever tell a "my first word was 'fish'" story in a normal classroom?

And like that, this language has just worked its way back under my skin.