Okey Dokey

Wow, didn't write in all of April. Oops.

Koreans say okey dokey. Isn’t that weird? Today, I said “Okey Dokey” to my partner teacher, and she wanted to know where I learned that. All I could do was look at her funny and say, “Childhood?” It took us ten minutes to figure out that we say it in the US, but Koreans say it here too.

There’s nothing quite like living in a foreign speaking country to make you think about language. Most of you probably know that I like thinking about language anyway (my list of fun words to say for example). I’ve always loved the fun you can have with English words, too. When I was explaining the word “folks” to a friend, I told him that “The only folks I know who say ‘folks’ are my folks.” Isn’t it cool how versatile even a relatively unused (these days) word can be? Since I’ve been studying Korean, I’ve found Korean words with multiple meanings as well, but I’m not sure if it’s to the same extent.

*Sidebar: there are two sets of numbers Koreans use. One is a straight Hangul (Korean) set, and the other is a Chinese/Hangul set. If you say 18 in the Chinese/Hangul set, it sounds like a bad word. Essentially, it's like saying "I'm going to cut you into ten pieces." I'm not going to teach you, but you can look it up if you're really curious.

Talking to friends who have been studying English as a second language for years makes me grateful English is my first language. We all take it for granted so much! I mean, all airports have English in them. I can’t imagine trying to travel through, say, the Beijing airport if I only spoke Hindi. How do people do it? And even more, let’s say English is your second (or third or fourth) language, and you have to use it in an airport. Now you’ve got the confusion of another country, and you can’t quite remember if “departures” means coming or going.

Or texting. One of my friends (who has excellent English skills) wrote “You can be lazy.” I was a little offended. I wrote something slightly rude back (it is me after all), and then he was horrified. He didn’t know what he did wrong, and I didn’t know why he was so shocked when he’d been rude first… Then it dawned on me (you might have figured it out right away, but it took me a while) that he meant “You are able to be lazy if you want to” not, “you’re lazy.”

Dear God, I’m glad this is my first language. It’s hard enough to explain the differences between regular words, let alone the overt and covert meanings. So all of you out there that hated English class in high school, thank your lucky stars it was your first language. It’s a nightmare to learn, and really hard to explain why things are the way they are (my standard response is “Because the English hate you.”).