Mind your Korean: Language classes in Seoul

Editor’s note: In this excerpt from ‘Seoulmates’ by Sudha Huzurbazar Tumbe and Vasudev Tumbe, Sudha describes her real-life ‘Mind Your Language’ experience as a resident of Seoul—and explains why being Indian was an unexpected advantage. The couple lived in Korea from 2013 and 2019. This excerpt has been published with permission from Juggernaut Books. 

As suggested by Keiko, one day, I went to visit Yeoksam Global Village Center near Gangnam to find out whether I could join their class. To my delight, the next batch at the Center was about to start the following week; I enrolled myself immediately. I came to know that there were many such centres in different parts of Seoul, which serve as community centres for Koreans, especially the elderly, and foreign nationals. These centres have libraries, mostly with Korean books, gymnasiums with state-of-the-art equipment and basic medical facilities. They also organize many activities. For foreigners, they have Korean classes, driving license training facilities and legal or taxation related advice. All this is free or for a very nominal charge. 

I made the most of what the Center had to offer for the next six years. I started going for Korean-language classes twice a week using the metro, a 20-minute ride from my place to Gangnam.

I had seen the Hindi movie English Vinglish right before coming to Seoul, and could relate to the movie and the lead actress Sridevi while going to the class. Coming back from the class, I would say to Vasudev, ‘I am back from my “Korean-Worean” class.’

These classes are free for all levels, from the very first level till TOPIK, the Korean-language proficiency test. The minimum requirements were 70 per cent attendance and 70 per cent passing marks. Over the years, I studied up to the final level and also learnt business Korean.

The Korean language is made up of 24 letters, known as ‘Hangul’, with 10 vowels and 14 consonants. In ancient times, Koreans used the Chinese script. As it was very difficult, only the intelligent, elite, upper-class people (known as ‘Yangban’) working in the king’s court received higher education. In 1443, King Se-jong created the present-day Hangul system, which was a simplified version, and offered it to the public on 10 October 1443. Due to its simplicity, the level of literacy increased exponentially. Today, 10 October is a national holiday called ‘Hangul Day’, when essay and elocution competitions are conducted. 

I remember our teacher telling us on the first day that Korean is so simple that if you do not get the letters right in the first week, then you must be really very slow or something must be wrong with you. I guess this was her way of motivating us or putting pressure on us. Indeed, the letters were simple, and I started remembering them within a week.

That was just the beginning. The fun started when we began constructing sentences, with the awkward pronunciations by students from different countries. Soon, I realized that I should not think in English but in an Indian language to get the sentence right. For example, ‘What is your name?’ is written as ‘Your name what is?’ in Korean, Hindi and Marathi. We all laughed in the class when our teacher said ‘uri nampyeon’ to mean ‘my husband’ because we had just learnt that ‘uri nara’ means ‘our country’, so when we were thinking in English we translated as ‘our husband’. Later, I realized that it is just like we say in Hindi, ‘hamare pati’.

There are some words in Korean that people from English-speaking or Western countries cannot pronounce. The word for water is ‘mool’ but the pronunciation does not have the common ‘l’ and instead comes with a twist of the tongue. I could pronounce it perfectly because Indian languages like Marathi, based on Sanskrit, have a similar alphabet. Although I speak Marathi at home, I found the tone of the Korean language similar to Kannada. So, I started using my Kannada tone while speaking Korean, and later my Korean friends started saying, ‘Oh! She speaks like one of us.’

Our class had people from different countries and age groups. Some were working-professionals, some were students and some were wives of expats. I had one classmate who was born Korean but had been adopted by US citizens. She had come to Seoul to find her roots and to learn the native language. Nobody asked about educational qualification –- everyone was in the class to learn Korean from the first level.

Our Korean teacher was very patient and understanding. She knew only Korean. Many classmates were from non-English-speaking countries like Russia, China, Japan and France. We were forced to converse only in Korean in the class. But we were just beginners. We used our hands, frantic gestures and desperate facial expressions to express the words we wanted to communicate. It was as if we were all playing a game of dumb charades. Nobody else understood us but our teacher, somehow, always managed to get the gist and encouraged us. The scene in the class was quite like the English TV series ‘Mind Your Language’ or its Hindi avatar ‘Zaban Sambhal Ke!’ We all had to control our laughter, as our teacher would be serious and correct us patiently.