Cider vs. Saeeda

I came to Korea assuming a few things. I knew it would be hot and humid in the summer. I knew meat would be a little more expensive, thus I'd be eating less of it. And I also knew hundreds of English words had made their way into the Korean language over the last 50 years -- words like "Internet", "supermarket", and "pizza". I assumed this hybridization of English and Korean might make communication a little easier for us in the beginning, that because of the, shall I say, bastardization of the language, we'd have a sort of crutch to lean on for a little while. I assumed I'd be able to order a Coke, buy a Big Mac and ask directions to the nearest 7-11, no problem. That, unfortunately, was an entirely incorrect assumption.

The beautiful thing about Korea's written word, known as Hangul, is in its simplicity. 24 letters in all (14 consonants, 10 vowels), it elegantly maps out the sounds of speech in a carefully designed series of patterns. Each letter's design has a logic, and as you move through the Korean alphabet, a single stroke here and there alters a letter's sound, but also keeps it in relation to others. It's also phonetic. In other words, if you learn to read it, you can sound out nearly anything and hit fairly close to the mark on a word's true pronunciation.

But the Korean language has sounds we don't have in US, and vice versa. Take the English letters "L" and "R", for instance. There is no Korean equivalent to either of those. Rather, it's a sort of combination of both those sounds -- an "R" sound with a slight, single roll of the tongue -- that makes up the letter ㄹ (pronounced "lree-uhl"). I'm discovering the Hangul letter ㅅ (pronounced "shee-ote") has neither the hard "ss" sound of a word like "skate", nor the softer "sh" sound in something like "shoe". It's somewhere in between, and I still haven't really figured out how to pronounce it yet.

Since I know some Hangul, I've been able to read, albeit slowly, most of what I see out on the street. Problem is, 95% of the time I don't know what the heck it means. But often, a word will read out into something vaguely familiar to me. "Tu-ran-su-po-muh"... "Transfomers". "Gu-ran-duh"... "Grand". It feels like a flickering light bulb taking a second or two to snap into full brightness. But in a world where I can't understand much, those moments are sublime.

The difficulty, though, comes in saying some of these Koreanized English words back to Koreans. I tried to order a Sprite-like drink here called "Chilsung Cider" (which is written in English on the can) at a restaurant the other day and the conversation took about seven rounds before the kid behind the counter and I were in agreement. Nissa and I went to a coffee shop two nights ago where she was trying to order a peppermint tea... Ah yes, "pep-uh-meen-tuh" was the word we were looking for. The really shameful part of all this is that, in an attempt to fill in all the Korean I don't know, I've begun assuming certain English words have been Koreanized, when they really haven't. So the bank teller has no idea what I'm saying when I ask for a "tu-ran-su-puh" (transfer), my aunt is confused when I say our new apartment is by two "moo-bee" places (movie places), and I can't get my point across by saying this is my "poyn-tuh" (OK, that one's not real, but the possibility is there).