I said I'm not an obsessive blogger (and I was only half-kidding), but my dissatisfaction with the hit for hit, "here's-what-I-did-this-week-okay-bye" nature of most of my posts has encouraged me to write more when I feel like I have something to say. Not that anything that I say is important or noteworthy in any way, but blogging does fill the space on a quiet Friday night as I gear up for what will hopefully be 12-hour sleepfest (but I still haven't bought a pillow and have been sleeping on a balled up Yale sweatshirt, so this will probably be a fail). The more I sleep, the less likely I will be to pass out tomorrow during the 11:00 KST Korea-Uruguay World Cup game. I was invited to watch this game at my new friend Won-Hyeok Oppa's apartment with a bunch of Koreans from Jung Min Unni's church. At first, I was apprehensive about it, especially because Jung Min Unni may be out somewhere else; wouldn't it be weird, I thought, to spend the entire evening with a bunch of people connected to my friend without said friend? But then again, I've done absolutely nothing fun in terms of watching the World Cup (which is not to say I didn't enjoy watching it with Unni's family, but I think that there is something distinct about cheering with a large group of people who are so passionate - it's probably worth experiencing), and I probably wouldn't want to venture out to the public cheering venues alone. Additionally, I've spent the last couple of weeks bitching and moaning about how I won't ever have friends again after all my Yale buddies leave, so this might be a good opportunity to meet some nice people and jumpstart my speaking skills (which I kind of think have pathetically stagnated - but that's another post).
Anyway. Today, I'd like to talk about manners, because in Korea, this is pretty much all people care about. And that's only a slight exaggeration.
When I say Koreans care about manners, I don't mean that they care about them in the "American" sense - i.e. opening doors for people, apologizing for bumping into someone, saying "thank you," etc. - I mean that they care intensely about whether or not someone is perceived as being disrespectful towards them or someone else (ironically, Koreans are notorious for being rude in the American sense - just ride a subway during rush hour to see what I mean). In Korea, there are a thousand ways to be disrespectful - you can eat the wrong way at a table, drink your alcohol the wrong way, bow the wrong way- just today, during a brief visit to Unni's house to say hello to her mom, Unni told me quietly that my posture (leaning against a chair with my arms crossed) was quite rude and to sit upright. But the most profound way to be disrespectful in Korea (and the most common) is to fail to address someone using the proper form of speech.
For a foreigner learning Korean, the different levels of respect in the Korean language can be just about impossible to internalize. I've mentioned it before, but a brief overview for the new readers would be that Korean has a number of of speech levels, and so far I've learned/been exposed to four:
- 반말, banmal, or common speech. This is used to talk to people your own age (people who were born in the same lunar year as you, so I can use common speech with no problems to people born between February 1988 - February 1989), people younger than you, or friends/family that you are extremely close to. Parents and children most often communicate in common speech, as do close friends of any age - although if you are younger and wish to speak commonly to an older friend, you should not do so until that older friend has given you permission (I'm not kidding). To assume that you can use common speech is dangerous; actually, one of the first questions Koreans ask people they've just met is how old they are, so that they can gauge how they should be speaking to them. Unlike how it is in the US, this is not perceived as rude in any way. Rather, if you don't ask and try to guess and guess wrongly, this will be perceived as rude.
- The first form of respectful speech, which is basically not disrespectful, but not overly formal or respectful. If you study Korean, this is the form you learn when conjugating verbs for the first time (공부해요, 가요). When speaking to someone older or referring to yourself, use this (you should NEVER use overly respectful speech to refer to yourself, as this is vain or egotistical, which is the opposite of humble, which is what EVERYONE HERE WANTS TO BE).
- 존댓말, respectful speech. This is used when speaking to anyone older than you as a complement to the first form of respectful speech above - when you are talking about or asking about an older person (or person you should respect), you use this form. This form also comes with some honorific vocabulary words that replace their common equivalents - there are separate honorific words for "to eat," "to sleep," and "to be," to name just a few. Failure to use these words gets you an automatic "rude" stamp. See below for examples.
- The mother of 존댓말, which may have a name, but I don't know it. This is the god of all respectful speech (with the exception of the speech form used to address royalty, which has been basically relegated to an artifact used for Korean period dramas or historical movies, because there hasn't been any royalty in Korea in about a century). It's used in the workplace, on the news, or whenever you go to a store and are helped by customer service/sales representatives (whom I can't stand, but again, that's another post). I am abysmal at using this form of speech; I'm not much better with the others, but thankfully my need to use this is far lesser than is my need to have a handle on the others.
Figuring out when it's okay to switch up and down is a beast as well. With Unni's parents, I always tried to use the third form of respectful speech, but because I'm simply not used to it, I slipped up a lot. Today, I actually slipped and used common speech - I felt quite bad about it and immediately amended, but it didn't go unnoticed. The problem is that I speak to Unni in common speech (having of course gotten her permission to do so), and so when I'm talking to both her and her mom at the same time, my brain needs to work overtime to turn out what I say to her in one form and what I say to her mom in another. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure Korean is not one language, but four.
And the age thing! People here are so goddamn obsessed with age. Even one year means the difference between common speech and formal speech. It even means a difference in the most basic form of address. Readers must surely have noticed how I almost always add "Unni" after the name of any female friend (or in Jung Min's case, just refer to her simply as Unni); that is because this word is a respectful word used by females to address older females (it means "older sister"), and most of my Korean friends are older than me. Calling someone by their first name is generally a privilege given only to those who are older than you or the same age - no matter how close you are with an older female friend, you must always address them by the term "older sister." You can add their name to distinguish them from other older friends, but it must be followed with "언니, unni." The same applies to siblings as well; the older are always called "older sister" and "older brother," while the older address the younger by name. Oh, and in case it couldn't get a little more confusing, there are separate terms for girls to use and for guys to use.
I realized how lax people are with me and my shitty Korean when I was out to lunch last April with my friend Yoonhee Unni, who is perhaps five or six years older than me. Yoonhee Unni told me it was quite alright to use common speech with her (actually, nearly all of my unnies have said the same thing), and so I did, but when Jung Min Unni joined us later in the meal, I was surprised to hear her address Yoonhee, who is maybe only one or two years her senior, in formal speech. It made me feel sheepish and rude - I, who am easily almost always the youngest at any gathering of Korean friends, go around shooting off common speech to all of my 선배들, or seniors, while Unni maintains a respectful tone even though these are her friends and classmates, people she is much closer to than I am and people she has known for far longer than have I. I asked her about this once, and she kind of shrugged and was like, "빵굴, Yoonhee Unni is older than me." She said it as though this explanation should have been sufficient and obvious. But I still didn't understand - I wanted to ask, isn't Yoonhee your friend? Didn't you guys go to the same undergrad college? Doesn't Helen (another friend, around my age), use common speech when talking to Yoonhee, too? Why isn't it okay for you to drop the formalities when she has no problem with me having done so? Is it really just because I'm a foreigner and people assume I'm too stupid to handle the changes in speech level (an assumption which is actually not far from accurate?).
The other day, I was out with Jihye Unni and some of her friends from the Seoul Phil, most of whom I had just met for the first time. I made an effort to use respectful speech, which is standard when you don't know someone well, and addressed one of her friends, Haesung, as "해성 씨, (Haesung Ssi)" which is basically a super-respectful way to address someone - I guess the best English equivalent would be "Miss Haesung," which is really not an accurate translation, but I suppose the gist is similar. When I did this, everyone laughed, including Haesung, and Jihye said, "Just call her unni!" As though this, too, was supposed to be obvious - although I was told (and believed) that calling someone "unni" meant that you had a certain degree of closeness, i.e. were not total strangers meeting for the first time. Meanwhile, last week, I sent a text message to a male acquaintance of mine and Jung Min's that we'd met at Suon Unni's wedding, and since I don't know him very well, I asked Jung Min Unni if I could address him as "oppa," which is the term girls use to address older guys (older brother). She looked kind of perplexed, and then said she didn't know if that was too inappropriate and to just call him "우형씨, (Woohyung Ssi), using the same respectful ending I used to address Jihye's friend Haesung. I have noticed that it is Unni's tendency to always use the respectful form, even if people tell her to drop it, so this might just be her, but if Woohyung noticed anything odd about my message or was bothered by my choice of words, his reply didn't indicate it.
And then today! While at Jung Min Unni's the aforementioned Won-Hyeok Oppa stopped by to see us and told me when I answered him respectfully to just drop the formal and speak commonly. We've spent maybe a collective 40 minutes together. WHAT IS THIS. The crazy thing is that I seem to be receiving mixed signals from like, everyone I know, but none of the Koreans I know seem to find it odd at all. Can someone like, just write a book and tell me the exact moment in any relationship at which I can transition from formal to informal (if there even IS a point when that is appropriate?). Because I am tired of trying to figure out on my own when I am sounding like a rude bitch, and when I try not to sound like a rude bitch, people laugh at how overly formal I am being! Where on earth is the middle ground????
While out with Michelle on Wednesday, I ran into Jung Min Unni's best friend from college, who I met for about 10 minutes last week, and addressed her as "Euna Unni." Having written this post, I am now wondering if that was rude, and maybe I shouldn't have sounded so overly familiar and just stuck with "Euna Ssi" and now I think my brain might explode.
(Personally, I think that all the rules governing speech formality are excessive and produce a ridiculous kind of superficial respect - it's like, yeah, you probably don't want to sound this goddamn polite, but you want to save face, so you do. It's almost as though this institutionalization of speech has been flipped on its head - the idea is for it to SOUND as though you are humbling yourself before another, but it almost has the effect of "showing off" how polite and well-mannered you can sound. Who is the real beneficiary, anyway? But no one asked me, of course.)
side note for Korean readers: Koreans also LUV nicknames, and 빵굴 is the nickname given to me by Unni - so don't panic if Naver didn't turn out a translation.
Another great post!
ReplyDeleteMy two cents:
1. Just proof that you need to BE in Korea to truly get the language. Really this means to get the context.
2. All those layers simply give more layers of communication. For example, my favorite is when you switch to respectful language to actually show DISTANCE. It`s a nuanced, sweet little trick. In other words, it`s complex language in which expressions of closeness or distance can override the content itself.
3. We have these things in English, too, but it tends to come with tone and body language. In that sense, imagine the confusion of trying to learn THOSE things non-natively! I`d rather have to learn special words and be done with it. =)