I called one of my long time friends the other day to catch up on life. I've been teaching English in Korea for the last seven months and it'd been a while since we were able to have a few moments to sit down and gossip. Before I left for Korea she had asked me what language they speak here; it was one of those situations where I rubbed my eyes and blinked a few times in astonishment. She's not dumb by any means; her major in college was at one point actuarial science, and ended up being economics. But anyway, during this phone conversation, somehow we got on the topic of the Korean language and she asked if I could speak any, and I said that I could read it and could generally understand more than I could say. The next part of the conversation is the most absurd thing that has ever happened to me! (That's not entirely true...my college town was pretty absurd!)
Friend: Ching chong chong ching. That's what Korean sounds like.
Me: No, it doesn't.
Friend: Yes, it does.
Me: That sounds more like Chinese. Korean sentences usually end in "yo."
When my friend gave her rendition of Korean, I was a tad offended on behalf of all Koreans (apparently I'm a typical white person because I like to be offended on behalf of other people). Her comment took me back to elementary school to when I knew nothing about nothing and making up what I thought languages sounded like seemed acceptable. I guess hearing something like that was something that I hadn't heard in a long time, and I got confused and thought I was in elementary school again because my comment about her imitation sounding more like Chinese was pretty ridiculous when I could have actually given her a mini-linguistics/history lesson about China and Korea. This scenario got those rusty ol' wheels in my head turning though.
1. Why was it almost a gut reaction to say that it sounded like Chinese? Perhaps I am still seven years old playing tetherball on the playground making jokes about farting. Shoot, I thought I'd grown up a little.
2. Do I really even know what Chinese sounds like? Yeah...well...sorta. I live in Korea...that's not China, but living in Korea I've heard more Chinese than when I was living in Iowa. Before I came here, I couldn't decipher Chinese from Japanese from Korean. I do alright now, though.
3. Why I didn't I really realize at the time that my comment was just as ignorant as hers? Because I was too busy telling her that she was wrong about the Korean language to realize that someone should correct me about my knowledge of the Chinese language. What she said, in fact, sounds nothing like the Chinese language! In wanting to help her understand the Koreans, I realized that I was in her place (and probably a lot more people's places) about the Chinese.
4. Holy crap, am I a racist?! Well, no. Absolutely not. Do I say stupid things sometimes? Yes. Does everyone? Yes. A while back, my students were reading To Kill A Mockingbird. Most of them couldn't understand it, but a few are semi-fluent in English and could get the gist of what they were reading. One of the other teachers that worked at my school was black, and one day in class I made a comment about us hanging out together on the weekend. One of my students promptly raised his hand and said, "Teacher! You and Kimberly hang out?" "Yes. Why?" "I thought all white Americans were racist." *total astonishment* "Where on Earth did you get that idea?!" "The book."
Granted, the boy is 14 and no one really bothered to explain the book, but more importantly, why was this boy so eager to believe that white Americans are all like that? Do Americans really have that sort of reputation? In Korea, it is seemingly so. There are two reasons people here somewhat dislike America. The first is the military presence, the second is George W. Bush and his relationship with Lee Myung Bak. On numerous occasions, I'll be with a Canadian friend and we'll meet some Koreans and they'll ask us where we are from. She'll say Canada, and as soon as I say America, the Korean makes a face and looks away. It's very common between the Americans and Canadians in Korea to make fun of each other, but when someone makes a face and breaks eye contact with you because of what country you're from, it's rather disheartening. Alright, so I make that face at Canadians all the time...but it's different!! ^^
The anti-American sentiment isn't always the case though. Sometimes I meet people who can't stop telling me how wonderful and great they think America is. I don't ever usually get the chance to ask these people about Korea because they are so interested in hearing about America. A couple of my Korean friends have told me that they want to be Americans, and not Koreans. That type of thought is what empowers a lot of people in America to believe that everyone actually wants to be them, is jealous of them, and that they need not bother to care about anyone else simply because they are Americans.
5. Why don't Americans really know a lot about Asians? Mostly because we're all pretty self-centered. I'd like to think of myself as a worldly person, but that Chinese comment sets me back about ten years to before I'd ever left the country. I know that people can't know everything about every country or region in the world, but what is America doing to make us want to learn about other places in the world? Not much really. For as globally involved as we are, you'd think it would be proper to focus a lot on our relationship with, or history of, the rest of the world. Truth be told, I only remember taking one world history class in high school, and a couple classes on European history in college. The rest were American history classes that sometimes involved other countries.
I guess we all slip up sometimes and forget all those important lessons we've learned along the way, but the most important part is realizing we've made those mistakes and work to correct them. As with everything, we have to make a mistake to realize that we need to learn something, and we can't know that we need to learn something unless it's brought to our attention that we actually know nothing. I encourage you all to make an extra effort to learn more about other countries. Most countries have news websites in English, or you can easily read http://www.bbc.co.uk/; look beyond CNN and Fox News, learn what's going on in the rest of the world, and then make foreign friends. Their perspectives are far more interesting than anything you could ever learn in a book or newspaper. Being just a little bit familiar with other places and their events is far less embarrassing than not even knowing what language they speak.
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