My Korean self-study with Rachel this month has been a bit different from the experience I had last month because we not only discussed academic topics but also K-drama and its culture. “The Glory Part 2”, a long-awaited Netflix series, was released on March 10th, so we decided to collect and have discussions on the expressions I could learn from it and the Korean culture it depicts, if any.
To learn Korean, I ironically put an English subtitle so that I can match Korean expressions and Korean expressions, which came as a realization that there are so many expressions that could not be easily translated into other languages, especially in scripts. One of the interesting translations appeared in the fight between Dong-eun(동은), the main character trying to take revenge on those who ruined her life, and Sa-ra(사라), one of those bullies and also a daughter of a pastor. The scene took place in Sara’s church, and Sara, shouting, asks Dong-eun why Dong-eun is trying to revenge after doing nothing for so long time. “뭐, 커서 만나니까 이판사판이다 이거야?” Sara used a word(이판사판) that originated from Buddhism culture, which is deeply rooted in Korean culture (There are many customs and words that are passed on from Buddhism culture in the past in Korean culture). Then, Dong-eun counters it, saying “That is a Buddhism expression”, meaning they are in the church, so Sara is not being respectful to her own religion. However, the possible difficulty in translation I thought was that there would not be a suitable word in English so that Dong-eun could say the same thing in English.
When I put a subtitle on, I could check them translated as “You don’t give a f*** because we’re all grown up?” and “We are in the house of God”. I was very impressed by the translator’s great work because he successfully kept the atmosphere of the conversation and also mentioned the religious part. What I learn from this was that learning language is indeed not only learning a language itself but also learning more integrally about the country. As I look forward to doing a language partner in this course, I felt necessary to learn more about the cultures of Korea and America and be able to tell the difference between them, which would make my future partners more engaged and interested in learning.
For example of linguistic differences, although not cultural, I found it could be confusing for learners if they are not aware of differences in the phonetic inventory of Korean and English. There was a famous and iconic line – “Bravo, Yeonjin” (“브라보 연진아!”) – when Dong-eun appeared in front of Yeon-jin (the main antagonist) for the first time after high school, making her surprised. I have never doubted that Bravo is written as 브라보 in Korean but it surprised me, while watching, that ‘b’ and ‘v’ both are written as ‘ㅂ’ in Korean since Korean phonetic inventory only has [b] but not [v]. This is also a reason that Korean people learning English mix up ‘b’ and ‘v’, and ‘p’ and ‘f’, and ‘j’ and ‘z’. If I could also become an English tutor for Koreans someday, this would help me a lot to lead them to a better language learning experience.
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