Silence- Day 6

Better late than never, huh?  I've actually had this done for a few days, I just never posted it *Procrastinators of the world unite...later*

I've been really busy studying trying to cram all the Korean that I can into brain before next month.

That's what I was thinking about the whole time, actually.

I just kept running over different scenarios and trying to make things make sense in my mind and all that kept coming up is "これは연필 입니다." (This is a pencil). Sure, the sentence is right, but if you look at it, there are two languages jammed into it. My test is in Korean. When I get frustrated or forget something, I don't even fall back on English, I fall back on Japanese.

Which brought me to another point: Japanese is my first love. I enjoy studying it. I put myself through all kinds of crazy before I took the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) last December. I mean like"KiteGirl, don't forget to sleep" crazy. And it paid off. I passed and got the certification I was going for. It was the lowest level of 5, but hey, I got it.

As I was laying on bed, I kept thinking of that. But rather than feeling encouraged, it made me feel even worse about the upcoming Korean test. For the JLPT, I had been studying Japanese for years. I took a few classes on my own, self-studied, took university level classes for several semesters, watch Japanese animation (in Japanese, subtitles are blasphemy) and have just been a lot more "involved" with Japanese in general.
 Korean, on the other hand, not so much.Yes, I live in South Korea, but that doesn't mean anything. I know people who've lived here for as long as I have (or longer) and they can't speak a word of Korean. It pisses me off [more on that later]. I live here. I can carry on a decent conversation and do day-to-day things. I can even get into an argument and win *which I've done only once, but it was still nice. hahaha* But the academic stuff like grammar and proper sentence structure and word spacing? That's not ingrained into my brain the way it is with Japanese.

People who don't speak the language in the country they reside in: USELESS. Seriously. I'm not asking for fluency or native-level proficiency. I'm  just asking that you make some effort to be able to go out on your own and do things for yourself. Every now and then you will likely need assistance from a native-speaker, but that's okay. I can't tell you how much it irritates me that people always say "I don't need to learn it. they speak English and I'm an English teacher." Isht like that is the reason that many English-only speakers are labeled as self-centered. Learn the language. Expecting others to speak English because you're an English teacher is stupid. The national language is Korean. "I'll only be here for a year." "I'll never use it again." "It's too hard." You are a useless human being with the independence of a child without at least SOME grasp of the language. Yeah, I make tons of mistakes, yeah, people look at me like I'm an alien when I open my mouth and answer in Korean, but guess what: I've found that people tend to be more open to you and willing to help if you at least try to speak the language. Butcher it. Go ahead. But they'll see that you're trying.

With that said, I'm pretty useless, myself. I thought about my trips to Hong Kong and Taiwan and how stupid I felt not being able to communicate. I can speak English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and a few "choice" words in French, but Chinese? Taiwanese? Not so much.

So back to the test....as I was in bed, I noticed that the time started going more and more quickly. Perhaps I'm getting used to the silence...that, or my brain's more full of stuff than I thought and the process of going through it makes the time fly by.