Danny ChaiIt’s fascinating to me how Abby has preferences now. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising, since everyone has preferences, but trying to figure out the basis of her preferences is what interests me. And frankly, I can’t figure it out. Why her book preferences change from day to day seems essentially random to me. And why she consistently prefers this one book we have, Olivia, about a kid pig, I just can’t figure it out. It’s nothing special to me, in words or pictures. But she loves it.
So during reading time we let her choose the book(s) to read. There’s one book though, that when she reaches for it, my heart fills with dread. It’s this Korean book we have. (We actually have several Korean children’s books, including a Korean version of The Giving Tree and, if I’m not mistaken, a Korean version of Where The Wild Things Are, but she doesn’t like those (yet).) Dread because my Korean is still awful, and it’s stressful for me to read. If I read it too slow, she gets frustrated and goes to get another book. I suppose that should make me happy, since it lets me off the hook, but there’s a little pride thing there, that it’s sad that my Korean is so bad that Abby has no patience for it. So I really try to get through it.
Sadly, I’m still at the phonetics stage of reading Korean. I don’t read words; I still read letters that I need to put together. I’m like that two-headed monster on Sesame Street. You know what I’m talking about, right? They’ll take a word like “cake” and each half of the word will appear on opposite ends of the screen and each head will say part of the word and as the halves come together on screen, gradually they say the entire word together. Phonetics in action. My stage of reading Korean is at that Sesame Street level, appropriate for 4 year old kids, reading letters, not words.
I still fully plan on getting better at Korean someday, but there’s a shame block there that makes it more difficult for me to learn Korean than any other language. With any other language, I could start from the beginning and freely be bad and practice. With Korean, there’s shame in being bad, and that psychological block is hard to overcome.
I think I can do it though. Like with lifting. I say this a lot, but I was painfully skinny and weak growing up. My ribs protruded like I was starving, so I didn’t swim for like 5 years so I didn’t have to take off my shirt. When I think Phi1 Shin first took me to the gym, I had to start with just the bar, and if I’m not mistaken, I needed a spotter for that. It’s kind of humiliating, and enough to make most people stop. But once I got over the shame and just concentrated on myself, I made a lot of progress. I think I can do the same with Korean at some point, but for now, I still joke about how bad I am.
This might surprise you, given Jieun’s skill with Korean and desire to teach Abby many languages, but we actually speak very little Korean to Abby. On my part, it’s because I don’t want her to learn broken Korean. I once met these Koreans from Tennessee, and the son had learned to speak English from his father, and it wasn’t pretty. On Jieun’s part, I think it’s because she has high standards. Maybe it’s from hearing my Korean, I don’t know, but I think she cringes when she hears little kids learning messed up Korean, and since her language proficiency is high, she’s much more aware of what’s messed up. It might even be that she doesn’t think her own Korean is good enough to teach Abby, I don’t know. But in any case, we barely use Korean with her.
Anyway, I’m at the point where I can consistently get through that Korean book with Abby, and the other day I even read it well enough for her to laugh at parts. Victory! Huaiting!