An Mi-kyoung

By An Mi-kyoung

Since young, I have heard that "hangeul" is a scientific language and perhaps the most efficient language in the world. As such, I have been proud of my language without knowing what exactly is good about it. But this year, when I went to Australia as an exchange student, I finally realized what makes hangeul scientific and efficient.

Many students go overseas to learn English these days. However, in my opinion, people should remember their roots even when they are abroad. I mean, focusing on English studies is good, but going mad about it to the extent of ignoring their identity and culture is a real shame.

Even though I also decided to apply for an exchange program offered by my university to improve my English proficiency, I brought along some booklets about Korean language and culture that I got from a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) where I'm working as a cyber diplomat because I wanted to show my foreign friends our great language and culture.

I met lots of students at the university. They came from all over the world like Afghanistan, Greece and even some African countries that I've never ever heard about before. We had a good time exchanging our culture and language. They got all excited when I showed them how to write their name in hangeul.

Among them were three people who were really interested in Korean ― an Australian guy, who was a classmate of mine, a German guy whose girlfriend is majoring in Asian language and a Singaporean girl who is already proficient in Korean. Because of their immense interest in Korean, I decided to teach them Korean.

The two guys were novices, so I had to teach them from the very basics ― consonants and vowels. At first, they were very frustrated because it was totally a new language. There were no roman alphabets and no similar sounds at all. They weren't confident that they could memorize all the letters and their sounds.

When they mastered all the 24 letters in a few weeks, however, they were really fascinated as they could make words. Although sometimes they made some strange words that don't make sense, they could write and read hangeul very well only after a month of study. I was so happy to see them improved day by day. However, even though I'm a native speaker of Korean, it was still difficult for me to answer their questions about grammar and system of Korean. I couldn't help but say, ``There's no reason. We just say like that.'' I felt guilty to say in that way. I felt that I had a responsibility to teach them correctly with reasonable explanation.

Therefore, that night, I surfed the Internet to find more information. In fact, I spent whole night researching on hangeul ― history, linguistic system and future vision. I realized how ignorant I was about my culture and language, as my research continues.

Hanguel is very easy for non-natives speakers to learn due to its simplicity and the number of letters. In addition to that, hangeul's scientific design lends itself to easy mechanization. When I told my friends what I've learnt from the Internet, they were very surprised and became more passionate toward learning hangeul.

Teaching hangeul to my friend was the best experience I've had in Australia.

I'm neither a chauvinist nor tradition-minded person, but I think we should fully understand our mother tongue before being obsessed about English or any other foreign languages. It is our responsibility to know about our heritage first. That is a way Korea can leap toward one of the world's leading countries in this global era.

sinbisu@naver.com

An Mi-kyoung is a junior majoring in English language education at Inha University in Incheon.