I came to the States before elementary school, so I had no formal education in my native tongue. I picked up English quickly and forgot even the little Korean that I knew despite my parents' attempts to teach it at home.

Many of us Koreans who came to the State at a young age forgot much of our first language. However, recently, I'm noticing that more and more children of Korean immigrants are maintaining a fluency with the language. I attribute it to the development of Korean popular culture in terms of accessibility and desirability. There were Korean dramas and miniseries back in the late '70s but it was definitely geared toward an older, more traditional audience. Those VHS tapes weren't widely available until the '80s. As for music, if you've ever seen some of the Korean variety shows with the old soloist singing melodies that sound distinctly Asian and backed up by an orchestra, that's 95% of what domestic Korean music was like back then. So, you couldn't blame the immigrant kids for watching Battlestar Galactica and listening to the Bee Gees.

I've got cousins down in LA, born in the States, who consume, almost exclusively, Korean culture: TV, music, film, and even books. So very different than when I was growing up.

When I meet older Koreans nowadays, some of them are surprised that I speak so very little Korean. I can speak the language to an extent, but certainly not in a professional capacity. In fact, I try to avoid situations where I may have to dig into that linguistic memory to muster some Korean. I'm in my 30's and I hate speaking to strangers using a third grader's syntax. I also get this sense that a few Korean immigrants, even those who gained US citizenship, harbor a degree of immigrant shame and never commit to learning English. They may have come to the US because they exhausted all prospects in Korea, but they pretend as if they're in the US temporarily as some international scholar. In certain contexts, pretty funny.

So, how fluent are you all in your native tongue, whether it is Korean, Chinese, Japanese or any other language. For the ladies of AL, how fluent are your fellas or your prior boyfriends?

^Masters of killing it softly.

Hey sam.

I moved to NZ when I was 2. This was a time when there were hardly any South Koreans, yet any Asians around.

My Korean is not good. Trying to speak it with other South Koreans is just awkward. I can speak it with my parents, though it's not fully Korean... a mixture of English and Korean.

There were South Korean videos around when i got older, though I was unable to get them. Hence grew up without any of that.


I don't understand how being an immigrant can be shameful - maybe this is an
American thing... "immigrant shame".
In my opinion, not learning a local language is not shameful, but when you cannot integrate in society, one reason probably due to a language barrier, I think THAT is a shame, and just sad

When you have kids growing up in a bilingual environment, the parents have to support the use of the "smaller" language in the house & city. They can do it by for example downloading/buying music of the other language, spending holidays in the country of origin of the smaller language, going to a language school where they learn to read and write on a good level and such. Now that there is Internet, this is easier... But you REALLY learn a language well if you live in another country. Then you are surrounded by the language ALL THE TIME. Maybe an exchange student period to the other country would do it?

I know a girl from Germany whose parents are Finnish. When she came to Finland as uni exchange student, she spoke Finnish with a horrible accent. In a few months the accent was gone and she spoke Finnish like any other Finn.


I think the OP targets the question to those of us who came to another country as a kid. Since I came to Canada as an adult, I pass the question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin

Honey-bunnyyyy...

I am what you call a 1.5er, I came to states at youg teen. I can speak /read /write perfect Korean tho I am losing difficult vocabulary and virtually forgotten all Chinese characters. Didn't have many Korean friends growing up and still don't but luckily for me my family kept the Korean language in household.

Unfotunately I see that with a lot of Koreans in earlier years that somehow keeping your own language isn't important enough in this country. I'm glad the attitude is changing now that world is becoming more closer and Korean culture is becoming more popular with westerners.

Fellas you really shouldn't be shamed or embarrassed by not being able to speak Korean fully instead you should keep trying to be more interactive with other Korean who speaks the language. Noone is going to laugh at you.

Straight up FOB. No matter what I say people say WTF. My Chinese is pretty advanced though.

I came here when I was 18. In my college, there are any Japanese, except Japanese language professor. So, I had to learn communication skill quickly. But, I learned to talk like a truck driver in the beginning...

i came here when i was 20s.. guess.

Born in Germany, living in Canada, speaking French and being a 1.5th Korean. Now that's enough to throw someone completely off.

bilingual? try going to a country and learning 2 languages at the same time

I'm lucky to be pretty ok in all 3 languages yay!

No seriously, I'm not an a-hole, talk to me