[KS] failed Koreanists littering the streets

[Yuh Ji-Yeon]

Points well taken, but I must disagree with the following:

 >And some of it just isn't possible.
> > It's like asking for a really good, detailed and accurate explanation of
> > the use of the articles the and a/an in English. Or the various situations
> > in which you can put an adjective after the noun it modifies. You can't 
> get
> > it because it only follows general rules and the actual usage depends a
> > great deal on convention and what sounds good to a native ear.
>
>This just isn't true and is tantamount to saying that human language can't 
>be learned. There ARE such 'good, detailed and accurate explanations' for 
>various points of English structure, and it is the job of ESL specialists 
>and English linguists to write those explanations and the (thousands of) 
>books that enshrine them. Language is rule-governed, not some mystical 
>mishmash of 'what sounds good to a native ear'.


I must stand by what I wrote and disagree with Ross King here. I have been 
involved in English language education for quite a few years now, and the 
kind of deeply satisfying, 
I-can-take-this-explanation-and-use-it-every-day-and-never-make-a-mistake 
explanation is not available for many many things. And this is true the 
higher up you go, i.e., the more fluent a student gets. As a native speaker 
well-educated in grammar, history, etc., there are many times I simply 
cannot find the explanation a student or editor demands. (If you know of 
one for such items as I mention above, let me know.) This does not mean 
that languages cannot be learned -- I never said that. It means that one 
must learn to recognize that languages are not logical, rational or 
scientific, but the result of centuries of use and disuse, change and 
continuity, an accretion of history that we roll out on our tongues daily. 
Language is largely convention --- this convention sits on top of basic 
grammatical rules and structures, but in many cases convention overrides 
grammar and then we say it is grammar. Convention means that what's right 
is not necessarily logical or explainable --- it's just the way people use 
the language and it has been accepted as correct. The higher up in fluency 
one gets, the more true this becomes. Any conscientious teacher of language 
understands that the rules only go so far, and in this sense, language is 
not always rule-governed. (This, by the way, is seen as particularly true 
for English, which is notorious among ESL students for its lack of 
consistency.) This means that to become fluent, one must learn to develop a 
feel for what's right and wrong, similar to that of well-educated native 
speakers who speak correctly but can't explain grammar if their life 
depended on it. This feel can be developed, but it takes an investment of 
time and energy, and this is true not just for Korean or English, but for 
any language. Please note that I do not say that one needs a "mystical 
feel" to learn a language. The rules and so forth can make you quite 
competent, but they cannot really give you native-speaker fluency. The 
fluency requires a feel, and this feel is not mystical. It is simple the 
intimate familiarity born of every day, lifetime use. This can be developed 
if you use a language every day over a sufficiently long period of time and 
make the effort to make a language part of your life and one of your 
primary mediums of communication and experience, rather than simply a 
subject you study.

Too many students of Korean, heritage learners or otherwise, simply do not 
make the effort to incorporate Korean into their lives and therefore never 
advance beyond basic levels. You can't blame the lack of resources and 
materials for this. The opposite example is that I know many, many Koreans 
and Japanese and Chinese who make English part of their lives even when all 
they had was a dictionary (and some didn't even have that) and yet they 
became fluent. They did this back in the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s, before 
ESL became widespread. And they did this because they felt an acute 
need/desire to learn the language and thereby gain access to the benefits 
they believed it would give them. Student motivation is the primary factor. 
I would say that our American students of Korean are profoundly 
unmotivated, even apathetic and lazy. This is not necessarily their fault 
or the fault of Korea, but a result of the contemporary 
political/historical situation we are in. Bemoan this situation as much as 
you want, but please don't place so much blame on Korea for not pouring 
resources into Korean language education for North Americans.

So while it may be in the interest of Korea for Americans to learn Korean, 
it may also be that Koreans really don't have the wherewithal to convince 
Americans of Korean's importance. Let me remind all of us that China and 
Japan did not become important in the Western consciousness because Chinese 
and Japanese people/governments tried to convince the West of their 
importance. They became important for strategic reasons that have no 
connection to the intrinsic importance or value of these two 
countries/peoples/cultures/languages. So sure, maybe Koreans should go 
around trying to convince Americans how important they are, but really, 
it's not going to have much effect unless the world political/economic 
situation changes and Americans themselves wake up and notice. In short, 
the brutal reality is that whether or not a country/people/language is seen 
as important has little to nothing to do with whether or not they 
themselves are good at promoting themselves.

>It's a walk in the park compared to CJK, but it is an interesting example 
>to bring up for political reasons. The bottom fell out of Russian and 
>Slavic Studies in the USA as soon as the USSR collapsed -- all the federal 
>funding spent on encouraging Americans to learn Russian dried up, and now 
>hardly anybody learns it. Incredibly short-sighted on the part of the US 
>government. (If they won't support Russian, hard to imagine they'll put 
>much support into Korean.) Don't know what policies Russia has to promote 
>the study of Russian abroad, but I bet they at least have something.

My point exactly. Isn't it up to the U.S. govt to support foreign language 
studies? Why exactly should a foreign country spend its limited resources 
trying to convince reluctant people to learn its language? Let the U.S. 
convince its own people and support their language education. This is 
certainly in the national interest. (Does the U.S. spend money to support 
English language education in Korea and to promote English language 
education in Korea?) Besides, while the U.S. is certainly an important 
country to South Korea and it's in SK's interest to have more Americans 
familiar with the language, other countries are important too, and someday 
may be more important. So perhaps SK is making strategic and wise 
investments for future friends and allies. Who are North Americans to 
criticize this and demand more attention for themselves?

Yuh Ji-Yeon