harsh words.
Thursday, May 29th, 2008this past week, harrie/증진 (the boy i tutor) graduated from my preschool, and i will now only see him on wednesdays when i tutor him at his house. sad. i didn’t see him for a whole week and i was so excited on my way over to his house today, but when i got there, he was in an awful mood. he did not want to study, he did not want to play an english game, he did not want to read the book i brought with me, he kept saying “i no play you (i’m not playing with you),” and pouting. he even told me to shut up and called me stupid! his mom had to come over and talk to him, but he still didn’t listen to her. finally, he broke down completely sobbing and we had to stop for the day. after that he wouldn’t even eat dinner!
a little while later his 8 year old brother came home (harrie is 5) and he heard me and his mom talking about harrie’s behavior. he was so upset with harrie for acting like that toward me that he started yelling at him in korean and was threatening to hit him. their mom had to separate them.
i bring up all of this to say that in general, i think that korean children are much more respectful than american children. i think all children have bad days (like harrie today - he is not usually like that), but i haven’t met an american 8 year old boy that would reprimand his own brother’s behavior like i saw today. from a very young age, korean children learn to differentiate 반말 and 존대말. i’ve seen very young children reprimanded for not speaking properly to adults.
respect is so much a part of korean culture that it is even built right into the language. i think this is part of the reason why korean children are generally more respectful than american children. the family unit has much more value in korean culture than in american culture, and i think that makes a big impact as well. the most respectful american children i’ve met came from very strong and caring families…
please don’t get me wrong, i am not saying that all american children are awful or that all korean children are perfect, i am just speaking from my observations. does anyone else have any thoughts on this? or perhaps other reasons why korean children seem to be so well behaved?
and just to make my blog more korean, the phrase i used the most today:
공부 해야 지~
i’m getting good at using this ^^ know what it means?
Posted by holdfast in Learning Korean |
May 29th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
It’s almost hard to imagine an 8-year old talking about discipline with anyone.
Thanks for sharing that story. That was very interesting. However, the lack of capitalization in this entry really makes me uneasy. I think I’ll go wash my hands 20 times now. ㅋㅋ
May 29th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Wow, I agree that 8-year-olds are disinclined to worry themselves about discipline in the US! Unfortunately, my daughter’s school is rife with badly-behaved kids of a range of ages. And even more sadly…their parents aren’t much of a good example either. That is one thing I admire about Korean culture - in a world that is getting more and more rude, they have preserved a little more respect.
Did you find out what was bothering poor little 증진?
As for the phrase meaning…저는몰라요!
May 29th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Oh Emily! I know the answer to the question! Am I exempt from answering?
In defense of spoiled brats everywhere, I must say that it is not necessarily the Korean child that is more polite, rather, it is the emphasis placed on politeness that is the key factor. So really, it’s the adults that are creating this. Case in point: anyone who has had a super-polite American student is not surprised when you meet the student’s parents. As it turns out, the kid’s respect is intentionally taught by the parents and not exclusive to any ethnicity.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
James, I am sorry about the capitalization - I wrote that really late last night and was being lazy. ^^
Bouks, he was just upset because he wanted to play paper, rock, scissors instead of study.
Matthew, I think you are exactly right, it is the parents. I have met many respectful American kids, but because respect is so much a part of the Korean culture, it is my observation that Korean children are more often likely to be respectful. Or perhaps I have just had bad luck dealing with American children and their parents. ^^
May 30th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Can I just say, I think it’s the cutest thing hearing very young children on the street using 존댓말 with adults. It takes more syllables to use 존댓말, so the kids have to sound it out so slowly: “안-녕-히 가-세-요~~!”
I agree with Matthew that a child’s politeness is definitely related to the parents. It is interesting how the Korean “built-in” politeness thing is used to maintain levels of respect– and how it is enforced very strictly. The 존댓말/반말 aspect of Korean is something that has always interested me.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Feel free to explore you own style by omitting capitalization if you want! I was listening to a radio show today and there was an interesting comment about how the capitalization of the first word at the start of a sentence doesn’t accomplish anything that the period at the end of the previous sentence had not already accomplished. English is a very flexible language.
Anyway, about the respectful children bit, I think that it’s just that respectful speech practices in American families are much more variable than in Korea. We moved around several times as I was growing up, so I got to know kids from many different backgrounds and regions. In my family, we speak pretty casually to eachother, so I was taken aback the first time that I saw a friend being scolded for responding to his dad, “Yeah,” instead of, “Yes, Sir”. There are even families where children call their parents by their first names.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Jeff, i have to say, I’ve met people who call their parents by their first name. And it’s jsut the most bizarre thing to me. I can’t wrap my head around it. And it’s not a sign of disrespect (although sometimes kids do that on purpose just to be disrespectful). But the Korean world is structured in a hierarchy, and calling someone via first names puts them on the same level.
Don’t know… I just can’t wrap my head around it.
I grew up with Korean values, so I don’t know, can an American or Canadian, chime in on how they view this? I’d like to know.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
My daughter is on this “kick” lately where she wants to call me by my first name. She doesn’t mean disrespect exactly…it’s just some sort of name obsession, or perhaps some virus of weirdness she got from a classmate (thank goodness the school year ends today!).
Of course, I am not letting her do it. But she keeps attempting because it’s her job to challenge me at every turn
And I’ll tell you, it’s bone-chilling weird to hear her call me by my first name. I can’t explain it. I just hate, hate, hate it. It rubs me the wrong way. It just seems like she’s going against all universal peace and order.
So then I call her something she hates to be called, and she stops right away
May 31st, 2008 at 2:22 am
It was my impression that families where the parents encourage their children to call them by their first names were a product of the sort of free-thinking, “your parents are your best friends” atmosphere of the nineties. If a parent is starting to feel old, yet wants to hang onto youth and life with all his might, what better way to feel young than to encourage your child to regard to as a peer?
November 26th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Korean children are rude , disrepectful , loud , ignorant , arrogant little fools . It is not there fault though , they learn it from big Koreans .