Language and Identity
Many different languages are used in the world and each language may represent an identity of the person’s nationality, tribe, and origin. I was born in Korea and raised there for 27 years, so my native and home language is Korean. As every language does, Korean history and culture was melted in Korean language. This is why every language can show people’s identity by reflecting many factors.
Historically, Korea was invaded by Mongolia for 80 years, served China as a vassal state, and became a colony of Japan. These dynamic past events triggered Korean people to generate many new words such as “Han” and “Jung”. The word “Han” implies the suppressed anger. “Jung” means the warm hearted mind where they respect each other, and sharing something to overcome poverty, and a conceiving concept that my neighbors are my family members. Although I am trying to explain it, I still believe that only Korean people who grew up in Korea can truly understand the meaning of those words.
Also, the culture of Korea affected the language. Korean people think Koreans come from one ancestor, so they are all one blood born as brother and sister. (Honestly, I hate this culture because some Korean people still think that they have to marry with only Korean to keep the same blood. What a shame! That really bothers me. What kind of racism is that?) Therefore, in Korean language, “our” is more commonly used as a possessive word instead of “my”. I still call my mom, our mom, my country, as our country. Yes, it sounds cheesy. Another good example of Korean language based on recent culture is neologism combined with English. Korea was influence by Confucius, so all actions such as kissing, hugging, and touching are considered taboo. People do not want to directly say those words. (Of course, it is no more relevant in Korea.) Therefore, they started making new words to refer to all touching actions; an example of one such word is “Skin-ship”. Now, this word became very popular and it was registered in a Korean dictionary.
In this way, all languages reflect its own historical and cultural aspects in the language itself, which can express people’s identity sufficiently. When I saw the endangered language, I was very surprised by 1) how many different languages exist in the world, 2) any language can be in danger of extinction in the tendency of the world becoming closer and trying to communicate by enacting official languages, such as English. The job market in Korea prefers to hire people who can speak English fluently, rather than Korean. Korean parents started sending their kids to the English speaking countries to make them learn perfect English. Some of them take their kids to plastic surgery clinics and cut their kid’s frenulum under the tongue to make them able to freely pronounce the ‘R’ sound which does not exist in Korean. Those kids growing up in this environment are easily confused about themselves and it sometimes results in social maladjustment.
I believe that each language is valuable as it preserves many categories like history, culture, and religion that show who we are and where we come from. Learning a new language is a great way to solve problems of miscommunication between people using different languages and it can give us an opportunity to understand each other’s background as well. However, we do not necessarily change our home language and follow the trend like Korean society shows. Losing our home language is the same as losing your identity. We have to give it a try to conserve our home language while learning and understanding other people’s home language no matter whether it is a foreign language, or dialect.
***There is one exception though. The Korean language does not have the ‘F’ sound and I used to pronounce it as “P”. As a result, my husband started making fun of me by copying it and now he unconsciously started using weird hybridized Konglish such as “Pacebook” instead of “Facebook”. Now, pronouncing the “P” sound instead of the “F” sound seems to have become my home language (our habit). Before mispronunciation, such as the wrong P sound, becomes the home language of my child in the future, my husband and I definitely have to fix it.
