As I'm sure I've written before, Korean was probably the first language I learned growing up. I was born and raised here in the States, in Massachusetts, and watched a lot of PBS as a baby, but I also watched some Korean children's shows and my parents spoke to me in a pretty even combination of Korean and English. When someone asked what my name was I'd reply that I was 지원 (G1), which is actually my legal middle name; I didn't consistently identify myself with my first name until I started going to school. My mastery of Korean has stayed at about that level, so I sound like an Americanized five-year-old when I speak it.
The Korean language is mostly foreign to me, but at the same time it's comforting to hear it, to listen to it. It's music to my ears. I don't always know what is being said when it is spoken but I can identify the tone. To me its the prettiest sounding Asian language, but of course I'm completely biased. Then again, it can also be the scariest, because it's the language that's used on me and my siblings when we get in trouble...and Ken Jeong seems to agree at the intensity of the Korean language:
Still, I can't get out of my head this memory from childhood, of waking up on Sunday morning and just lying in bed, listening to my parents talk to each other in Korean, speaking very lovingly toward each other, undisturbed (for the time being) by us kids. I hope to have that kind of facility with the Korean language, but I'm closer to being fluent in Spanish; it'd be awesome to be able to say that I'm trilingual but for now I'm aiming to be bilingual in English and Spanish.
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