So age and respecting your elders in Korea as you know is a
big deal, even if it’s just a 1 year difference. Does this get in the way of
making friends…yes and no, but I’ll talk about making friends and how
friendships are different in Korea to the west in a different blog.
So how much of an issue age and honorifics are depends
entirely on the person that you’re talking to. I’m approached by quite a lot of
people, particular students around my age, who are interested in making foreign
friends, they have studied English from a very young age and are aware of our
social differences, and they’re quite quick to scrap Korean social rules bound
by age, job and marital status and trade them with western social rules. Most
students now speak a pretty decent level of English anyway, because they’ve
studied English so long in their compulsory education, even if they’re studying
mechanics or something in university, many still study English. Those that are
actually English students will have lived abroad before in most likely America and
can very easily snap between each culture. However, I’m pretty much speaking
for my age and under, that still leaves a large amount of the Korean population
to speak for and it’s really obvious when a Korean person has been outside of Korea
before or not.
Koreans who have had no experience with foreigners before
nor were very good at languages in school will be noticeably uncomfortable when
talking to foreigners. They’ll ask you the typical Korean like, what’s you age,
marital status, job, I’ve even been asked how much you get paid, what my height
and weight is. It’s not that they’re trying to be rude or anything it’s just
that these things are important to know when speaking Korean so they can know
how to address you properly, and the type of relationship that they can or
cannot develop with you.
In Korean there are technically 4 levels of formal speech which
affects every sentence you say so knowing these things really important to know
how to speak to someone. Quick example: I would never say sorry the same way to
my student and friends(mianhe), as I would to my co-teacher and people socially
higher than me(mianhe-yo/mianhabnida). And I would never say sorry the same way
I say sorry to my principal (jwaesunghabnida).
As well as affecting each sentence pattern, it affects
titles. Getting the right honorifics is kinda important and this is where I still
get rather confused…
For example: In university, the person who is a grade above
you would refer to as “Seonbae”, this one doesn’t matter if they are a boy or a
girl is it just a generic title. In this situation you are the younger person
and you would be referred to at the “hubae”. But! Should the two of you become
close friends, then these titles are subject to change. The “Seonbae” might start
to feel uncomfortable being called that title because it emphasizes the age gap
and his/her authority. They can change the title to one which represents a
closer bond but still maintains the age divide (this is an epic bonding moment).
Between two girls, the older girl’s title would become “Eonni”, and between two
guys, the older guy would become “Hyeong”. Between an older girl and a younger
guy, the older girl becomes, “Noona” and between an older guy and a younger
girl, the guy becomes “Oppa”. The ungender-specific title for someone close to
you but younger than you is “dongseng”, or if you are in a group he or she
would be referred to as the “maknae” of the group.
There are many more titles than just this one situation, but
as you can see from just this one example, there is always this implicit
barrier which is reminding you that you cannot be “friends” with someone who is
not the same age as you. Whenever I meet someone new who is Korean and they realize
that we are the same age, a lot of the time the reaction is, “Oh my God, we can
be friends!” When I’m speaking English to someone these rules don’t really take
affect at all, but when speaking Korean they’re really good to know. When
speaking Korean, at first I didn’t care about these things, but I’m slowly becoming
more aware of when someone younger than me speaks too informally to me or out
of turn, and I’m becoming more aware around people older than me about speaking
the right level of formality.
And it doesn’t end there…oooh no. Once you find out about
someone’s social status in comparison to yours, it’s meant to affect how you
interact with that parson as well. Especially in the work environment!
Another example: When
going out for meals and such with the other staff at my school. The younger
people should be the ones handing out the chopsticks setting the table etc,
pouring people’s water for them and all that. Now when it comes to drinking in
these situations, people pour each others drinks, they never pour their own. How
you receive and give your drinks is again dependant on age and social standing.
If you’re younger, then you should receive a drink with your right hand holding
the glass and your left hand supporting the right arm or around your body so
your hand is just below your arm pit. Or you can just receive the glass with two hands. If you’re
the older one you just kinda pour with your right hand and it’s fine. When you
go to say cheers and you clang your glasses together, if you’re younger, then
your glass should be lower than the older person’s glass when it makes contact,
and when you drink your drink, the younger/lower person should turn away from
the higher person to show respect. If you have an higher person in front of
you, and on either side of you, turn all the way around before drinking… if
that happens and there’s an old person sneaking up behind you, just don’t
drink. Lol.
This also comes into play when you’re drinking with friends,
even the really westernized ones. I actually have 1 friend who is older than me,
but because he’s a student, and I’m a teacher, he still turns away from me when
he drinks. And again, this is just one example. Trying to remember the
different sentence structures, honorific titles, the correct behavior, and
speak a different language which you’re relatively new to, whilst drinking, really
isn’t easy. But I’m getting there. ^^
As you can see, with all these things reminding you that you
are either superior or inferior to someone it’s kinda hard to get really close
with someone at the moment for me unless they are reasonable westernized and
they can drop some of these Korean rules. Luckily for me I’ve met a few of
these people because I only have one Korean friend the same age as me. Most are
younger than me by a year or two and only 1 is older than me.
The kind of relationship I have with my co-teacher is pretty
much the kind of relationship I have with everyone who is not all that accustomed
to western social rules. Me and her get along just fine together but she is 3
years older than me. In western terms that’s nothing, I’d treat her the same as
someone the same age as me but even though we speak in English to each other, I’m
still very aware of my social standing in relation to her, which at times makes
things a little awkward. Her grandmother died a few weeks ago and had she been
a westerner, I would have given her a hug, talked with her for a bit and made
sure she was ok. But she’s not western, so I couldn’t hug her, or really
display any level of affection that wasn’t appropriate, so it made the
situation a little bit like a matter of fact. There are more reasons why but
when I do my blog about friendships and gender interaction, I’ll come back to
this anecdote and explain in more detail.
But there you have it, a brief insight into Age
and honorifics in Korea. ^^
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