How Language Shapes Culture
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I’m 8 years old. Seoul is all I’ve ever known, but I’m traveling to northern New Jersey, my new home. I don’t know English, I have never tasted a banana or a pizza. I’m about to make a major transition to a new culture as an immigrant, having to absorb a brand new perspective, having to understand my own cultural assumptions…
I’m now 9 years old. I have a good command of English, but I’m still getting used to subtle cultural things like leaving the bathroom open when you’re done and using a shower instead of a bath ladle. Culture is taking longer to adjust to, but in a sense, I’m absorbing a lot of culture as I’m learning English.
For example, the word uncle reflects four different relationships: your father's brother, your father's sister's husband, your mother's brother and your mother’s sister’s husband. Those are four different relationships that are compressed into a single word in English.
Korean, by contrast, has words for each of these 4 different relationships, but subdivides even further. Your father's brother who is older than your father is a different word than your father’s brother who is younger than your father. English is coarse when it comes to relationships. Korean is granular.
The difference reflects a cultural difference of these relationships. In Korean, blood relation is a stronger bond so it’s important to distinguish which are in-laws versus not. The father’s side is also more important because that’s the family that you belong to. So the level of humiliation about your weird uncle is dependent on which side of your family and whether there’s an actual blood relation. In western culture, it doesn’t really matter which older male relative is the cool uncle that keeps getting your nose.
Language Differences
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Korean and English emphasize different values. In Korean, family names come first. Family name being first emphasizes the family of origin. In English, personal names come first. Personal name being first emphasizes individualism. Individualism is built into how names are used in English and filial piety is built into how names are used in Korean.
Korean has a whole way of speaking called the honorific, which is used for people who are older or have a higher position. Honorifics are also considered more polite. Polite and honoring language exists in English, but it's not a whole different set of grammar rules. A sentence in Korean spoken to an elder has different endings. In other words, politeness and respect for elders is built into the Korean language, which isn’t built into English. Elders are addressed with respect by default which doesn’t happen in English.
Granularity Within Relationships
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The differences in values make translating very difficult.
One of the most frustrating experiences for me is watching Korean movies be made into western versions. My Sassy Girl and The Lake House are two such Korean movies which Hollywood also made. The two Hollywood versions miss so much in the relationship at the heart of both movies, largely due to language.
When I watched the Korean version of My Sassy Girl, I enjoyed how the relationship progressed slowly, deliciously, going through the many different stages where the couple’s romance develops. When I watched the Hollywood version, I thought it had all the subtlety of a homeless person asking for change at a busy intersection. The language to describe what’s going on just doesn’t exist in English and the progression doesn’t feel believable. I suspect most people watching the Hollywood version are wondering when the couple is going to sleep together. The main character just feels like a loser who’s doing everything for the girl while the girl strings him along. The Korean version shows a much more subtle give and take in the relationship. The Hollywood movie felt off because the language and culture didn’t translate very well to a western setting.
To explain what I mean, there’s an untranslatable word in Korean (정 - pronounced “juhng”) which means something like affection. It encompasses this idea that someone can grow on you and through the process of getting to know that person, you can see what’s good about them and want them in your presence. In Korean dramas, a character uses this word to say that they have feelings for someone which is not quite as strong as love, but not as weak as like. It’s an in-between state with room for subtlety and nuance, something not normally seen in Hollywood movies because the language isn’t there. That nuance and subtlety around relationships, by the way, is why Korean dramas are so popular around the world.
There’s a larger variety of relationships that can be described in Korean than in English. Relationships in English tend to be amorphous and not defined very well. In Korean, relationships are defined and there are a lot more archetypes or templates for how they should be.
When two Korean people first meet and know that the relationship will last, they’ll spend several minutes figuring out what the relationship is, through what titles they’ll use for each other. In English, you just learn the other person’s name and that’s it. In Korean, you have to figure out what your relationship is with that person and use the proper title. If you know somebody from church, the title might be Deacon. If you know somebody from work, it might be Vice-President. Korean has literally hundreds of titles, many of which don’t have accurate, single-word translations into English.
In other words, Korean has a much larger menu of relationships.
Societal Structure
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Why are Korean relationships so precisely defined? What is the purpose of having so many titles? The reason is because Korean culture is very hierarchical. The Korean language reinforces a culture of a highly ordered society. Relationships are precisely defined so each person can know exactly where they are in the hierarchy.
By contrast, the English language reinforces a culture of a more individualist, a more nominally egalitarian society where everybody calls each other by their personal names. There are relatively few titles because western society is flat and isn’t nearly as rigid or hierarchical. By not having certain words, certain concepts become difficult to explain or hold in mind. In that sense, language is a subtle enforcement mechanism for preserving the values and morals of the culture.
We can see this even in the way language is diverging within English. There’s a study out of Stanford which shows that there’s a real and persistent difference between the language used by Democrats and Republicans. Language is being used to reinforce the culture within these groups. In other words, embedded deep within words and language are the values of the community. By using the same language, we are absorbing a community’s values, sometimes without much reflection of what those values are.
This is why you should talk to people outside your own circles and engage with different perspectives. You’ll quickly learn the cultural assumptions that you have and adjust your perspective accordingly. And you don’t have to be an immigrant to do so.
