OK Rok…what’s the answer?
I think I know the answer…that is I think I know as opposed to I’m positive I know. So as to not subject myself to public ridicule I refuse to take a stand.
For all the brilliant HalkTalkers…get your best South Korean workin’ and take a swing at it.
I would answer 1
the answer is 1, though obviously I couldn’t do that if it were written in Korean
The answer is 1 as stated by others. Korean students start studying English in school in 3rd grade, so by the time they get to this, they will have studied (3 hours a week X’s 35 weeks a year X’s 10 years) 1050 hours in class, and many hours more outside of it. Although there are much more difficult languages to learn than English, many of them have similarities to Korean, and English ends up being the most difficult language for Korean speakers to learn, with an average expected time to fluency of over 10,000 hours. In comparison, Spanish will take about 900 hours for a native English speaker to learn on average. And these questions require you to be near fluency, although this question is one of the super advanced questions to differentiate the upper echelons of students. They only get to take the test once a year, and it is the main factor in determining acceptance into universities.
With all that said, I understand why those advanced students who did below what they had hoped, and who have the means, would choose to go to the USA and getting a respected degree rather than spending a whole year self-studying and hoping you do better the next time.
(edited for not thinking with my math brain)
The test in China happens once a year too. There’s also tailored programs for those who did not do so well in their last attempt to prepare for their next exam. That’s what many of those exam prep “factories” are known for.
Kamsahamnida.
The only Hangul word I learned to write is Imo (Auntie). I remembered it as Stick Circle TV. I do recall a number of words inappropriate for use in polite company. My kid’s mom - my ex - is Korean.
I’ve never understood why American schools don’t teach foreign languages earlier than high school, and at the same time I’m always fascinated by people who are extremely proficient in multiple languages.
In the hockey world, kids come over from Sweden and Finland all the time and have better literacy skills than an average American high school senior. Most of the European-born RedHawks don’t even have much of an accent.
I have a second-generation Polish friend who didn’t speak a word of English until he was six and he got a scholarship to DePaul.
I remember a bartender I had in Montreal who said she came over from Italy when she was nine to one of the most bilingual cities on the continent and spoke flawless English and French. She said English was her third-best language and didn’t have any accent.
Huh, I thought Imo meant “pizza”. Maybe that’s just in St. Louis.
Lots of hockey players do speak multiple languages. One of my kid’s best friends was born in NJ and grew up in NC. The two of them played prep and college at different schools. The friend has been playing professionally in Switzerland for about eight years now. He’s at this point conversant in both French and German.
F1 drivers and pit crews are another group who speak as many as six or seven languages.
Sadly, American kids are pretty much tongue-tied unless they grew up in an ESL household. My kid’s mom didn’t bother to teach him Korean.
As someone who lived in South America, North America (both Canada and rural US), and Europe, I can most certainly see a huge cultural difference when it comes to languages. In South America, speaking 2+ languages fluently makes people look at you like you are Einstein. In Europe, it is quite standard, except maybe certain regions where folks speak romance/latin-based languages. In Butler County, outside Miami, one is almost discouraged from speaking anything other than English: all the ugly looks and heads shaking.
One of my most embarrassing Ugly American moments came in Ensenada in about 1979. I was there with my girlfriend for Carnival. A bus load of Okie tourists parked outside a souvenir market. A 60 something guy with a flattop and a flannel shirt got off the bus and walked toward a Mexican man standing out in front conversing with someone he knew. I watched as the Okie grabbled the Mexican by the shoulder and said “Stop talkin’ that gibberish, Pedro, and get over here and take a pitcher with me!”
There are lots of those guys in Walmarts these days.
The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes
Here is a good read about languages and the effects they can have on a culture. Because of what’s in this article, it is illegal for Korean pilots to speak Korean in the cockpit.
I had some friends from Scandinavia, and they told me that English was taught beginning at the earliest levels of school. The government realized that trade/ travel/ international work would be much more difficult since so few outside of their country speak their language. So by having a population fluent in English, one would have a workforce better prepared for global experiences of all kinds. Europe of course has much more interaction and live in close proximity with other countries and have a greater need for language learning than Americans. Koreans are all taught English through high school, Chinese in a sense (they aren’t learning it to speak, they are learning it to better understand their language as it was based on Chinese with a simplified writing system, Hangeul 한글) They are separated in high school into trade schools or college track. College track they also have to learn another language, though they mostly choose Japanese.
All that said, they are studying to succeed on a test rather than to become conversational, so their test results indicate they would be better than what my actual experience says they are. But the younger generation seems to see the value in it much more than the older generation, and seem much more competent at it.
Re: Languages: I was in Finland back in the 90s, where people spoke English as well as they spoke Finnish. When I asked how they got so good, they said “School, movies and MTV”.
When our waiter the last time in Rome was asked about his English skills, he credited school and ESPN. When in Amsterdam, the gentleman in line behind us at the Anne Frank house asked if was ok if his 3 school age children held a conversation with us. He told them it was better practice than in school. They were Dutch.
The Dutch have a saying that they speak excellent English because they gave up thinking the world was going to learn Dutch 400 years ago.
Dutch is also the language most similar to English (excluding Frisian which few people speak), which makes it easier to learn.
That’s true! The Cincinnati Mighty Ducks had a Slovakian defenseman named Peter Podhradsky spoke flawless English, and he said he learned it by going to the cinema in Bratislava.
The only Scandinavian who is not very fluent in English is probably the Finnish former F1 champ Kimi Raikkonen. But I think his English fluency was mostly hindered by the fact that he just doesn’t talk much.