There is at least one extremely frustrating experience that most Korean students have encountered while taking classes conducted in English: the hazy feeling of being “maladjusted” when faced with the obstacle of having to articulate ideas in a western language, a malaise of defeat in advance. This impression does not have only to do with vocabulary issues that are commonly shared amongst many non-native speakers, but also in my opinion, with the way to organize the perception of reality, which happens to be substantially different in western and eastern languages. Even though this contrast is so evident, it often goes unnoticed by linguists and professors.

Let me give a very simple example to illustrate my point. In all western languages the sentence “I love you” is to be translated through a similar grammatical structure: I (1) LOVE (2) YOU (3). In French, je t’aime, the German ich liebe dich, etc., are always about a “me” loving a “you”. All major European languages are organized around the similar subject-verb sentence structure, which always brings focus and clear definitions to the action being performed and the said subject’s determination. No verb can be used without a corresponding subject. In other words, no action can be described first without pointing to the person who acts. On the contrary, no such obligations exist in the Korean and Japanese languages. In the Korean sentence 사랑해요, very strikingly, no subject is mentioned and only from the context can one infer “who loves whom”.

The main point that I wish to assert is a rather simple one. It is about the Korean sentence not needing to refer constantly to a clearly decipherable ‘cause’ (the subject is only expressed when it appears to be indispensable or to insist on ‘who did it’) but rather through the general context, where the set of circumstances enable one to understand what it is being spoken of. It follows a very unusual mindset to Western eyes, where relationship comes first and where being linked prevails over linked subjects and objects.

In French, German or English, not only can a verb not be omitted without an attached subject but also the main clause generally precedes the subordinates. Thus, the main clause can be compared to an axis around which diverse additions or restrictions revolve; they may alter its message of course but cannot change it substantially ? in a similar manner to the way footnotes do. In Korean it is rather the opposite: the circumstances are placed before the central action. The main clause’s verb always comes last, at the end of the sentence (it is the only element of the sentence which cannot be moved, adhering to Korean grammar rules).

As a result, the comprehension does not solely have to do with the answer of the classical ‘whodunit’. It is more related to what we can deduce in a certain context, thanks to the progressive unveiling of the background context. The focus is less on the painter, and more on the way colors go together in the big picture. To this regard, it is enlightening to remark that when French philosopher Deleuze was asked to specify his political positioning and to define the ‘left-wing’ to which he claimed to belong, he precisely took the example of the traditional Japanese art of drawing. Contrary to the paintings ruled by western perspectives, which are organized around a single action that the whole composition tends to enhance, he stated that in far-eastern art, all details deserve the same attention, the same meticulousness. Order is not imposed by a transcendent authority, but rather can be considered to be the product of an intern regulation, a continuous adaptation of every element to the others.

Thus, I can say from experience that learning Korean as a foreigner is not only about memorizing words or grammar rules; it also about assimilating to a certain way of thinking, a new thought pattern, more or less to “think like a Korean”. Knowing perfectly well how irritating and even maddening such an exercise can be, I am fully aware of the required efforts and trivialities my Korean students face when having to write in English. Writing “logically” in a western language implies that one not translate in one's head (the way you could in Japanese for instance), but rather an actual conversion to the western thought process. It certainly does not mean by any means that these standards are “superior” to your mother-tongue. They are just intrinsic, inherent to the foreign language you are trying to use, and as a result they enrich your vision of reality the same way mine has been enriched while studying Korean, or Deleuze’s when faced with another way of drawing he had previously been unfamiliar no clue of. As a Spanish saying states: “A man who speaks two languages has two souls.”