Tuesday, November 02, 2010

말실수

We were required to make a statement each with the grammar (으)러. I made my sentence and read it aloud: 개를 데리고 공원에 산책하러 가요. My teacher's eyes were wide open. It seemed like something was amiss which I was not aware. Then, he asked, "왜 개를 때려요?" (Why do you beat your dog?). The class burst out in laughter. So there you have it, I mispronounced '데리' (to bring) as '때리' (to beat). Poor dog, I didn't mean to 'beat' you when what I wanted to say was to bring you for a stroll in the park.

In an interview to assess my language proficiency, an assessor wanted to know why I was not progressing much despite studying Korean for a long time. I replied, "일이 많고 바쁘느라고 공부를 못 했어요." I thought I gave a satisfactory answer but she pointed out ~느라고 is always used with action verb and 바쁘다 is a stative verb. I was caught with wrong usage of a level 3 grammar. For that, the assessor determined that I should repeat level 3 when I had actually completed it. As much as it was an ego-bruising experience, I never use  ~느라고 wrongly since then.

Those were the times when I wanted to dig a hole and dive in. Despite that, I still believe in what Gilbert Chesterton said, "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

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