One day, Me Pretty Talk-yo (pt. 2)

Tonight, I was hungry as people sometimes are. I really wanted to throw down on some kimbap, which is kinda like a sushi roll. Also, they're about $2 and pretty filling. It was my preference to get it to go, but, shit, how do I express that? I can read menus now, by which I mean I can sound shit out and I only know about 25% of what I'm saying ("rice" and "seaweed" is 20% of any given Korean menu, so that just leaves about 5% of miscellany that I was taught by my kindergarteners). I did ask which one had fish, and which one had no meat, by which I mean I pointed at the menu and said: "Here. Water meat (fish)?" "Yes." "Good. I can't eat meat. Water meat kimbap-only one, please give-yo." Above is how I synthesized two units of several Korean books to make a simple request in a stilted way. Although, it's not a fair grammatical representation of what I actually said. I left out things like topic particles (yeah, I'm not really sure what that is either) and subject particles. But, grammar can wait. Communication is much more important to me now and I'm still a very, very long way from not fucking that up.

I still had to pick out the ham, and there was some kind of mystery water-meat. But the kimbap was tasty, and enjoyed in the comfort of my home. Real soon, I need to learn to say "I don't eat anything that makes a sound, unless it's a splash." "I" would start the sentence, and "eat" would come at the very end. The negator would come right before the final verb, I think. So, yeah, that's still many many months away.

Korean is kind of an invented language, so it's not too hard. For example, one of the royal ugly dudes on Korean currency is the person who came up with the Korean alphabet. The alphabet is pretty nifty - and takes just a couple days to learn - because the characters actually represent the shape of the mouth and the position of the tongue when making those sounds. So, reading Korean script is really phonetic, so the literacy rate here is sky high. For example, a kindergarten coworker swears that he's seen one of his six year olds reading a translated version of "Treasure Island" in his spare time.

Really and truly, I'm a little peeved with myself that I can't yet flirt with the ladies in their native language. Korean women are absolutely stunning.