Similarly, English-speakers may say things like chibi-Cokes and Jenny-chan, or ciao, or quelle horreur!, or gesundheit, without thinking about it -- but in each case, they're adopting foreign words into their vocabularies.
Ok, but not particularly useful words in this context. The fact that I have a handful of Russian words I can call up to add color to an english sentence would help me communicate not at all if I were stranded on an island with people who spoke only Russian and had absolutely no English.
Hell, I've encountered enough Americans with no useful English that I couldn't assume someone who's actually from a whole different country needs have it.
Nutty, I'm guessing you're facile with languages. You're lucky. Not everyone is, by a long shot.
I've been assuming that in an ambitious country like Korea, children get 8-10 years of English instruction in the schools. If that's not true, then it's possible that Sun had only slight familiarity with English, although it still seems likely that rich daddy would send her to private school so she could reflect his own sophistication when interacting with 'colleagues from Syndney and LA.' Does anyone know about English instruction in Korean schools?
No, of course, not all these words are useful. But like I said, the writers are treating language like an on/off switch. Either you know the language completely, or you don't at all; whereas even a few sessions of "New Coke!" "Hasta la vista baby?" would be realistic.
The proof of it will come next week, if Sun's English is idiomatic and correct, and she never discovers a vocab deficit and lapses back into Korean in the middle of a conversation with an English-only speaker. For that matter, we already have proof: despite some close interactions, and both Sun's and Jin's general usefulness, nobody on the island has learned a single word of Korean.
nobody on the island has learned a single word of Korean.
Walt learned toothbrush or toothpaste (I can't remember which) when Michael went boar-hunting
nobody on the island has learned a single word of Korean.
Given how isolated Jin has deliberately kept both Sun and himself, that doesn't surprise me.
I agree with you that Sun's proficiency with English is unrealistic, given that she canonically didn't start learning until she was an adult, and (I think it's safe to assume) hasn't been taking lessons for more than a year.
Is it not possible that Jin was deliberately avoiding using English, at all, even if he had a few phrases, because he wanted to keep himself and Sun as a seperate unit of two?
As for other non-native English speakers, Sayid and Rousseau both seem to have a fairly complete grasp of the language. Rousseau perhaps surprisingly, presuming she's been on her own for a long time.
Either you know the language completely, or you don't at all; whereas even a few sessions of "New Coke!" "Hasta la vista baby?" would be realistic.
Ok, but...I still think those are the kind of things that I might throw into my conversations with another speaker of my same language - but if I'm stuck with a bunch of people who only speak Spanish, say, and I have none - I'm not likely to drag out my Hasta la vista. Or maybe I will, but it won't make for for riveting tv since I'll spit out a few words that might as well be gibberish they'll be so non-sequitory and then the conversation will be over.
I found this in a journal called the Texas Linguistic Forum. The author does go on to say that English instruction in the schools is so bad that students have to get private lessons to develop any real competence. So it's true that few Koreans would be fluent.
Joseph Sung-Yul Park
University of California, Santa Barbara
South Korea (henceforth Korea) is a highly monolingual country; for virtually all domains of everyday life, Korean is the only language used for communicative purposes. However, there is also much emphasis on English language learning in Korea. English has been an important language in Korea since an intricate relationship with the United States began after the end of modern Japanese rule, but it has become even more significant in recent years, as the need to be competent in the international market has become more crucial for Korea’s economic stability.
Students receive mandatory English education throughout primary and secondary school, and English plays an important part in college entrance and graduation as well as in employment and promotion. For this reason, many Koreans strive hard to achieve good English skills, making large investments of time and money at private language schools both for themselves and their children, to the extent that English is often considered to be an emotional and economic burden.