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.

Perhaps Jin was extensively tutored in Mandarin or Japanese as a child, giving her some experience in acquiring a language?

It occurs to me that Vonnie may come by any time now and give us the first person perspective on learning English later than sooner.

Sun's father, FWIW, also didn't strike me as type to put a lot of effort into turning little Sun into an independent woman, so I can buy that he might not have made English learning such a priority.

OTOH, having had some crappy english in school would explain why she might have been able to pick it up fairly swiftly once she had a driving reason to do so.

...I dunno, Brenda. My experience with Spaniards -- who mostly receive English instruction from about the 8th grade, and it seems to be always crappy instruction -- is that, when they are 30 and meet Americans, the only English they can come up with is "Star Wars. Que quieren decir los yedi? Es algo japones, no?"

(We had an extended discussion over Revenge of the Jedi vs. Return of the Jedi, and the fact that "Star Wars" sounds cooler than "Guerra de las estrellas". The whole conversation was in Spanish, peppered with (often inappropriate) random English words as my conversant remembered them.)

In sum, I think that crappy lessons in childhood may beat no lessons at all, but they shouldn't confer grammatical and vocabulary perfection in adulthood.

My experience with Spaniards -- who mostly receive English instruction from about the 8th grade, and it seems to be always crappy instruction -- is that, when they are 30 and meet Americans, the only English they can come up with is "Star Wars. Que quieren decir los yedi? Es algo japones, no?"

I'm confused, because I'm guessing we're to assume that your Spaniard's crappy lessons are better than Jin and Sun's no lessons, which leaves them both quite un-fluent, and supports Jessica and me.

If Sun went through twelve years of English instruction in the schools and learned absolutely nothing, then took a few months of private instruction and became spectacularly fluent, this is a great advertisment for the private instructions. They must be as magical as those audio tapes you see advertised in the back of magazines.

Of course, for Jin, not speaking English does add a bit of dramatic tension and obviously character conflict. Something that makes a drama with lots of character conflict really watchable.

For you DDK fans, Wed's Daily Star article.