The meaning of novelty has changed a lot for me in the past few days. A few weeks ago, I would have never thought it was a novelty to be able to understand the words coming out of people’s mouths. The ability to communicate is boldly automatic when one is communicating in its native language.
When you can’t communicate at all, you start to resort to gesturing and pointing. I went to buy a cellphone yesterday and the salesman knew how to say hello in english. I knew how to say hello in korean and that was the extent of our communication. But through gesturing, pointing and laughing, he managed to sell me a really cute phone and I left a happy customer.
So far my communication at stores has been something like this:
Me: Annyong – haseyo
Clerk: Annyong – haseyo, jibberish, jibberish, jibberish
Me: Ummm, Yes
Clerk: Jibberish, jibberish
Me: Ummm, this one (pointing to something that I want to buy)
Clerk: Aahhhh, jibberish jibberish jibberish
They take my money and the transaction is completed. It’s quite funny to be honest and once I learn a little Korean, I will be able to understand some of the jibberish and not feel so confused. Luckily Korean people are really nice and trustworthy. If they weren’t, I would be probably be ripped off beyond belief due to the language barrier.
