Today is Korean Alphabet Day celebrating the invention of the Korean alphabet in 1446.
It is a language spoken by some 80 million people. The nucleus of the vocabulary is local Korean words. Of the words used in the country, some 5% of them come from English. However, this borrowing does not go the other way.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites only 15 words based on Korean which are used in English. Relevant to today is of course hangul – the Korean phonetic alphabet. Other words are the won (currency) and the tae kwon do – the martial arts system.
Over centuries Korea was virtually unknown to the West. Diplomatic relations were opened up with Great Britain only in 1884.
Kimchi
Being unknown also relates to food. One of the most common Korean words used in English relates to something to eat – kimchi. This is consumed in great quantities in Korea – on average 18 kilograms per person per year. But what is kimchi? What does it consist of? The best place to go it the Kimchi Field Museum in Seoul. This museum documents the 187 varieties of the dish, provides tastings, cooking courses and shows the development of kimchi over time. Key ingredients are cabbage, spring onion and cucumber.
Isabella Bird
This was first recorded by Isabella Bird – a nineteenth century English woman who travelled extensively. She also wrote about what she had experienced with books on America, China, Japan, Israel, Iran, Malaysia, Australia and also Korea. In her book Korean and her Neighbours which came out in 1898. Her book of some 450 pages is one of the first which sees Korean with English eyes. She mentions kimchi three times, defining it as “an elaborate form of sour kraut”. She is serviced kimchi by a prince and also sees it in a poor fisherman’s home.
James Gale
James Gale mentions kimchi in the same year. In his Korean Sketches he records that “we found a Korean hut, and to our delight, dined on rice and kimchi once more”. In brackets he states that kimchi tastes like pickle. Gale is the man that brought English to Korea and Korean to English speakers. He arrived in Korea from Canada in 1888 as a missionary and left after a lifetime in 1927. During this time not only did he translate the Bible into Korean, but also Korean literature into English. In addition, he published the first Korean-English dictionary and wrote an English language history of Korea.
For a foreigner it takes time to love kimchi. Blackwood’s Magazine in 1925 provides an example of the shock of a first taste for a foreigner. The writer was presented with “five different sorts of kimchi, a horrible dish made out of vegetables which have become rotten”.
