Free Happy Birthday or Whatever by Annie Choi Page B

was easier. English, not Korean, was the language in which I now thought and dreamed. At seven years old, I was exploring language like my classmates. I enjoyed English tongue twisters, puns, jokes, and tall tales. I likedlistening to poems where English words created rhythms and patterns I hadn’t heard in the language of our home. The Korean versions didn’t interest me because I had no one to share them with except my family, and what was the fun in that?
    My parents recognized my waning Korean as a problem. First, my mother showed me videos of Korea’s answer to Sesame Street, which I thought was boring because what I really wanted was Sesame Street . Then, she gave me Korean picture books, which also failed to keep my attention. My brother, whose Korean had also degenerated, rejected all of his Korean books and preferred his Hardy Boys and Star Wars serials. Eventually my parents realized it was time for more formal measures to make us read, write, and speak Korean like Korean people. They enrolled Mike and me into a Korean school held on Saturdays, and really, that is what all children really want—more than a trip to Disneyland or a Golden Retriever puppy—a sixth day of school.
    The Korean classes were held at a junior high school about forty minutes away from where we lived. I felt odd sitting in such a foreign classroom, one without colorful banners, watercolor artwork, and an aquarium with caterpillars. Instead, there were D.A.R.E posters, large maps, and diagrams of the human body (on which many students, including me, pointed to the crotch and giggled). Though I was in second grade, my parents enrolled me into the first grade of Korean school. I had to start from the beginning, they explained to me. My brother, being three years older, was in a class designed to teach Korean to older students—the pace was much faster and the homework load much heavier. Most of my classmates were my age, in the same situation—they too had become more inclined toward English than Korean. My teacher was a middle-aged woman who pointed to students with a ruler and occasionally slapped it on a desk when we answered incorrectly. She wasshort, had greasy skin, and her hair was a gigantic, frizzy mess. She looked like a Korean troll and for a while I was convinced she lived under a bridge, or perhaps one of the freeway overpasses. She passed out large sheets of paper and had us copy the Korean alphabet over and over and over again. And then over again.
    The Korean alphabet doesn’t have an l or r sound as Americans know it. The closest sound is somewhere between l and r. Oddly enough, it is similar to the t/d sound in the word water (when it is not pronounced in the ennunciated Martha Stewart way—“wat-ter”—or in the garbled Philadelphian way—“werddur”). The sound of this Korean letter is subtle. As air moves out from the throat, the tongue gently flicks the roof of the mouth, behind the front teeth. It’s like a quiet purr or a gently rolling r. However, the letter, called lee-ul (maybe ree-ul? ), looks nothing like the sound. It looks like a backward s, but instead of a curving, serpentine shape, the Korean letter is written with horizontal and vertical lines. It’s like the 2 on a digital alarm clock, the kind with the red numbers that burn into your retinas when you can’t fall asleep.
    When I first learned how to read Korean, this letter deceived me. I pronounced it like an s , as in strenuous , not like the t as in daughter. It was confusing and part of the reason why I got held back in Korean school. At the end of my first year, my Korean teacher told my mother I was reading at a kindergarten level. I didn’t even know kindergarteners could even read—apparently they could in Korean school. So, I was forced to take the Korean first grade twice.
    â€œAnne, you make Mommy so mad, weh gongboo ahn heh? ”
    â€œI do too study! I gongboo