“How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
The best way to describe this string of nine words is that it’s the Korean equivalent of “¿Puedo ir al baño?” or, if you’re a Community fan, “¿Dónde está la biblioteca?” Both are phrases every American high schooler learned in introductory Spanish.
It’s something everyone knows, understands, and has tucked away somewhere in the back of their brain, right next to that one song from 10 years ago they still know every lyric to and their mom’s phone number she made you memorize in case you ever got lost. Something so deeply ingrained in your psyche that forgetting it would be nearly impossible.
But for Koreans, it wasn’t Spanish class. It was English class.
For many people my age or older, one of the first phrases they ever learned was, “How are you? I’m fine, thank you. And you?” It’s one of those textbook conversations that technically makes sense but exists far more often inside classrooms than in real life. Still, when it comes from someone speaking English as a second language, it never feels strange. If anything, it feels oddly comforting, because I now know the context.
My notes, textbooks, and vocabulary from one of my many late-night sessions under dorm lights.
After all, I’ve been doing the exact same thing every day as I jumble phrases and words into my own fair share of embarrassing moments. Like the time I was trying to ask which flavors of 빙수, a Korean shaved-ice dessert, they had, only for the person to just respond in English and put me down for red bean. Or the time I accidentally spoke without honorifics to a convenience store cashier who was easily in her 60s.
There have been plenty of conversations where I understood just enough Korean to know the answer to the question in English, only for my brain to completely shut down when it became my turn to speak. The words are there somewhere—they’re just trapped in traffic on the highway between my brain and my mouth while I desperately search through Papago.
A mountain of Bingsu, the dessert behind one of my many Korean-language mishaps.
And one thing no one really tells you about learning another language is how much it temporarily changes who you are.
Back home, I like to think I’m reasonably quick-witted. I like making jokes, telling stories, accidentally interrupting people because I’m excited about whatever they’re saying. In Korean, though, all of that disappears. Every sentence has to be assembled piece by piece before I let it leave my mouth. For a while, you’re forced to accept that the version of yourself everyone meets isn’t really you at all. It’s a simplified version, built from whatever words you happen to know that day.
It’s an incredibly vulnerable feeling. I think that’s part of why language learners are often so patient with one another. Everyone understands what it feels like to know exactly who they are but not yet have the words to show it.
But for every embarrassing interaction, there have been a hundred good ones. The taxi driver who enthusiastically complimented my Korean before immediately asking whether I have a handsome Korean boyfriend (I won’t tell him if you won’t). The girl in my English writing class who looked surprised when I initially asked her a question in Korean. The auntie at the local Shabu Shabu place who patiently let me take my time ordering for my friend and me before saying “잘해서~,” which means good job.
The rare experience of ordering everything right the first time.
Nobody expects perfection. Most people are simply happy that you’re trying, and that encouragement has made the difficult days feel much smaller than they otherwise would have.
And the more time I spend navigating the beautiful nightmare that is the Korean language, the more I’ve come to love it.
Because language is such a strange thing. It’s just sounds, patterns, and grammar rules that make you question your own sanity. Tiny vibrations in the air that disappear the moment they’re spoken, yet somehow those sounds can carry jokes, memories, love, grief, and entire histories.
Looking out over Seoul near Seoul Station before heading to Busan for the weekend.
It is deeply intimate to speak someone else’s language. Not because you’re fluent or because your pronunciation is perfect, but because you’re willing to be uncomfortable. You’re willing to sound a little stupid. You’re willing to let your personality shrink down to the vocabulary of a five-year-old just for the chance to connect with someone who otherwise might have remained a stranger.
People soften when you make that effort. You stop being another foreign face walking through the city and become someone trying. Someone curious. Someone who respects where they are.
It’s easy to think the goal is speaking perfectly, but perfection has never really been the point. Every conversation is less about getting the grammar exactly right and more about telling the other person, I’m here. I’m trying. I want to understand you.
Goryeodae-ro (literally “Korea University road”), which runs right along campus.
And maybe that’s why those nine words have stuck with so many people for so many years.
“How are you? I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
Not because they’re particularly useful. Not because anyone actually talks like that every day. But because, for a lot of people, they were the very first bridge between themselves and someone from another world.
Every language has a bridge like that—a first sentence that transforms a foreign language from something printed in a textbook into something shared between two people.
Standing here now, stumbling through Korean one sentence at a time, I finally understand why that bridge matters so much. Not because it gets you to the other side, but because it gives you the courage to take the very first step without the fear of falling.