How Language Shapes the Way We Think: What Learning Korean Taught Me

I don't mean that speaking a certain language traps you inside a certain way of thinking. But language can give names to experiences we might otherwise overlook. It can make certain relationships, emotions, and distinctions easier to see.

Korean did that for me.

And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

How Language Shapes the Way We Think

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass that language holds a culture's thoughts and its way of seeing the world.

I understood that much better after learning Korean.

There is a word Koreans use all the time: 시원하다 (siwonhada).

The basic translation is something like "refreshingly cool."

But that doesn't quite get it.

It is taking a drink of an ice-cold beer on a brutally hot day and letting out that long:

Ahhhhh.

It can be the cool breeze that hits you when you step outside.

But it can also describe the feeling of finally saying something that has been bottled up inside you.

Its opposite, 답답하다 (dapdap-hada), can mean stuffy or suffocating.

But again, that isn't quite enough.

It can describe a room with no air.

It can also describe frustration. Being trapped. That feeling when something inside you desperately wants to get out.

Korean had words that connected physical sensations with emotional ones.

I began noticing feelings I had always experienced but had never quite named.

Korean Didn't Just Give Me New Words

That difference showed up everywhere.

People didn't always ask, "How are you?"

They asked:

Have you eaten?

At first, it sounded like a question about lunch.

Eventually I understood that it could be a question about care.

Are you okay?

Are you taking care of yourself?

Have you been fed?

Food was not simply something people consumed. Meals were community.

Even goodbyes felt different.

If you were leaving, you told the person staying to remain in peace.

If you were staying, you told the person leaving to go in peace.

The language paid attention to who was going and who remained.

Even food made noise differently.

A stew didn't merely boil. It went 보글보글.

Meat cooking in a pan went 지글지글.

The words seemed wrapped around the experience itself.

I wasn't just learning how Koreans said things.

I was learning what Korean noticed.

The Korean Word Han — And What Happens When We Name Something

Then there is 한 (han).

Han is one of those Korean words that refuses to fit neatly inside an English translation.

It can contain grief, injustice, resentment, sorrow and longing — especially the pain of something that cannot simply be restored.

I learned about it in a country where the Korean War had divided families across a border. People had lost parents, brothers, sisters and homes knowing they might never see them again.

There was a word for that kind of wound.

That made me think about America.

We have words for slavery. Racism. Segregation.

But do we have a word for the accumulated grief left behind by centuries of families being torn apart and people being treated as property?

Maybe we don't need one.

But learning the word han made me notice the absence.

That is what language can do.

Once something has a name, it becomes easier to see.

Learning Korean Changed Where I Belonged

But Korean didn't only change the way I thought.

It changed where I could belong.

One afternoon in the Korean countryside, the other American soldiers stayed together.

I wandered off.

Some local men were sitting around drinking bowls of 동동주 (dongdongju), a cloudy traditional rice wine. They waved me over.

So I sat down.

Soon we were drinking, laughing and talking.

I spent the entire afternoon with them without speaking a word of English.

And for those few hours, I didn't feel like the American visiting Korea.

I was simply another person sitting at the table.

That may have been when I understood what fluency could really give you.

Not perfect grammar.

Access.

Living off base gave me more of those moments. I walked and biked through neighborhoods just to see what was there. Sometimes I would almost forget I was an American serviceman until I saw my uniform again.

Korea became familiar.

Autumn turned the mountains red and gold, reminding me of the Hudson River Valley where I'd grown up.

Meals stretched across tables.

People argued loudly and laughed loudly.

The place stopped feeling foreign.

That experience—letting another culture change you rather than keeping it at arm’s length—is something I wrote about again in Leah Stayed: Poisonwood Bible Reflections

When Korean Became My Superpower

Of course, belonging wasn't automatic.

One night I was sitting in a 포장마차 (pojangmacha), one of the drinking tents that used to line Korean streets.

A man started berating me for being American.

Normally, he probably expected the American kid sitting nearby to have no idea what he was saying.

Except I understood every word.

So I answered him.

In Korean.

"You don't know me. To assume I'm an asshole because of my nationality is wrong."

His face froze.

For a while, Korean felt like a superpower.

People saw me before I spoke and made one assumption.

Then I opened my mouth and suddenly I became something else.

A Simple Way to See What Another Language Notices

You don't have to become fluent in Korean to experience this.

Find a word in another language that doesn't translate cleanly into English.

Then ask:

What experience is this language naming that English tends to bundle together or overlook?
Why might that distinction matter in the culture where the word developed?
Once you know the word, do you begin noticing the experience more often?

That's what happened to me.

Korean gave names to things I had experienced but hadn't learned to separate.

And naming them made them easier to see.

I found myself thinking about this again when I went looking for a word for that satisfied, accomplished feeling after a good week of work.

Learning Another Language Gives You Another Window

My Korean isn't what it once was.

When my wife and I returned to America, it was her turn to concentrate on English. We gradually stopped speaking Korean at home.

Language is perishable.

Use it or lose it.

I lost a lot.

But I never lost the way Korean changed me.

It gave me my wife.

It gave me experiences and friendships I never would have had otherwise.

And it taught me that learning another language isn't simply learning different words for the same world.

Sometimes it lets you notice a different part of the world altogether.

Maybe that is how language shapes the way we think.

It doesn't tell us what we are allowed to see.

It gives us more things to see.

“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”

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Lou LaMedica

How Language Shapes the Way We Think: What Learning Korean Taught Me