My parents spoke Korean between themselves and Russian with us. In the 1950s it was not wise to speak a language that made the neighbours curious. So we grew up with Russian, and Iradi from the street, and the Korean that remains is a kitchen language.
My forty words (I counted, with Vika's help): kimchi, banchan, bap (rice), kuk (soup), jang (sauce), pap, tteok, bulgogi, and so on. Also appa, omma, halmoni, harabeoji, the family words. Also "eat" (meogeo), "come" (wa), "enough" (dwaesseo), which my mother used in the yard. Also the words for "good luck" and "the end".
My daughter Vika went to Seoul in 2014 on the visa for overseas Koreans, to learn the language in the university, and stayed. She says in the first month people laughed at her Korean, because it sounds "like the 1930s", and in the second month they stopped laughing and started to ask where she learned such a pure old accent. "From Grandma's kitchen", she said. I am proud of her, but I am afraid of the distance.
Recently I started to learn again from an old textbook. Forty-one words. One new word: bogo-sipda, "I miss you".
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