Korean Americans Cross-Train in Language Classes

Adults Try English; Kids Explore Motherland's Tongue

In a Fairfax church basement, a dozen Korean-born men and women squeezed into blue kindergarten chairs one evening last week, struggling with their elusive R's and H's.

"Thursday," the teacher said. "TOOS-DAY" the class responded in unison.

"Not Tues-day, Thurs-day," she tried again, enunciating slowly. "The H sound has air in it. Put your tongue against your teeth. And don't forget the R."

The students, most in their 40s and 50s, nodded and frowned in concentration. They giggled, murmured to each other in Korean and tried again.

"THOOS-DAY," they announced on cue, lips pursed, backs straight.

"Great," the teacher said with an encouraging smile.

The Washington region's large Korean American community, long one of the area's most organized and affluent immigrant groups, is moving belatedly but aggressively to break through its final barrier to successful immersion in American society. After years of living, working and shopping in suburban ethnic enclaves where they have little need to master English, many older Koreans are flocking to English classes across the region.

Their motives are a mixture of the practical, the pleasurable and the altruistic. Shop owners and professionals say they need to interact more fluently with American customers and co-workers. Homemakers want to better help their children with schoolwork. Older people with time on their hands hope to get more out of museums and movies, or to become useful volunteers for civic and charity groups.

"Koreans love to get involved and contribute, but they are embarrassed if they make a mistake. If you don't speak English, you can't serve the community," said the Rev. Yong Hwan Kim, a United Methodist pastor who organizes English classes in Fairfax.

He said one 81-year-old student was translating each chapter of the Bible from Korean into English and had already finished Revelations.

Kim said that because of the language barrier, many adult Korean Americans have never been inside the home of someone who is not Korean. "Their kids go to parties with their American friends from school, but they are ashamed because their parents don't speak English, so they don't want them to meet the other parents," he said.

The new popularity of English study also has a political component. As the area's Korean community has swelled to more than 150,000 since the 1980s, a growing percentage of its members have become eligible to vote. And as they take more active interest in public issues, candidates for county and state offices have begun seeking their support.