My Korean Husband

Bilingual Update! How a four-year-old switches between Korean and English

We filmed a video to give an update on our son Yul’s language process.

Hello everyone! Finally a bilingual update video! We tried to get it as natural as possible but of course can never be completely like a normal conversation at home.

Our bilingual method:

We do “one parent, one language” method but with flexibility.

Nichola speaks English with Yul and Hugh speaks Korean with him. Nichola and Hugh speak mostly English to each other, so Yul constantly hears English conversation.

Within the community Yul is hearing mostly Korean. He goes to a completely Korean daycare/preschool but they also have some English classes a few times a week. Multicultural families are offered free Korean classes for kids in Korea, so he also attends Korean class twice a week. Even though he is a native Korean speaker, he goes to them to make sure there are no gaps in his learning. The teacher also caters to what he needs or what we ask. For example, there is a whole element of culture and manners in Korea that children are taught but what Nichola, as a foreigner, might not be able to instinctively instill in him. So the teacher is making sure they know manners and bowing etc. He really enjoys his Korean classes because the teacher makes them very fun.

Nichola will sometimes use Korean with Yul in public, as a way of showing others that he can speak Korean, and to not just use English with him. It’s a way of signalling that although Yul’s mother is obviously a foreigner, that he is a Korean child, and to treat him as one.

Hugh does the opposite sometimes to show that Yul can speak English too.

Nichola can participate in basic conversations in Korean and can understand the general gist of Korean but has to answer in English at home usually. This is for Yul’s benefit and because the focus on English means she doesn’t have opportunity to develop speaking skills at a higher level yet.

We are working on Yul changing using his own name to “I” at the moment in English. Nichola often corrects him gently, but didn’t during this video. While it’s something that is normal around this age, it’s also something to get kids to adjust to.

At the moment Yul is still working out the difference between English words in English and English loan words in Korean. Sometimes he will say a Korean pronunciation of an English word that is used in Korean, but he wasn’t sure of the English pronunciation in English. That’s something that gets corrected gently as he still needs to know how to pronounce loan words how Koreans do, rather than never saying them at all. He can have a few issues with pronouncing some English sounds that aren’t in Korean, and when quizzed he can say them, but he is still working out how they are used in English and sometimes defaults to the Korean adjustment of that sound. We are keeping an eye on his speech and will make sure he has some evaluations as he gets older.

Yul has not been back to Australia since 2020, so it’s difficult to check his English compared to other Australian kids. We will be visiting next year and will have a better idea of his progress.

(We show videos to Yul before we post them to make sure he is okay with them. He found this one hilarious. He also banged the keyboard and deleted the whole video accidentally! Luckily I managed to undo and get it back and export it, but there may be a random blue square that appears at some point, which I think was because of that haha.)

Korean 100 Days and Updates

It’s been a while since we have updated. This has mostly been because having a new baby is so hectic, plus Hugh has been busy with work stuff. We originally had vlogged our baby girl’s 100 Days as a separate video, but as time went by, I realised we needed to update everyone about the other things that have been happening. For us, it feels like we are just trying to get past this early stage of having kids before we can become more consistent. I always have comic ideas but need a new drawing tablet before I can continue. Hugh’s work deals a lot with the behind the scenes of YouTube and social media but ironically it means he has less time for our own channel.

The 100 Days celebration used to be bigger in Korea, with a ritual aspect to it, but these days it may only be a small family gathering and a photo shoot. We only did the photo shoot and even that was stressful. But I do like acknowledging 100 days and feeling a bit more freedom to go outside with my baby. Traditionally, the mother and baby would not leave the home for 100 days and even today in Korea people still somewhat abide by that rule. If I went out with her before 100 days the first questions the old women in the neighbourhood would ask is, “Has she had her 100 days yet?!”

Rather than having to buy the props for a photo shoot, there are companies that hire packages out. There are a range to choose from, depending if you want it to look very traditional, or have more of a modern look. There are also many different hanboks (the traditional clothes) to choose from. As we show in the video, it is delivered to you and has instructions on how to set it up.

We also give a glimpse into seeing my family again as they were finally able to come to Korea. My brother was able to move to Korea last year (he was living in Japan), but my parents had to wait until Australia opened up again and Korea allowed Australian tourists. It was been wonderful to see some of my family again and to see Yul reconnect with them, as the last time he has seen them he was only two years old.

Our New Baby!

We are very happy to welcome our baby girl to our family. In this video we show our time in the hospital and Yul meeting his little sister for the first time. I also show you all the food I ate in hospital as honestly, Korean hospital food is very good! Watch the video to find out her Korean and English name.

It’s been a hectic few months of adjusting to a newborn again but slowly starting to get some sort of routine now. I’m aiming to get a few hours a week to work so please expect more videos soon. Hugh has switched up his work schedule and is keen to create more content again. Later in the year I’ll be starting some more comics again about being a bilingual and intercultural family. Stay tuned!

Baby Coming Soon!

An update before heading into hospital VERY SOON!

Pregnancy Update

Pregnancy Update

I am now in my third trimester and currently as I’m writing this, I’m now as pregnant as I’ve ever been! Yul had just arrived at this point of my first pregnancy.

In this video I talk about a scare early on, all my awful symptoms, IVF and Seoul hospitals.

Usually these days we try to have both Korean and English subtitles embedded in the video but as this video is quite long it wasn’t possible. But next video will have!

Time to come back to Korea?

Are you planning your Korea trip again?

Did you have to cancel your trip to Korea? Are you planning on traveling to Korea soon? My parents are looking forward to coming back to Korea maybe early next year. I hope this video is helpful when planning your trip. A big tourist attraction in this area is Gyeongbokgung Palace, which is actually a huge area to walk around. People hire hanboks to wear and walk around the palace, but all that walking is going to make you hungry.

It’s convenient to head to this street and find a restaurant to eat at. Locals also eat here and there is a big range of food that will be satisfying, especially after all that walking. Even living in Seoul, I wasn’t that aware of this food street, but now I know! One of the great things about doing these tourism videos is that we learn something too, and in this case, we got a chance to actually go out as a family.

Local markets in Seoul / Dalgona

What food can you buy at local markets?

In this video we head to our local markets to show you the type of food we often buy from there. One of the stalls was selling dalogna, which has become internationally popular recently because of the TV show ‘Squid Game’. While this show is definitely NOT FOR KIDS, it features children’s games in it. Dalgona is a honeycomb candy where children try to get the shape out without breaking the actual shape. It’s been around for several decades but popularity had dwindled in recent years. It’s now been very much revived and apparently there have been huge lines for it as young adults are keen to try it. We were lucky to find it locally without there being big lines.

You may have heard fruit and vegetable can be expensive in Korea, and while that can be true for big supermarkets or department stores, it’s usually decent prices at markets like this and sometimes can be very cheap. Food in general at markets tends to be cheap and it’s an easy way to put together a meal for at home with a variety of meat and seafood, as well as already prepared side dishes.

Hugh and Yul try out some different food in this video, as well as attempting the dalgona game. This is probably the most natural situation we have filmed that shows how Yul is bilingual. You may notice that he uses English when talking to both of us, he will use Korean when talking to Hugh directly and English when talking to me directly. When talking to both of us he may mix some Korean and English into one sentence and this is called “code mixing” and is normal at this age. This is different from “code switching” that bilingual adults use as this is more a part of bilingual development as he learns both languages, but even at this age he is well aware of which language a word belongs to.

Yul switches between languages easily and is a similar level in both. What he speaks is not “Konglish” as I’ve seen some people say, as Konglish means English words that have been absorbed into the Korean language but have changed somewhat in meaning. Konglish is also different from English loan words in Korean, which retain their original English meaning. Yul competently speaks both languages, knows when to switch and only code mixes when he knows that we will understand. There is a lot of myths about kids and bilingualism, one of them being that they are confused, but it’s really not true at all.

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