Note on Language

Note on Language 2007 & 2012 (Kindle)

Colorized photo, late 19th Century

Romanized Korean is a central feature of this story. Finding the appropriate system of Romanization depended, finally, upon the McCune-Reischauer system, which has had a longer common usage than the newer systems being implemented in recent years by both Koreas. Spelling variations exist between the major Romanization systems, and in some cases the spelling in this work depends upon how the word sounds, as the transformation of any language into slang does, versus the formalized spelling belonging to one of those systems. Too, the Koreans understand that Hangul, the name of their written language, differs markedly in their speech. In this work, the adaptation of the McCune-Reischauer omits the diacritics to make the reading of the Korean words easier for those not acquainted with the technical inflections referred to in their usage. And, within the larger context of dialogue and narrative the omission of the diacritics works effectively. The omission of in this version of the apostrophe is a small battle won over a stylistic issue I considered before the originally publication of Seasons in the Kingdom. Doing so for the Kindle version was a good thing and helped me reconsider word choices and dialogue that I feel had a positive outcome for this version. One may wonder why I left the comma, and it’s sometimes sporadic peppering of the page, but I am not at that point of clarity, and may never be, to make that choice too. A glossary at the end of the text or at this weblink lists alphabetically the Korean words and a short definition of how the word is used and its implied meaning in this work. In the text, an English word is imbedded for a quick translation early in the book, recognizing that common words will be learned as the reading is completed. Japanese words common to the Koreans and GIs alike are included in the Korean glossary.

Late 19th Century

    In 1960 John T. Algeo wrote a short article, “Korean Bamboo English,” which described developments in American GI dialect in Asia that spread after the Pacific War with Japan and the occupation that followed, and during and after the Korean War. The usage of many Japanese words in this GI dialect, “bamboo English,” made it easy for Koreans to understand what the Americans wanted, because the Japanese had occupied Korea for almost forty years before being thrown out at the end of the Pacific War and their language was deeply imbedded in Korean usage. During the ongoing period of U.S. commitment to Korea, this pidgin dialect formed using borrowed Japanese words, bastardizations of Korean words, and English, which were all put throw the meat grinder of GI ingenuity and need. This meant that using a word repetitively, and perhaps adding the sound of an “i” or “ee” on the end of a word, created a new flexible language. Catch, became “catchee, catchee,” and took on a new meaning, and so on, and of course, saying the word louder made it more comprehensible, as any tourist knows. Because the Koreans had to work close with the GIs, either as partners in military operations, or as servants for them on or near their camps, the language spread by common usage as each successive group of American GIs rotated in and out of Korea since the early 1950s.

    It should be noted that the American military had been in Korea since the fall of 1945, when they occupied the southern half of the peninsula at the end of the Pacific War. The issues of “bamboo English” developed during this period mostly from the use of Japanese words. In Korea, most of the GIs were removed by early 1950; only a few hundred training personnel were left when in June of that year, the DPRK invaded the ROK in an attempt to unify the nation under the Communist banner. They almost succeeded.
    The use of this dialect, “bamboo English” has diminished as the Koreans have prospered, have become better educated, need the U.S. less, and as U.S. deployed forces have decreased in Asia. However, it was a very vital dialect alive with emotions, and in this work, I use it when appropriate to increase the feeling for place and for the emotional world of those of us that had used it in its place of birth.

Late 19th Century, Namdaemun Gate

    Algeo noted that this dialect was quickly given up once the GI rotated back to the states. He hinted at an “emotional connotation” that the dialect had for the GI and that using it outside of its original environment meant also to remember that origin, and the memory of that dialect carried with it other memories they wished not to remember. This is true. It became a special language that could be used in the company of other GIs who had been in Korea and who understood the village life there from the 1950s through to the 1980s as a dialect of shared experience and emotions of things they otherwise would rather keep “secret.” That Korea was known in military speak as the “best kept secret in the army” is part of the telling of this story.

Ascom City panorama, circa 1968

    George Cornell, “GI Slang in Viet Nam,” also explores the further usage of “bamboo English,” and its augmentation during the 1960s and 1970s. “Bamboo English” reached its peak during the Viet Nam War, when many of the terms originally coined in Japan, then enlarged by the Korean experience, became imbedded within the American language, for good and for bad, as many of the terms carried with them an inherent racial slur, like the term “gook.” The “slanguage” that develops in any army is interesting not only for the energy and vitality that tests words and gives them new meanings in those new contexts, but also expresses the culture of military necessity and foreign locations in which this “slanguage” dialect takes shape.