My normal gig is top 40, whatever is on the rock charts, singing and acoustic guitar. I've played guitar for about 8 years now, and probably have sing for 4 or 5 years. One day I realized that I would never be a really great guitarist, so I decided to sing and it turned out, I could be a really great singer! All I had to to was get over the fear of singing in front of others. . .

Recently my friends pulled me into a here on post, it was a talent show. My part was to sing a song in korean and play guitar for the performance (all coordinated and times with a video sequence). Its really hard to describe what a feit that is, particularly singing in korean.

Koreans are very funny when it comes to speaking thire language, if you don't do it right, they won't understand you at all. Furthermore, many don't expect foreigners to know korean, if they do (like on tv) they still provide subtitles of what they are really saying. . .

. . . I'll attach a couple stories at the end of this. to further explain. . .

but anyway, it was a rousing success, I was not expecting the round of cheers from the crowd when I delivered my first verse flawlessly, nor did I expect the Korean American announcer to be 'shocked' by it as she was . . . nor the endless congratulations from Koreans who were overall impressed. . .

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a few stories:

One day a forienger, who knew some korean, approched and old woman and a child and asked for directions. .

He directs his question to the old lady, but she did not respond, instead, the child heard the foreigner, understood, and told him in korean the way to go, the foreigner then thanked the two and went on his way.

the old lady then leaned down and complemented the child "wow, your english is really good!"
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A Burmese friend of mine, who I know from church, told me of a time when he and his brother were on a bus. His Brother who started up a conversation with a guy. About 1-2 hours into the conversation, he mentioned that he was really Burmese and not korean. Upon hearing that the guy suddenly could not understand what he was saying.
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And of course myself I have noticed: Every time I go to a nightclub and talk a girl over the blaring pop music, she can understand me just fine. But when I talk to my normal every day co-workers in korean, I have to say things 2 or three times, and be persistent, and even then they respond in english.

Basically they have to 'want' to understand you. Otherwise they just don't try to see past your grammer mistakes. Or perhaps it is a face saving, habit of thiers, they ignore what is said because there was a mistake there, and makeing a mistake is a relatively big things to them. In the U.S. we are used to talking with foriegners all the time, and with people not talking standard english, we really don't pay much attention to this fact. But here it is not so common.

Its always a challenge convincing a korean speaker, who knows moderate english to talk. They can understand what you are saying, but the fear of making a mistake prevents them from speaking back most of the time. Sometimes they are afraid of being laughed at (which sometimes happens to me if my pronunciation is off). Its hard to explain that culture is different here, and that we don;t care as much if they make a mistake, we understand that they are learning.