False Shibboleth
When I was in grad school, I was briefly friends with the students in the year above me. For some reason, my year was full of people who didn't want to get together and do things, and I wanted to do things, so I hung out with the "older" group (I say older, but about half of them were younger than me). One of the group was a young woman who, like me, was fond of Kpop, and we occasionally talked about music and various bands. I quickly found out she was a fan of the group Nu'est, a group that debuted in 2012 with a song about bullying, which was cool, because I also liked their music. I tried talking with her about them, but then I ran into an unexpected issue that still taints my ability to listen to their music today.
Context 1: I speak Korean. I trained at the Defense Language Institute in California, spending upwards of 7 hours a day in language and culture classes with native speakers, then spending up to 2 hours on homework in between my military duties, for nearly a year and a half. I spent 6 weeks on a language exchange program in South Korea at one of the three most prestigious universities while living with a Korean family of five. I later lived in Korea for 2 years, where I spent most of my available free time off-base exploring Seoul, seeing musicals and theatre (including Wicked and Singing in the Rain in Korean) and exploring museums and the largest bookstore I've ever been to. The majority of my music library is in Korean, and not just Kpop, but indie bands, drama OSTs, and more traditional music. When I watch Korean dramas, I don't have to have my eyes glued to the subtitles most of the time. TL:DR, I'm pretty good with the Korean language.
Context 2: I have been listening to Kpop since 2011, which is not the longest, but is still a long time. The band that is the topic of today's post, Nu'est? I was in the Kpop world when they debuted. I followed all the promotional videos introducing the members. I don't do fandoms, but I watched all their music videos and bought their music and enjoyed being a casual fan.
By the time I had the interaction with this fellow grad student, I'd been listening to the band for nearly ten years. So when I said the band's name to this grad student and she said "oh, now I know you're not in the fandom, since we say it different", I was taken aback. She used my pronunciation--the Korean pronunciation, mind you, the pronunciation the group use themselves in the actual music--to preclude me from being a true fan of the group.
I was so taken aback, that I didn't say anything. I didn't correct her. I didn't tell her that I had watched the group form. I didn't tell her that not only was she unkind to exclude me, but that her supposed shibboleth that proved my exclusion from the in-group was in fact a mispronunciation.
And now, even 5 years later, I still get mad about it every time I hear one of their songs, because her one little comment ruined my casual enjoyment of their music.
It's pronounced "New East", Kat, not "Newest".
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