Doha: When fans of the South Korean football team visited for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, they would have thought to communicate in English or with sign language while in Doha.
But for those who visited Qatar National Library Korean-speaking Qatari Najlaa Alshahwani, manager of collections acquisitions services at the Library was a surprise.
Najlaa said, “In general, Koreans are not the kind of people who will meet your eye, they tend to be quite conservative. When they come to the Library they don’t approach you to ask questions, they just enjoy the space themselves.
“But during the World Cup Library employees wanted to greet people; I made it my mission to go up to Korean fans and greet them in their language; I could recognize them as most were wearing the colors of the Korean team,” she told The Peninsula.
She added, “They were shocked that someone could speak their language and appreciate their culture and also surprised that someone other than themselves was following the progress of the Korean team – who they were playing, the scores and the matches.
“A lot of them were older gentlemen who did not speak English, so they were surprised to be able to have a conversation with a Qatari; a couple of them even came back to give me gifts of their flag.”
Because all the games involving the Korean team were held at Education City Stadium, Najlaa was also able to go to the matches and meet Korean fans outside the stadium, handing out dates and talking to them about Qatari culture.
“We talked about Korean books in the Library and I let them know that it’s the most popular language among the language-learning books,” she said.
“Many of them had a lot of misconceptions about our culture and had questions like: ‘Are we all related to the royal family?’”
Najlaa also met a reporter from KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) and gave an interview in which she wished the South Korean team good luck and was complimented on her language skills.
Najlaa added: “The reporter wanted to talk to me about supporting the Korean team, and I wanted to tell her about how excited we were to have so many people from different countries in Qatar and being able to help the Korean community in the Library.”
Najlaa initially began learning Korean after watching Korean films and TV dramas. As an English language graduate, she was always interested in linguistics and Korean appealed to her as the language was so different, yet the society was very similar to Qatar’s; quite conservative, private and family-oriented. She began having oral lessons with an online tutor during the COVID pandemic. The Tutor taught her to read and write basic Korean in just a week.
Najlaa’s Korean language skills were also put to good use during a visit to the Library by a pair of high-ranking Korean army officers, who were also impressed by her choice of music.
She explained that QNL received a call about their upcoming visit, so she offered to conduct a tour for them in their language.
She said, “When I first met them their military uniforms were a little intimidating, but we went into the music room and they asked me what kind of music I liked. I think they expected me to say BTS or someone, but I said I liked Lee Moon-sae, who is sort of the Korean equivalent of Frank Sinatra or Abdel Halim Hafez. We also talked about the Library and books in general. We just had a good conversation.
“It’s a language that’s completely different to Arabic and English in structure and I like the culture; their society is quite similar to ours. It feels familiar but it is also intriguing. But speaking it is not easy on the throat!”
As far as Najlaa knows, there is only one other Qatari out of the whole population who can speak fluent Korean, but he lives in South Korea, whereas Najlaa has never been there… yet.
For anyone wanting to follow in the linguistic footsteps of Najlaa and learn Korean – or Mandarin, Arabic, English, Portuguese, French, and a host of other languages – Qatar National Library has dozens of books to help people learn the basics. To get an inspiration visitors to the Library can speak to staff members – of 34 nationalities employed at the Library, from Qatari to Polish, Turkish to Serbian.
Significantly, the Library also has a host of language-learning ebooks and resources – which combined with the new QNL app – means people can learn a new language on the go.
