I speak Korean, but not enough to construct well-thought-out age appropriate sentences. I do understand quite a bit, though. I've noticed that my mother, who was born and raised in south Korea, can swear with much more conviction and better results if she's swearing in her native tongue. :-) Korean is the language where her passion lies. She can make herself the center of everyone's attention much easier in Korean, and her advice, when given in Korean, is much easier to understand, and often more intensely delivered. Does that make sense? When she's having fun and talking in Korean, her animation and sense of humor, which is wicked at times, comes off much better than it does in English. Although she's been living in the states for almost thirty years now, there are still words she has a hard time really understanding on an abstract level.

It is very unnerving to hear her switch from Korean to English in the middle of a sentence, but sometimes, there really aren't words to replace the ones you want to use when in the midst of a conversation. Most of the time when she switches, though, she's doing it to directly quote from an American person.