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Understanding in a Foreign Language
When I first came to Japan, I could not speak the language. I came to the country in a job straight out of college, teaching conversational English in a juku, or cram school, in a town outside of Osaka, and my high school French and college German were of no use to me.
The first weeks were hard, trying to learn everything. I began copying the written kana daily in both forms, hiragana and katakana, so that I could be able to read signs, menus, and labels. I hired a teacher and attended lessons weekly. I talked with new friends most nights in a local bar and picked up Osaka-ben, or slang.
My first realization that I was really understanding without constantly trying to translate in my head came when a Japanese friend stopped by the bar to ask several of us to come on an excursion with him to hana-mi, or go look at cherry blossoms. My American friend who spoke Japanese perfectly was sure that our Japanese friend had said hana-bi, fireworks, and asked us in English if we were free for fireworks. I diffidently asked if he was sure that was what Minoru had said. Even I was a little startled that I had heard him correctly, and I realized that I had understood pretty much all of Minoru’s words, including the time he wanted to pick us up (another clue that it was hana-mi not hana-bi since the excursion was planned for the late morning and early afternoon).
By the time I left Japan, I was able to converse in a kind of pidgin-Japanese with every person I met, so I could not only understand them but be understood. I frequently made people laugh at the gaijin with her Osaka-ben, but I usually got the information I needed, and sometimes I made a new friend.
Have you had an experience like that, when you realized that you were suddenly truly understanding?
Published in Group Writing
I had an actual epiphany with algebra in 9th grade, I remember the moment when it all became clear. Math had been a struggle for me throughout elementary school and junior high. But from that moment on, all the way through calculus in college, I got As. Now, though, 50 years later, I hardly trust myself to add 2 + 2 without a calculator!
Yes, and weirdly enough it was in a record store in Munich. It was like God threw a switch or pressed a button and suddenly the dull hum of barely perceived German conversation around me turned into a completely comprehensible stream of words. So, I rounded on the high schoolers behind me and said “Ja, ich bin Ausländer und scheinbar hat mein Onkel ein Paar Nazis zu wenig erschossen.”
Must have been before the Good Christian vibe kicked in. 😜
Senegal 2016. They speak French and it was nice Saturday morning and I went down alone to the local restaurant to get some much needed coffee. My co-worker, having spent a semester in Paris during college, had taken the lead on all things linguistic to this point. I, having heard him order coffee with cream and sugar multiple times, was relatively certain I could do it (I have had a lot of language training thanks to the US military). In my best Inspector Clouseau French I ordered it. The waitress hesitated and then smiled. I was pleased with myself. Waitress returned with black coffee and orange juice – nailed it!
French numbers are dumb.
I have been studying Japanese for about four years. I enjoy the classes, and when I think back to where I was when I started, I can see that I have learned a lot.
But I am continually frustrated by the fact that, as much as I have learned, I can’t understand much. Give me a Japanese sentence in writing, and (assuming it uses only vocabulary and grammar that I know) I can work out what it means. But I have not developed the ability to understand spoken Japanese in real time. Even in class, where my teacher makes a point of keeping things at our level, she often has to repeat something three or four times before I work out what she’s saying. It’s a source of great frustration to me, and I wish I knew how to fix it (apart from immersion, which unfortunately isn’t available to me).
Having said that, though, there was one memorable experience that happened in class a couple of years ago (when I knew even less than I do now). Somehow we got off on a tangent, and our teacher ended up telling us a short anecdote about something that happened to her at a restaurant once. Later, as I was telling my wife about the story, I realized that our teacher had almost certainly told us the story in Japanese, even though I had no memory of that. Somehow, for that brief moment, I was so focused on what she was saying that I didn’t pay any attention to the language she was using.
I wish I could discover what state of mind made that possible and learn to do it at will. Maybe someday.
We usually call that a sake state of mind.
Ja. Ein Paar Jahren bevor. Ich war eher damals Jünger von Jack Daniels. Aber der Herr ist gnädig. Gepriesen sei ER in Ewigkeit.
😁
Do you remember the line from My Fair Lady that goes, “the French don’t what you say exactly as long as you pronounce it properly”…? Well it’s true – especially in Paris. When you get out into the countryside, the people are friendlier and a lot more forgiving. They’re even pleased that you’re trying – unlike Paris.
My wife swears the waiter was teasing her. I think my version makes a better story. We had zero bad experiences with the French. We asked for directions from a policeman that was directing traffic at an intersection. He jumped on his motorcycle and took us six blocks to our destination. It was like out of a movie.
Years ago, the Pittsburgh Symphony was going to go on tour in Asia so some of the members decided to take Japanese at Pitt. As they were friends, I (and a few others) tagged along. I remember the first lesson: the instructor told us to forget everything we knew about any other language (including English) for it wasn’t going to help us in any way. We were to learn what he taught us and how he pronounced it. Did that work? Don’t know. Had to leave on a business trip for several weeks and missed too much to continue when I got back The trip was to Korea, as it happened.
You version makes a wonderfully comic story. As for the policeman, that was incredible (French pronunciation – or, incroyable).
I actually found all Frenchmen, even Parisians, to be much more friendly if you at least tried to speak French.
On the other hand, when someone from French Canada joined our project, the French members of the team insisted that he speak English because they couldn’t understand his French. I could understand it, they were just being, well, French.