I was trying to remember how it was when I first started learning Japanese. No matter how many times I went over those flashcards, I couldn't remember the symbol for "nu." The phrases my sensei told me I was supposed to say in certain situations sounded like a bunch of syllables stuck together in no discernable order. And numbers? It was almost like counting on my fingers again.
These days it's hard for me to actually place myself in that position again. I realized that today as I started tutoring a Japanese 101 student. The extent of vocabulary, grammar, and alphabet at this point makes asking anything more than, "What's your name?" "How much is this?" and "What year in school are you?" pretty much impossible. The sounds of the Japanese language are still foreign, and the corresponding alphabet is something more forgotten than remembered. As much as I knew this was going to be the level, it was hard for me to get my head around how someone couldn't know something so basic!
This reminded me of the time my mother came to Japan to visit while I was living there. I put her on the bus and told her to get off when the bus driver said "Ginkakuji." Listening for a place name is no problem, right? Of course, I was being an idiot; when you've never studied the language, all the sounds blend together. But again, all I could think when I finally found her (after getting off 4 blocks too late and walking in the, luckily, correct direction) was, "How could she have messed up something so simple?"
When we know things, we take them for granted. We assume that others must know them as well. But that is not often the case, as I have too many times encountered with both the Japanese and English languages. As much as it is incredibly exhilarating to be rattling off a foreign language fluently, it is three times as frustrating not being able to understand the conversation. I need to take a couple of steps back to that day when, going to my new host family's house, all I could answer to anything they asked me was, "I don't understand."
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3 comments:
I learned yesterday that "Nintendo" loosely translates to "Leave luck to heaven" - which is totally awesome. I believe, more formally, it is something like "Do whatever is humanly possible, and leave luck to fate."
Which sparked my curiosity: what do the individual characters mean when it's written in Japanese? I saw it on wikipedia as a string of three characters. something like an "H" something like an upside-down "V" with "=" above it and the last one's...well, it's more complicated, it could almost be a guy wearing a hat who's getting rained on.
So now for two days I've been wanted to learn Japanese!
-t
任天堂 = Nintendo.
任 = responsibility, duty; to entrust something to someone.
天 = heaven, sky.
堂 = chamber, hall.
As I'm sure you've read on Wikipedia, no one really knows what the founder meant when he put these characters together. But such is the Japanese language - obscurity.
Seriously? "Chamber, hall"? Is it really a guy with a roof over his head getting rained on? That's totally awesome. Do you still tutor Japanese? What's the going rate? Am I crazy for thinking about moving to Japan? ...I wonder if the Wii is in stock over there?
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