Of Language

Language as a medium - An international hotel in Paris

Language is much more than a tool for obtaining information; it is also a way of organizing our perception of the world. It plays a very important role as a medium for social interaction.

When a Japanese hear's the word sushi he thinks of much more than a small piece of raw fish atop a firmly molded block of warm rice. Rather he imagines small dishes of soy sauce, boxes of sliced ginger (shôga), mugs of tea without handles, possibly a rotating conveyor belt filled with plates of a large assortment of fish, a special language that he can barely understand, a master chef with at least one assistant, a special smell associated only with sushi bars, and perhaps even a good friend with whom he often goes.

When a Japanese hears the word nihon (one of two comtemporary Japanese words for Japan) he might have mixed feeling of pride, happiness, and anger depending on whether: he once ran in the world olympics for the Japanese team; just gave birth to a baby boy, who looks very much like his handsome Japanese grandfather; or fought during the war in the service of his emperor, only to discover that in the end that Japan was just like any other country of the world and not a master race. No matter the Japanese, who hears the word,  he knows the difference between the words nihon and Japan, and probably feels much better when he hears the former.

When a Japanese enters the lobby of an international hotel in Paris, after having just spent the past hour explaining to a French speaking police officer in English, that Japanese drive on the opposite side of the street, and it was for this reason that he turned into the wrong lane in the middle of rush hour traffic, he is elated to hear what appear to be voices speaking in Japanese. He cares little, if they are carrying Japanese passports, or are second generation Americans whose parents were born in Japan. Simply he is drawn to the familiar sound that he has heard spoken around him ever since he was a child. This is the "magic" of language, something that we can only truly appreciate as native speakers, or as foreigners with long residence in the country of our second acquired language.

Japanese can enjoy the "magic" of language, when seated in a taxi listening to a radio talk show on their way home after the trains have stopped. The same can be felt while watching a play in an underground theâtre in Shibuya or visiting a Shinjuku nightclub in which spoken Japanese is the primary source of entertainment. In these places linguistic puns or other plays on words form an important part of the entertainment. The mention of an important historical figure or the name of a famous politicians, the reference to a well-known place or popular movie star, or the use of a trendy word or pop phrase all blend together to make one feel at home among a group of complete strangers -- people intimately involved in the same society in which you were born, raised, and work, but whom you do not know. In short, it feels good to be a part of one's own society and virtually no information has been communicated that you do not already know -- simply it has been rearranged in a way that you have never thought possible, thus making everything fit together much better than it did before. Alternatively, you are shown in an amusing way how you have put ideas together in the past that really should be placed apart.

Though someone without any foreign experience can appreciate the "magic" of his own language and therefore the "magic" of language in general, he is unlikely to experience the "magic" of a foreign language without extensive familiarity with the language in the cultural setting in which it is commonly spoken.

Language as a tool - A Toshiba laboratory in Tôkyô

Now consider the way in which the average Japanese learns English, or any other foreign language for that matter. From the age of 12 until he reaches 18 he studies English in a Japanese classroom with a Japanese instructor, who has likely never lived overseas for any length of time, let alone in the country whose language he is teaching. If the child is lucky he may be able to spend one to two hours each or every other week with all of his other Japanese speaking classmates listening to a native speaker of English speak about his own country's culture, a place where neither the student, nor his classmates have ever been, and about which they likely have only a vague interest. In the child's school there is probably no language lab where the student can match his own speech against that of a native speaker, and it is even more unlikely that there is both a lab and a native speaker, who can correct the child with the authority of a native speaker when the match is improper. In the classroom the child is rarely required to speak, and there is no one with the authority of a native speaker to check what he writes. Each vocabulary that he learns is matched one for one with a Japanese equivalent, whose full meaning is likely to be narrower in concept or much broader in application. The grammar that he learns is taught from books written by Japanese who were once students of teachers very similar to the child's own -- teachers with little or no overseas experience. Moreover, he learns these rules of grammar, like he would learn a multiplication table -- through frequent, laborious repetition of the same pattern.

Unlike learning how to multiply, however, the only opportunity he has to test these rules in daily life, is on carefully constructed tests that capture the exact same pattern taught in class with no deviation. That the grammatical rules that he learns are just like those of his own native language -- namely, a rigid set of rules that do not always perform as they should, because they can be bent, reshaped, turned and twisted to achieve any number of desired effects on the part of native speakers and writers -- is simply unfathomable.

Should the child pass his language requirement, graduate and enter into a company, where he finally has the opportunity to use his acquired skill, he applies the aforementioned rules with the same mechanical precision that he did in school, until he becomes so frustrated that he puts down whatever it is he has been working on and thinks the problem through in his own native tongue.

In short the language he has learned and rarely ever spoke is like a skeleton without a body -- a fixed set of rules and words with no life of their own. ­ Words and rules in fact that belong to people and a society of which he knows something, but hardly enough to appreciate as much more than a source of linguistic pain. This same child might, though it is unlikely, be able to give directions to a stranger he meets on the street or atop a train platform at his local station, but he could certainly not explain how to use a country-side toilet, eat soba, or prepare "ozoni" (a kind of soup with cooked blocks of hardened rice), if he were not there to demonstrate it.