Sunday, July 14, 2019

The Japanese word for "Fool" is "Baka."

I have a story that I often tell newcomers to the Japanese-English Exchange group I’m in.  
It’s from when I first started learning Japanese.  Before I landed on the method that I ascribe to know as being the better way to learn, that of eschewing books to teach Japanese and finding a program that is entirely listening and repeating the language until you build up a body of things to say.  
More on that if anyone is interested later.  My original method of trying to learn was to figure out what I wanted to say by looking in the books and dictionaries I had and piecing it together then try to use it.  I was fortunate in that I had a colleague from Japan at the time, a guy named Toru, that was gracious enough to allow me to inflict my poorly worded phrases on him and give me feedback as to whether they worked or not.  
One day, one where I was going to leave the office early, I thought I should tell Toru to have a good day on my way out.  In Japanese.  None of the books I used at the time had anything like this common English phrase, “Have a nice day,” in them.  So I figured I would piece it together myself.  
Checking my dictionary I found the word for day, Hi, which is pronounced “Hee” in Japanese.  Good is pronounced “ee,” just like “Hee” before, but without the “h” sound.  I already knew the Japanese word to have was “motsu,” and that the conjugation to ask someone to do something meant changing the very to what’s called the “tee-form,” in this case, “motte,” which has a short glottal pause between “mo” and “tte,” then adding “kudasai” at the end.  
All together, I thought it should be, “Ii hi wo motte kudasai.”  I practiced it a few times, gathered my things, then headed to the exit to the parking lot that was next to Toru’s desk in Production. 
Toru was entering something into his computer when I got there.  “Hey, Toru…” I said to him as I took the doorknob to the door leading to the parking lot in my hand.  “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
“See you.”  He looked back over his shoulder, giving me a wave and a smile.  
I took a breath and said, “Ii hi wo motte kudasai.”  
“Hai!”  Toru nodded and reached into his pocket.  He swiveled his chair around toward me.  He extended his hand, flicked on the lighter he had pulled from his pocket, and held the fire out to me.  
I stared at Toru.  He waited patiently for me.  A couple of seconds passed.  A confused expression came over Toru’s face.  
“You don’t smoke…”  
“No.  I don’t.”  I nodded back, waved good-bye, then headed out to my car.  
I spoke to Toru the next day and found out that the Japanese do not have any phrase or expression in their language that translates to “Have a nice day.”  None.  Whatsoever.  When leaving friends, they’ll say, “Matta ne?”  Later, right?  Or, “matta kondo.”  Until next time.  What I had constructed for Toru sounded something like, “Please have good fire,” which he interpreted as a request for a light.  
I’ve since learned that Japanese people living in the United States have come up with a phrase that goes, “Suteki ichi nichi wo…,” which translates into something like, “A splendid day…” with the verb indicating what is to be done with a splendid day being left out for the listener to fill in.  I think it was created in response to the Americans they encountered in their daily lives constantly saying, “Have a nice day,” over and over again, instilling them a need to come up with something in response.  But in Japan, nothing like “Have a nice day” exists.  
More on that later if your curious.  
My reason for telling this story to people starting to learn Japanese comes from another thing Toru said to me once.  Months later, after many more translation failures, discovering a better way to learn, and finally starting to make progress.  
On this occasion, at the end of my work day, Toru and I were in the parking lot, talking about stuff.  I was about to leave.  Toru was taking a cigarette break before going back in to get some rush job processed.  I was fumbling through some Japanese, switching to English when I ran into a wall in my vocabulary, when Toru said this to me: 
“You know, talking with you, I now know why Americans learn Japanese faster than Japanese learn English.”  
“Really?”  There was something in how he asked it that made me feel good about my progress.  “Is that true?  That Americans learn Japanese faster than the Japanese learn English?” 
“Oh, yes.”  
“Ok…  What reason did you learn from talking with me?”  
“You not afraid of looking like fool.”  
It took me a couple of moments, but I eventually laughed at it.  It was a compliment, even if a backhanded one.  And after thinking about it I understood more deeply about what he was saying to me and decided I like what he was trying to convey about the quality he saw in me.  
Which is what I try to impart to newcomers when they join the group.  Newcomers who are, by and large, embarrassed at how little they think they know, how they are wasting the time of the Japanese members of the group because they have so little to say, and how they think they should try to learn more before they try to speak.  The most common thing they’ll say to me at my efforts to get them to speak is, “I’ll just listen for now.”  
That’s when I pull the story of Toru offering me a light out, following up with what he said to me about not being afraid of looking the fool, and point out that you learn anything, especially a new language, by doing.  And that they should regard failures as steps in the process.  At the very least, giving them my personal take on the subject, they’ll end up with a few funny stories they can tell people.  Maybe, one day, even doing so in the language they are struggling to learn.  
I told this story again to someone in the group today.  For the same reason, to encourage them to throw themselves into a conversation, saying as much as they can, and not worrying about mistakes they make.  And while telling them this, something occurred to me that hadn’t during the previous tellings of this tale.  
I have done pretty well at learning Japanese.  It’s taken a while.  It’s now thirteen years since I made those first clumsy efforts.  But I have no worries whatsoever about making myself understood when I visit the country.  An indication of how well I’d come to speak the language came from hotel clerks I’d talk to when checking into my room.  They will hand me registration cards.  I’d fill them out.  They’d look at the address I wrote down, tear up the card, then hand me another one, written in English with boxes for an American style address on it.  I was wondering what was going when one of them finally said to me: 
“I’m sorry.  I gave you the wrong card.  From how you spoke I thought you lived in Japan.”  
I definitely regard this as a positive signpost.  
But, what occurred to me today was, while this outlook, of throwing myself at what I’m doing without concern for the errors, regarding them only as part of the process, or maybe even something I could turn into an interesting tale later on, has worked very well for learning a new language, I have not applied it across my life.  In fact, I can honestly say that there are several aspects of my life where I hesitate.  Where I worry about what might happen.  Where I am afraid of failing.  
Where I’m afraid of looking the fool  
I’m not going to go into these areas now.  Maybe later, when it’s just us, after I’ve loosened up by having a few.  But I am thinking that I should take this page from my language study and apply it to these other things.  To take the remainder of my life and…  Just not worry about how I might look when I fall on my face.  

Hopefully, I’ll see as much progress across the board as I’ve seen with my Japanese.  If I come up with some really funny stories, I’ll let you know.