日本語のクラス、さようなら

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Great American Warm-up (11/10-12)
National Donor Sabbath (11/10-12)
Anniversary - Area Codes
Anniversary - Sesame Street Premier
Anniversary - USMC
Birthday - Martin Luther (Protestant Reformation)
First Shout for Independence (Panama)

 

So today Japanese and I had a long, serious talk, and after some soul-searching we decided that we should take a break in our relationship.

 

Neither of us are getting what we want out of it. I’ve been abusing it to the point that it’s unrecognizable, and it doesn’t seem to make its needs known to me so I don’t understand it as well as I’d like, even when I try to. Then I accuse it of hiding its true meanings from me, and make it feel unloved when I curse at its kanji. Also, it cannot fathom my bizarro metaphors.

 

Previously in this blog I have confessed to a dislike of the popular sushi. I now need to further this and confess to an indifference to Japanese itself.

 

I’m not sure why. It’s linguistically interesting, and I’m glad I studied it. I think the writing system’s cool. The inflections, the syntax, they’re a lot of fun to play with. I made a serious good-faith effort to learn it, under the theory that I must be open-minded. But the crucial interest in the language is absent. I never had it like I did with Spanish or Swahili.

 

It could be the sound itself. It could work with the synesthesia, which does apply to whole languages.* Spanish and Swahili are colorful and vibrant; Japanese seems greyish and a little anemic.

 

I know it has some to do with the writing system. I am a pretty good reader and find writing systems fascinating, and I try to go with the point of view that all languages are equally valid, but deep down I, along with everyone else, firmly believe that my own is the most correct. The syllabary is fine, but down in the depths of my psyche, past my reaction that the combining logograms with that is cool, is a conviction that they are also ridiculous, because having to memorize almost 2000 characters seems like overkill. I know that English has some weird spellings, but at least you can bloody well look them up in a dictionary, which is hard to do with kanji. And since I learn a lot from reading, this becomes an obstacle that I don’t feel like working on in class.

 

I think I’ll still study it when I can—I need to make a list of Teach Yourself >Language< books that I want. But it’s gonna have to take a back seat to Hawaiian, because I’ve decided to see other languages.

 

 

*I actually have an aversion to French for possibly this reason. I know that a couple of my friends are native speakers, and that many more find it beautiful, and I would like to assure them that my dislike is completely irrational and reflects nothing upon what I think of people who speak, or even like French.

Comments

[principessar.livejournal.com]

Aww, :( It's good that you realized that you don't want to do it now rather than later but I know how much work you put into it :( Good luck with your other languages. I know how you feel though -- I realized I was just not interested enough in Japan to learn the language beyond a few phrases -- but I luckily realized that after six months of study, not 2 years or 2 1/2 or I forgot how much you've done...

[nixve.livejournal.com]

oh, wow, Hawaiian? Are you taking that as a class or do you have a book you'd recommend for that?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

No to both. The city library has an old textbook, but I'm not sure how useful it'll be. So far all I've got to help me is my skinny little dictionary, a few mele with fanciful and nonliteral English translations, and a slightly overenthusiastic website.

If YOU find a book, let me know. ;)

[nixve.livejournal.com]

You'll be the first to know but I doubt I'll find anything :(

[viizou.livejournal.com]

I know that a couple of my friends are native speakers, and that many more find it beautiful, and I would like to assure them that my dislike is completely irrational and reflects nothing upon what I think of people who speak, or even like French.

No offense taken. :-) I myself tend to wince when I hear certain French accents...

Affinity with a language is a very personal thing. People are always surprised when I tell them I love German. I don't know, it has a reputation for being such a harsh language (largely because of WWII movies), but to me, it just rolls off the tongue.

I had a year of Japanese classes and am trying to continue on my own, but I definetely agree that, unless one really, really wants to learn the language, the amount of effort is just not worth it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, I have a bizarre aesthetic sense when it comes to languages. While I do like the famously euphonious ones like Hawaiian and Italian, I also have a real aesthetic affinity for English, which is a pretty klutzy language all around and isn't exactly lilting. I think German is ugly, but it's a lot of fun to speak anyway. I also dislike Tolkien's Elven languages, which he made to sound beautiful.

You and Mark Twain have something in common, though. Have you read "The Awful German Language"? You can tell he really liked learning it, and I don't think he's joking when he says it sounds pretty.

Good luck with your Japanese.

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Hey, anniversary of the USMC! Cool.

Hawaiian is a lovely language.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

No offense taken. n_n Heck, my own dissatisfaction with French was a large part of what motivated me to learn English as a kid to begin with. It took me a long time to re-appropriate it in a way I could tolerate.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

That's interesting--I've never heard something like that before. I'm curious about what dissatisfied you.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I'll be honest, a lot of it had to do with mental association. When I was a kid, French was the language I had to do homework in, get lectured by my parents in and got teased by the other kids in, while English was the language I'd read magazines, watch TV and play video games in. French was a stiff, proper and crude language people judged me in. English was the language I'd curse and write tacky poems in. French felt like order, intellect and control whereas English felt like chaos, emotion and freedom. French was "the same", it was a language I felt associated with a nonsensical political grudge in my province, and I often found myself at a loss as to how to express the way I really felt about things in French, because it was too childish, too clinical, too literal.

I also resented the fact that I'd been forced to go into the English to French translation program instead of the other way around like I'd really wanted because words came to me more naturally in English. French was imposition, determinism by birth, and I resisted it pretty much for the same reason I repressed my sexuality for so long, if I really stopped to think about it. It was just... "You're supposed to be this, so be this!" It wasn't different enough.

It's only when I began to look at French from the perspective of people who aren't native speakers of it that I began to see it in a new light. I started studying French culture more seriously after I'd been done with school. I learned about film noir, existentialism, savate, Godard, Zola, cane fighting, Luc Besson movies, Ed having spoken French in Bebop and the general perception of the French as pacifist socialists, not to mention Picard and the bread and cheese and the wine, my God, the wine! ^_^ Today, now that I've been living with a unilingual English-speaker on a daily basis for over a year, I'd wear a freaking beret for kicks if I had one. :>

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting; thanks for the explanation. I don't know enough about French to know about the differences between it and English, but as I study other languages I see how each language has its good sides and its bad sides.

I am always glad that I'm a native English speaker because it would be a devil of a second language to learn. But my fascination with the ways communication works keeps me learning others.