Staying in the U.S. as an exchange student for about a year,
I have learned so many things. One of them was, of course, to
speak my second language, English. After I learned how to speak
that language, I came up with the idea that can be shared only by
those who speak more than two languages. That is, to speak
another language certainly makes me have a different way of
thinking. Even my personality changes, I realized. In the case of
Japanese, which I have lived with over eighteen years, I would
say that it shapes a fundamental base of my mind. I cannot think
without it. It is a media that connects my heart and mind.
Japanese and English are totally different languages that stay
together in my mind. I would like to make a comparison between
these two languages on this paper to introduce you to how
important and fun it is to learn other languages.
The first few months in the States, I tried not to use any
Japanese when I spoke. Even though I was thinking in Japanese, I
wrote in English and spoke in English, just to be away from
Japanese. The only time I used Japanese was when I wrote to my
family and friends in Japan. At that time, I was just paying
close attention to my host family's conversation or friends', to
imitate their natural way of speaking English. To translate
Japanese into English and speak it was something that I really
wanted to avoid. However, the ideal is the ideal in most of the
time. I guess for about the first six months my brain had kept
trying to get touch with Japanese in some way out of my
consciousness. A funny thing was that every morning, I became a
worse speaker of English than in afternoons or nights. I could
not figure out why, but after I realized that my mind was
breaking up in two, the clear answer came up to me. I was
dreaming in Japanese and even my American friends were talking
Japanese in the dreams. It was so weird, but to think about that
again, I thought it was natural because I used Japanese as a
method of understanding everything in my mind. Therefore every
morning, no matter how much effort I took to speak English, it
did not work.
Compared grammatically, these two languages are extremely
different. To start with the way verbs are arranged, it is
completely opposite. If I write Japanese in English using English
grammatical order, it is going to be like this: "I you love" (for
"I love you"); or "she to America for culture teaching went." It
does not make any sense or is hard to understand in that way. In
addition, Japanese does not have any concept of singular or
plural, but on the other hand English does. Some of the English
words cannot be translated in Japanese, those words, to take an
example, such as so-called four-letter words. In the movies,
those words seemingly are translated well, but the actual
impression we get from those words in English is a lot different
from when we see and understand the meanings through subtitles in
Japanese. The same can be said to Japanese. There are the
Japanese words that are understood only in Japanese. Such as Wabi
or Sabi. From my point of view, they (those words that cannot be
translated easily in another language ) include the culture of
its own.
When we speak English, we have to make sure to put subjects in
sentences. For example if we take "I" from the sentence like
"want to do such and such," this will not carry the conversation
at all. Japanese does not have to have I or some other subjects
especially when there are only two people who are speaking. This
means I think that English shows individuality. Those who speak
English emphasize the line between oneself and the other, while
Japanese shows ambiguity through not expressing feelings
directly.
After I returned to Japan, I was so astonished that I have
changed greatly. I was completely different from now I used to
be. That might be because I went through so many experiences in
the States. However, I still believe that speaking English or
other foreign language makes us have different way of thinking.
The way I see the world has changed, too. Through speaking, I
gain the sense of how Westerners feel typically about particular
problems. Some of those were totally different from my point of
view as a Japanese. Also I understand more deeply my own country,
once I looked at it from the other side. I did not have any
feeling towards Japanese language until I learned the other. It
is certainly a beautiful language. I appreciate that as one of
the arts. We can tell the meanings of some of the letters by
looking at them. Those are like pictures in a way.
Learning two languages and using those as methods of
understanding things, I really gained variety of ideas that other
people have. I think the real learning of language is not only
how to write, speak, or listen to it, but to take in things that
are hidden behind the language. To see how two languages affected
me, I really say that to learn languages is something you should
do willingly. I just cannot wait to learn other ones to meet
another part of myself that is sleeping deeply in my mind.
by Rumiko Inoue
