2.03.2004
Nihongo-nator DESU!
Had a big big take home test in 日本語 this weekend--that's Japanese for you landlubbers. Studying is soooo good. It's been several years since I've studied anything in any kind of structured format. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, but I need those tests and deadlines or I just get lazy...soooo lazy and soooo surly.
But it helps that my school (EII) is such a good match for me. The classes are quite small--one to four students for my regular class. The teachers are good. Very reasonable, and if I ever have a problem they're extremely responsive, really bending over backward for me.
Most of the time I come out of class feeling like I learned something. Sometimes my ego gets a little crunched, as has to happen when it's such a small class--you can't rock out every time and you're the center of attention a lot, so now and then when I haven't had enough time to prepare I crash and burn.
Plus I'm used to being good at academics, but languages have always been my weakness. I tried to learn German, but when I went to Germany children, *children* laughed in my face. And I gave up.
I had to take Sanskrit I twice because the prof told me, "we don't teach to the lowest common denominator". Actually at the time I thought that was pretty funny. UT even created a summer class for me (and some grad students that wanted in), because all I needed to graduate was 6 more hours of language. Yes, that's right, I'm the only person in the history of UT to *almost* not graduate because I lacked 6 hours of Sanskrit.
But the point is, I'm not good at languages. Sanskrit hardly counts for that since it's not spoken, but I did get a pitiful C in French I. And I'm a wuss when it comes to knowledge. I cower in the face of legitimate skill.
So, there's a new girl in class. She's studied in college and had a much better grasp of the language than me. More vocab, grammar, more fluent. Fortunately, she's also a total spaz and quite funny so it makes it good. If she were all stuffy and narcissistic like me I don't know. But she's a dork and I quite like her--crazy pigtails and too many bobby pins. Very Bjork, and she looks about 16 even though she's 23. I saw her on the street riding her bike in this weird get-up, very club kid but, no, Scandinavian too--colors and knits. My first thought: "I hope she's going to the school".
The real reason we hit it off is that when we talk, even if we're walking out of class or there're no Japanese around, we talk in Japanese. She's balls-to-the-wall gonna learn Japanese and my self-conscious self appreciates that. So we speak Japanese. We can both be creative dorks this way. It's much more interesting.
Like today, we have the best teacher on Monday, we had a lesson on how to refer to different races politely. This in itself is quite interesting in English. All the more so when you can see how the language plays into the "stereotypes". Well, she and I went off a bit.
For me every class is a bit like "The Miracle Worker". The teachers write words and patterns in my brain again and again, and at some point the light bulb goes on and I usually understand a lot more than just the language at hand, but how people's thoughts are structured by that language. I suppose I could over-politicize it if I thought that were unique to Japanese or I thought too literally. Even taking it with a grain of salt, there's something there.
If you've lived in Japan, bear with me or skip this bit because I'm going to go off on one of the most common red flags, apologies in advance -- Gaijin verses Gaikokujin. Gaijin is about the most political word you can use with a foreigner here (I'm just thinking of 1st generation, I can't even get into the problems for 2nd and 3rd and...).
Most dictionaries tell you they mean the same thing, "foreigner". And if you ask most English-speakers in Japan, they'll tell you that the latter is more correct and the former a bit rude, or anyway, not as polite. You'll also hear and read a lot of people using it like some sort of badge of pride, that they're in the know, blah blah blah. RATHOLE.
Everybody Felix!
Where was I? So bearing in mind the fact that literal translations of kanji are also ratholes...
Technically the difference between the two words is the kanji for "koku" or country. Gaijin literally, is closer to "outsider" and Gaikokujin closer to "foreigner" (outside-country-person). Now if you think Japan is racist and exclusionary, I'm not arguing that point, but you would say that being an "outsider" sounds a lot more closed-minded than "person from another country".
Or you could construe either one, in the Southern vernacular, as: "You're not from around here, are ya boy?"
Given that, what are the alternatives in our own language? Well, for one thing we use people's country name more. But sometimes, we do that wrong. There are a lot of Guatemalans, Columbians, Venezuelans, etc. who get referred to at "Mexicans". Or if we do use the proper term for "Hispanics", we're still probably wondering if we're supposed to be saying something else like "Latino" or "Latina". My favorite was my friend's old boss, who said something about needing to get more "Tejano" customers.
From what I've read in the last few years the majority has shifted and African-American is officially the preferred term to "Black" (the latter of which is totally unacceptable in Australia). Caucasians are pretty safely "white guys" and "white girls", but that has it's own prejudices as well.
So what are the polite distinctions in Japanese? Well, crudely put, white, black and yellow. Kanji-by-kanji (not accurate, but still) "white-color-person-race", etc. Between that and Gaikokujin, if I must be described, I'd prefer Gaikokujin.
So she and I went off a little bit, trying to figure out what people were called. We didn't come up with a proper translation of Hispanic for one, or Aborigine although we did come up with the word for "tribal people". Our teacher was very patient and helpful, even though we were diverting from the lesson plan quite a bit (we had a big test this weekend anyway and there weren't any other students).
It was fun trying to explain that "Hispanic" isn't just Spanish people who moved to South America. And it was rather shocking to learn that someone of mixed Japanese descent is referred to as "half". We were way out of our depth, trying to turn a low-level language class into an advanced discussion class, but if we only do it every now and then and our teacher doesn't object, it can be quite interesting.
But it helps that my school (EII) is such a good match for me. The classes are quite small--one to four students for my regular class. The teachers are good. Very reasonable, and if I ever have a problem they're extremely responsive, really bending over backward for me.
Most of the time I come out of class feeling like I learned something. Sometimes my ego gets a little crunched, as has to happen when it's such a small class--you can't rock out every time and you're the center of attention a lot, so now and then when I haven't had enough time to prepare I crash and burn.
Plus I'm used to being good at academics, but languages have always been my weakness. I tried to learn German, but when I went to Germany children, *children* laughed in my face. And I gave up.
I had to take Sanskrit I twice because the prof told me, "we don't teach to the lowest common denominator". Actually at the time I thought that was pretty funny. UT even created a summer class for me (and some grad students that wanted in), because all I needed to graduate was 6 more hours of language. Yes, that's right, I'm the only person in the history of UT to *almost* not graduate because I lacked 6 hours of Sanskrit.
But the point is, I'm not good at languages. Sanskrit hardly counts for that since it's not spoken, but I did get a pitiful C in French I. And I'm a wuss when it comes to knowledge. I cower in the face of legitimate skill.
So, there's a new girl in class. She's studied in college and had a much better grasp of the language than me. More vocab, grammar, more fluent. Fortunately, she's also a total spaz and quite funny so it makes it good. If she were all stuffy and narcissistic like me I don't know. But she's a dork and I quite like her--crazy pigtails and too many bobby pins. Very Bjork, and she looks about 16 even though she's 23. I saw her on the street riding her bike in this weird get-up, very club kid but, no, Scandinavian too--colors and knits. My first thought: "I hope she's going to the school".
The real reason we hit it off is that when we talk, even if we're walking out of class or there're no Japanese around, we talk in Japanese. She's balls-to-the-wall gonna learn Japanese and my self-conscious self appreciates that. So we speak Japanese. We can both be creative dorks this way. It's much more interesting.
Like today, we have the best teacher on Monday, we had a lesson on how to refer to different races politely. This in itself is quite interesting in English. All the more so when you can see how the language plays into the "stereotypes". Well, she and I went off a bit.
For me every class is a bit like "The Miracle Worker". The teachers write words and patterns in my brain again and again, and at some point the light bulb goes on and I usually understand a lot more than just the language at hand, but how people's thoughts are structured by that language. I suppose I could over-politicize it if I thought that were unique to Japanese or I thought too literally. Even taking it with a grain of salt, there's something there.
If you've lived in Japan, bear with me or skip this bit because I'm going to go off on one of the most common red flags, apologies in advance -- Gaijin verses Gaikokujin. Gaijin is about the most political word you can use with a foreigner here (I'm just thinking of 1st generation, I can't even get into the problems for 2nd and 3rd and...).
Most dictionaries tell you they mean the same thing, "foreigner". And if you ask most English-speakers in Japan, they'll tell you that the latter is more correct and the former a bit rude, or anyway, not as polite. You'll also hear and read a lot of people using it like some sort of badge of pride, that they're in the know, blah blah blah. RATHOLE.
Everybody Felix!
Where was I? So bearing in mind the fact that literal translations of kanji are also ratholes...
Technically the difference between the two words is the kanji for "koku" or country. Gaijin literally, is closer to "outsider" and Gaikokujin closer to "foreigner" (outside-country-person). Now if you think Japan is racist and exclusionary, I'm not arguing that point, but you would say that being an "outsider" sounds a lot more closed-minded than "person from another country".
Or you could construe either one, in the Southern vernacular, as: "You're not from around here, are ya boy?"
Given that, what are the alternatives in our own language? Well, for one thing we use people's country name more. But sometimes, we do that wrong. There are a lot of Guatemalans, Columbians, Venezuelans, etc. who get referred to at "Mexicans". Or if we do use the proper term for "Hispanics", we're still probably wondering if we're supposed to be saying something else like "Latino" or "Latina". My favorite was my friend's old boss, who said something about needing to get more "Tejano" customers.
From what I've read in the last few years the majority has shifted and African-American is officially the preferred term to "Black" (the latter of which is totally unacceptable in Australia). Caucasians are pretty safely "white guys" and "white girls", but that has it's own prejudices as well.
So what are the polite distinctions in Japanese? Well, crudely put, white, black and yellow. Kanji-by-kanji (not accurate, but still) "white-color-person-race", etc. Between that and Gaikokujin, if I must be described, I'd prefer Gaikokujin.
So she and I went off a little bit, trying to figure out what people were called. We didn't come up with a proper translation of Hispanic for one, or Aborigine although we did come up with the word for "tribal people". Our teacher was very patient and helpful, even though we were diverting from the lesson plan quite a bit (we had a big test this weekend anyway and there weren't any other students).
It was fun trying to explain that "Hispanic" isn't just Spanish people who moved to South America. And it was rather shocking to learn that someone of mixed Japanese descent is referred to as "half". We were way out of our depth, trying to turn a low-level language class into an advanced discussion class, but if we only do it every now and then and our teacher doesn't object, it can be quite interesting.
