ima kara, nihonjin desu
Thursday 12th November
Every Wednesday evening, I take Japanese class. I think we’re on about week 8 now and after week 30 we’re taking a GCSE. This is a pretty tall order for everyone concerned – I have self-studied for 12 years, spent two weeks immersed in Japan and had 2 years of evening classes, and I’m apprehensive.
Just to add a little excitement, last night the teacher asked for two volunteers (while looking intently at Paul – another of his 2-year students) and I. He stated… “ima kara, nihonjin desu. eigo wo wakarimasu kedo nihongo wo hanatte hoshii desu”. This roughly translates to “From now, you are Japanese people. You can understand English, but you can only speak Japanese.”
We were assigned interpreters (the next-most-confident members of the class) who would explain what we were saying to anyone who didn’t understand. I think it was exceedingly hard work for all concerned and brought back memories of my trip to Japan. During that trip, I spoke solely in Japanese for the first 10 days, but on day 11 through complete and utter exhaustion declared it to be an English-only day. Day 12 onwards were 100% Japanese again, but I had definitely needed the break. Interestingly, on the English-only day while my brain had a much needed rest, getting anything useful done was significantly harder!
There were a couple of side-effects to this new way of working in class… firstly, when looking up the Kanji (chinese character) for “nomu” – “to drink”, I opened my English to Japanese dictionary and had huge problems finding it. The dictionary only lists one way translations – from English, and it took a good while to realise I was looking under n-o-m-. It then took a little longer to work out what the English word was that I needed. Immersion is great for the brain.
Secondly, on arriving home, it took about 5 minutes to switch out of Japanese and back to English. Luckily H understands such phrases as “kon ban wa” – “good evening” and “ogenki desuka?” – “are you well?” and responded appropriately… it was only when I said “ima kara, nihonjin desu” that she made Ken Tanaka style noises – but did understand that I was purporting to be a Japanese person and told me that no I am not actually.
So anyway… for two hours each Wednesday night, I am now a Japanese person. とても難しいですよ!
At uni, I lived for a while in a shared house, with a Spanish bloke and an English bloke, whose mum had moved to Spain.
When they spoke to each other the Spanish bloke would speak in English, (so he could practice his English) and the English bloke would speak in Spanish (so he could practice that). With the accents it just sounded wrong!
rollasoc
12 Nov 09 at 11:07 am
After I’d been learning Russian for a while (which has long since fallen by the way), I remember trying to read Russian written phonetically in the Latin alphabet and really really struggling because of the mixed context.
Roger
12 Nov 09 at 12:36 pm
Tell me about it Roger… I typically write Japanese in Japanese, but most of my classmates haven’t learned any of the syllabries/Kanji yet, so I find myself rewriting in roman script too so we can compare notes.
Although Rose, my interpreter can follow my Japanese fortunately (she lived in Japan for 4 years), so I might not have to do so much Roman any more!
Stu
12 Nov 09 at 4:58 pm
I think you’re turning Japanese, I think you’re turning Japanese, I really think so.
Sam
12 Nov 09 at 6:56 pm
I gave up on learning to speak “goat”. Now we just read each others minds. It’s easier for me and my goats!
Debster
14 Nov 09 at 4:30 am