I had this dream last night:
There was some trouble with Kaika. Naoko was not here, maybe she was still at the hospital. I had to communicate with my mother-in-law, in Japanese. I kept repeating the word shinzou (heart) over and over again, becoming more panicked, and she couldn’t understand me. There was something wrong with my pronunciation. She thought I was saying another word (which word, I don’t remember). I sounded out the word slowly. No go. I pointed to my own heart. No go….Something else must have happened at this point but I don’t remember. My memory fast-forwards to later ranting to Naoko about Japanese and their inability to be flexible in their listening. I then woke up.
Let me explain where I think my dream, and the basis for my rant, is partly coming from: I feel my mother-in-law oftentimes, when listening to me, doesn’t allow for the fact that I’m a non-native speaker of Japanese, and therefore prone to mispronunciation, or not getting a word exactly right. Oftentimes she gets stuck on a word she thinks I’m saying — to use the above dream as an example, let’s say she thought I was saying shinsou (the truth) and not shinzou — and she seems to harden around this thought to the exclusion of other possibilities. And it often seems that the more I try to repeat the word I want to convey, the further apart our understandings become. So much time and energy is spent on these points of linguistic conflict that I often (and I would suspect my mother-in-law feels the same way) have no interest in getting back to whatever the original conversation was.
Obviously this problem is not exclusive to my mother-in-law, nor Japanese. But I like to think that I don’t have this problem, or that I’m at least a lot more flexible. Indeed it would be pretty hard to be a teacher of English as a second language if I wasn’t flexible and imaginative in my thinking, and listening. But this isn’t an ability borne out of being a teacher. When Naoko and I first met and began to see each other, when she couldn’t construct an English sentence to save her life, nor could I do likewise in Japanese, we could still understand and communicate with each other. Context is what is most important. We all use it to form meaning, within our own languages (and it could be argued that Japanese rely on context more for meaning than English speakers do). But perhaps, where my mother-in-law is concerned, I throw my contextual net further and wider than she does, and therein lies some of the conflict of communication. And the conflict of differing expectations. Again, perhaps.
I should finally point out that in Japanese, there are two words for “heart.” shinzou refers to the actual physical, beating heart. kokoro refers to one’s figurative heart, one’s spirit, one’s mind.
P.S. Oops, just remembered something else in the shower (why is it that I always do my clearest thinking in the shower?). It’s not something from the dream, but rather more of the backstory, if you will. I remembered that it was my mother-in-law who first taught me the word shinzou (heart). We were watching the morning news together a few months ago, and there was news of Japan’s Prince Takamado Norihito’s sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack. I could understand that someone in the royal family had died, but of what cause I couldn’t. She kept repeating shinzou and pointing at her chest. I finally figured she must be referring to the heart, but up until this point I hadn’t known that Japanese had a separate word for the physical heart (I had thought kokoro meant both). I went upstairs to look in my dictionary and confirmed the meaning of shinzou.
It has been my experience, too, that the Japanese generally find foreigners incomprehensible, in the literal sense. Granted, non-native speakers of Japanese typically have dreadful pronunciation, but it goes beyond that. I can understand English as spoken by people from Australia to Zimbabwe. At least, I try. Like you I’m an active listener. I look for context clues and I fill in with imagination.
I’ve often wondered why this is and have come to the conclusion that it is because the Japanese language is so formal–not in the sense of “polite” but in the sense of following strict forms and conventions. Deviate from the form in the slightest and you become incomprehensible.
Jack Seward relates a slightly different theory in his book “Japanese in Action”. He says the sight and sound of a foreigner speaking Japanese are so discordant, that the Japanese person goes into a momentary state of shock and simply doesn’t hear anything you’re saying. I can almost believe him…sometimes I feel exactly the same way when watching blonde gaijin tarento chatter away in Japanese. It just looks so weird, I forget to listen.
Of course, Seward wrote this over 30 years ago. And we’ve all change a lot in the interim. I don’t think this is so true anymore. Almost all the problems I had were with people of your in-law’s generation or older. And I lived in a much more rural part of Japan than you.
Still it’s hard to be irritated remembering how my team teacher refused to understand that the young foreign exchange student was interested in studying martial arts (budou), not grapes (budou).
I meant, “it’s hard NOT to be irritated…” Obviously, I’m still mad.
“why is it that I always do my clearest thinking in the shower?”
my boss at my old job used to come in every morning with an idea that had come to him in the shower. I joked that we should keep a spray bottle on his desk for mid-day ideas.
I’m Polish and speak the language fluently. I lived back in Poland a couple of years ago and became really good friends with an Australian also working at my school. She put tremendous effort into learning Polish and really tried to use it everywhere. But she found it frustrating, as the Poles, not used to an unfamiliar accent, did not understand her nor did they try.
I think that Japan, like Poland, is fairly mono-cultural. Poles grow up speaking Polish with other Poles only. They watch TV in well-accented Polish, they listen to music in well-accented Polish. Nowhere (or extremely rarely) do they ever come across somebody who has a different accent. They don’t know how to deal with it and often don’t want to deal with it. This is true especially with the older generation.
I think that this applies to Japan, as well (to a certain degree).
English-speaking countries are usually a mix of cultures, races and accents. This allows the average English speaker to learn how to understand pretty much anybody, as long as they speak some form of English.
This is just my opinion.
ave all lived this nightmare. I found relief from my frustration by the fact that people from 東京 (Tokyo) had difficulty understanding people from the rural regions of Japan.
I remember going out to 福島県 (Fukushima) with my girlfriend at the time and having to translate to her, in English, what her Grandfather was saying in his local dialect.
However, my wife (直子) now suffers the reverse problem here in New York. People do not understand her English at times, although she speaks perfectly (Berlitz) clear. It seems simply to be human nature to turn on the autopilot and be unable to recover when things out of the ordinary occur.
It’s not only the Japanese it’s all of us. Until you are thrown into a position where either you like enjoy it or you have to survive it is clearly difficult for the average person.
頑張って。
Kurt – I think we have all lived this nightmare. I found relief from my frustration by the fact that people from 東京 (Tokyo) had difficulty understanding people from the rural regions of Japan.
I remember going out to 福島県 (Fukushima) with my girlfriend at the time and having to translate to her, in English, what her Grandfather was saying in his local dialect.
However, my wife (直子) now suffers the reverse problem here in New York. People do not understand her English at times, although she speaks perfectly (Berlitz) clear. It seems simply to be human nature to turn on the autopilot and be unable to recover when things out of the ordinary occur.
It’s not only the Japanese it’s all of us. Until you are thrown into a position where either you like enjoy it or you have to survive it is clearly difficult for the average person.
頑張って！！
Thanks for this Kurt.
Personally, I don’t give much effort to those who seem unwilling to try to understand. It’s unfortunate that your mother in law is one so you can’t escape the problem so easily. I know it can be a pain. I’d love to say more but I can’t seem to find the words. It annoys me to think about it sometimes. I’ll just say that I hear you man, even if you say it funny.
PS: Keep up the baby posts. What a cutie!
I just have to say that your little son have the same birthday as I am, thats sweet in some kind of way. Have a nice day.
/Elin (Sweden)