You Speak Good

Stopped by a little diner yesterday as I waited for the immigration office at Niigata airport to open for its afternoon hours. As I turned into the parking lot, I felt nervous. Not the nervousness that I would not be able to read the menu or that I would not find something I liked, since I had never been to this particular place before. No, I worried about what kinds of conversation I would have once I sat down. What kind of judgment would be given to me. People would invariably stare, mumble that “There’s a foreigner in here.” Probably they don’t get too many since it’s such a small place and not really in a place a lot of foreigners hang out.

Funny that after 10 years, I am still worried about that. Tells you what kinds of experiences I have had and which kind of experiences I still expect to happen to me.

Of course, when I got in and sat down, there were mumbles from the kitchen, and sort of hushed, pent up waiting…. Waiting to see if I would maybe ask for a cheeseburger or corn dog. But, I remained calm. Not so many people in there at the time, thankfully.

After I placed my order, I heard the cook from the kitchen exclaim surprise that I could read Japanese and kanji, and that he though I was erai, which means he thought I was a good person for learning to speak the language of the land. Maybe his experience with foreigners has been that of the typical lazy foreigner who takes no time to really get into the language. But behind his erai comment was another comment about my ability to read the language - not just I have taken it upon myself to learn it but that I could learn it at all.

Many Japanese people I meet have the same reaction. They are utterly amazed that I could learn this very difficult language. And I think that most Japanese have that kind of thinking. They believe that Japanese is so terribly difficult. And it is. But it’s not anymore difficult than English or Chinese or Swahili.

This kind of thinking sheds light on the language belief system many Japanese possess. It shows what they think about themselves as a language user and learner, how they organize language in their brains – as something unattainable, something elusive.

Due to my own studies in Japanese and of the language learning process in general, I am now more surprised at the vast population of monolinguals as opposed to bilinguals and multilinguals.