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.

Absolutes

So, I'm sitting with this student of ours that comes in about three times a week and all he does is grammar. His attempts at any real human communication are laughable, if not passable, as his penchant is for understanding the deep mechanics of English grammar. As a self-proclaimed philosopher, he spends hours and hours picking apart the logic of entirely random sentences. In particular, he is fascinated by the use of negation in English.

I have to admit, his fascination gets my juices going at times. Thoughts of college grammar classes flash by and all I can see are endless chalkboards filled with fully diagrammed sentences. I am hypnotized by my own memories. Luckily, when I wake up from my stupor, he's still pouring pages of his work, too into grammar to notice that I was absent for a few moments.

The thing that really gets me is that he - but not only him, lots of people do this too - asks me these questions about the finer workings of English grammar and expects clear cut answers. Even as I rattle off these absolutes about language I can hear the English Powers that Be rustling in their lofty chairs, showering disapproving glances and finger wags my way.

And on some level, I really don't care. At some point, these "opinions" about usage will shift to accommodate new social norms and ideologies. The permanence of grammar is a myth, smoke and lights, something that Usage Nuts death grip because their jobs and their own sense of reality depend on it.

I've told this guy that grammar rules fluctuate and bend over time, so that his minute, nit-picky explanations of rules will only work for a short time. He intends to create a computer program that will automatically modify the grammar of a given sentence in a number of ways.

I only ask, why?

The Interesting Thing about Deaf People...

The other day as I loitered around the meat section at the local supermarket searching for a specific cut of chicken that my wife so desperately wanted, I saw a group of three deaf people huddled in deep discussion, possibly signing over the same conundrum I had found myself in. Using my vast powers of intellect, I assumed they were a family: older man with a bit of a metabolic-syndrome gut, and older woman who looked fed up with that gut, and a young woman who seemed to mediate between the two other meat seekers. I wanted to stare, investigate their signing - kind of a visual eavesdropping. But that never works in any situation, actually. You could get arrested for stalking if you kept it up for any decent length of time.

Just as this unquenchable curiosity was taking control of my better social skills, I paused to reflect on why exactly I was so interested in these people. Yes, they are signing to each other, expressing their hopes and desires with their hands instead of their mouths. But those hopes and desires are not about the true meaning of life or the secret to curing cancer - they're talking about MEAT! Still, we - "we" here meaning "me" - want to gawk and point because they are talking about meat in a way that hearing people don't. I am sure that the little Japanese kids eavesdrop on my wife and I when we are at the supermarket discussing the same supper-related matters.

I've been reading Pinker's book The Language Instinct and have had the chance to reform opinions regarding humanity's use of language. For example, despite the "atrocities" of Black English Vernacular, it is a fully functioning and fully grammatical form of English. The sentences "He working" and "He be working", though incorrect when compared to Standard American English and seemingly express the same idea, actually refer to two completely different concepts about work, and they are referred in this way consistently.

Moving back to deaf people, they too have a language with a fully functioning grammar and rich vocabulary, capable of expressing any ole idea that might come into the signer's head. If non-hearing people learn sign language from an early age it is easily acquired, though if they can't have access to it until they are older their acquisition of the language is very limited. In short, the mental processes that manage language (a kind of grammar or device, if you will) inside a deaf person's head treats sign language just like any other language. There are rules and categories of words like nouns, verbs, and objects, and all of these are used consistently.

Interesting?

Well, it is and it isn't. Reminds me of a Steve Martin bit about his trip to France: Boy those French! They have a different word for everything! Uh, yeah they do. And while that might be the most fascinating realization for a moment, really it's just normal. And that's what happened to me when I saw those deaf people signing by the meat section: I was in awe of their use of their hands to use language but they were just doing what nearly any normally functioning human being can do. They were using language.

In terms of language, deaf people signing about meat are no more interesting that hearing people talking about meat. No, deaf people are not interesting, and that interests me.