Wednesday, 24 December 2008
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A very Kanji Christmas
Arrgh. I suck at Kanji.
I know everyone says, "Oh...like, you're going to be on an American base, right? So, like...why are you freaking about learning Kanji and Japanese and stuff?"
Well, I'll tell you why - I went up near Los Angeles once to some outdoor fair. That's basically what it was, although I think they call it 'the fashion district' or something. It sounded fancy and my mom had heard about it and my grandmother was in town visiting, so we all said, "What the hell?" and loaded up in the car, drove an hour and a half north to Los Angeles. We were kind of shocked by what greeted us. It wasn't a mall. It was a big, dirty marketplace. We also were the whitest people there. Everyone around us was Hispanic, Asian, or African American. We looked ridiculous. Not only that, but I didn't understand a word of what anyone was saying around me. Snippets of Asian languages here, Spanish here...There were even signs that weren't in English. I felt pretty lost and confused and immediately felt claustrophobic and just wanted to get the hell out of there. I suddenly realized that I am a damn hillbilly and up until then, that had been fine with me.
If I felt like that, then what am I going to feel like in a country where everything is in Japanese? I've seen photos of the street signs, etc. The Kanji is big and in-your-face. If there is English on the sign, it's written so small you can hardly see it unless you have really good eyesight. I have really bad eyesight. For me, Okinawa will be full of wrong turns unless I develop super-vision, because no glasses or contacts have ever seemed to really help me be able to read small writing from far away. I have astigmatism. My other option is to learn to read Kanji. I took my first lesson on www.livemocha.com and let's just say out of 5 stars, the one reviewer I had rated my piss-poor Kanji two stars.
How is it possible to have great mastery of the English language but be completely ignorant when it comes to managing another one? Or maybe it's just the way Live Mocha teaches Kanji...which pretty much sucks. Basically, I have learned to pick a few recognizable symbols out of the madness and I guess a lot of people can get by on that, but I really want to learn exactly what things are and why. What I REALLY want to learn is how in the hell I can type Kanji using my computer? How the hell do you do that? I've looked it up online and the computer instructions sound about as Greek to me as the Kanji. What's more, how do I fix this so every word I type doesn't end up being typed in Kanji? That would be really frustrating. I've tried changing the language on the computer and it didn't work.
In America, people get frustrated that people move here without even bothering to learn the language. Some people have lived here forever and still don't know a lick of English. It irritates people. Knowing this, I would think the Japanese would probably consider it rude, as well, if a bunch of us Americans just showed up and expected them to speak to us in English. I've heard many of them learn English and can speak it just as well as any of us...However, they are also known as a very polite nation. I'm sure behind closed doors, there may be some grumbling about rude Americans who don't bother to learn the language.
This is why I want to learn to speak Japanese. Not to be one of those WASPs, yuppies - whatever they are calling them, these days, who wants to learn a language so they can stick their noses up in the air and act superior because I've lived in a foreign country, but for survival purposes, so I don't lose my mind, and to be respectful of the culture of the Okinawans. We are guests on their island, after all. Unwelcome guests. I don't blame some of them for being agitated that we are still there, but I don't want to be an American who gives Americans bad names overseas. I don't want to be Japanese, I just want to be able to communicate in a friendly and effective manner.
The language, itself, isn't all that hard to learn. In fact, if they didn't have Kanji, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but Kanji is...well, completely foreign to me. Maybe one day I'll even be able to laugh at the tattoos people get that say "I have sex with dragons" because they thought the Kanji looked cool.
Yes, it's Christmas Eve and I'm working on learning language. Is that sad? It takes my mind off being away from family for the third year in a row. Christmas is a depressing time for me, now. I think I'd rather study the kanji which teaches me to say 'You are fat' and wonder when the hell I would ever have occasion to use this.
Merry Christmas everyone!
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Comments (10)
I learned what Kanji is this past Sunday in Japantown in San Francisco
Okinawa has a lot of whores around the base ... I know one personally. She no longer is a working girl because she snagged herself a good ol boy from North Dakota.
unfortunately, i think i heard that japanese is one of the top 2 hardest languages to learn. good luck learning and if you manage to learn enough to basically survive in japan, then you're awesome.
I actually thought that learning to speak simple Japanese phrases was fairly easy. I'm not sure Kanji (or Katakana) is going to help you much. It helps that we learned catchy memory cues. I'm real rusty in the exact spelling but here's a few.
Good Morning: Ohayo (Ohio) Guzimus. Don't remember how it's really spelled.
Thank you: Domo Arigato
You're Welcome: Do itashimashte (Don't touch the moustache)
How much is this?: Kora wa Ikura des?
Yes: Hai
Beach: Hama
In any case the Okinawan people were all very nice people.
@oOBuBBLes711Oo - It's everywhere!
It's pretty to look at, but frustrating when you can't understand it. lol
@JadedPoser - I've heard about them! I've also heard about the anonymous 'Love Hotels' and the drinky-drinky bars. It's definitely NOT the place you want to go if your man has a thing for Asian women, which a lot of guys do. I've seen guys bring hookers to the Marine Corps balls before...I don't think anything could surprise me at this point. lol
@ana_bomber - You know, the actual speaking part isn't so bad...it's the writing. Not only is there kanji, but there is the regular English alphabet, and several other forms of writing. I'm overwhelmed by it all. I basically just want to be able to read the signs and speak to people well enough to understand, be understood, get directions and all that fun stuff. I might take one of those classes that allow you to teach English in exchange for someone teaching you Japanese.
@SirDoc - The speaking part isn't so bad. The lessons I am taking, right now, teach some pretty useless phrases (like saying "You are fat", "She is fat", "The woman is fat"...Honestly, why even bother starting off teaching that?). My cousin is stationed on Okinawa, right now. She's a linguist in the Air Force and has been learning Japanese so she's been a big help. She speaks Mandarin fluently and still said learning Japanese was hard. The only reason I want to learn kanji is to read signs. From all the photos I've seen, the signs are largely in kanji.
Thanks for the phrases. There were a few there that I didn't know. 'Don't touch the moustache?'?! It cracks me up how some of these things translate and how the phrases originate. I just learned that 'Watashi wa sega takai desu' (I am tall) literally translated, means something like, "Speaking about me. My back is tall."
@Devildogs_Doll - i do agree that the writing part is pretty difficult..especially if you're going from english to japanese because both languages are soooo completely different....some people who know chinese might be able to read japanese because some of the characters are similar....even though the speaking part is nowhere the same...my brother learned japanese, and was able to read a little bit of chinese.
those classes where you teach someone english in exchange of someone teaching you japanese would be an awesome idea.
@Devildogs_Doll - The literal translations are sometimes embarrassing. I remember once I was trying to construct a sentence by just stringing together words from my pocket japanese-english-japanese dictionary. Unfortunately I had two strikes against me, 1) it isn't my native language and 2) Okinawans are comprised of people from Korea, China, Japan, etc. and have variations from mainland Japanese. I was trying to say something like "My stomach is upset" and I won't even tell you what it transalated to... (which I found out whenl mamasan turned beat red and told me I was a nasty boy). After some coaxing and her using my crappy dictionary (her looking the words up via their kanji characters) I was embarrassed to discover what I had said.