Yesterday, in my infinite wisdom (I looked outside and saw that it was raining), I wore a jacket to work to avoid the misery of being drenched in rainwater from head to toe. When I got to school after the 30-minute bike ride, the rain had only soaked me from waist to toe. From head to waist, I was drenched in sweat. So I wasn't just soaked all over—I also smelled like a seventh grade locker room after P.E. all day. Now, on to what I really want to talk about.
The Japanese language borrows heavily from western languages. Many words can be expressed not only in Japanese, but in pseudo-westernese. Part time job can be referred to as either its Japanese-ized English equivalent, paato taimu, or its German equivalent, arubaito. There's mostly likely a Japanese term for it as well, but I'm too lazy to look it up, and the western terms are more common. Other commonly used English words include basuketto booru (basketball), biiru (beer), pen (pen), and juusu (juice).
Here's a quick guide for Japanese vowel pronunciation to help you understand my romanizations:
Japanese vowels are basically just like Spanish ones.
a = ah, as in the Bostonian “go pahk the cah”
e = eh, as in “eh, you go pahk it yaself”
i = ee, as in “beets beets, sugar beets, beets sugar beets beets beets”
o = oh, as in “oh noh you (Trevor) dohn't”
u = oo, as in “Scooby Doo went scuba dooving”*
*It's actually a little more complicated than that—closer to a French u sound. But that's not really important right now.
Japanese consonants, while close in pronunciation to Spanish consonants, are similar enough to English consonants that we can use English to describe them. Each vowel (a, e, i, o, u) or combination of consonant-plus-vowel (ta, ka, pi, bu, etc) counts as one rhythmic beat, or syllable. Two consecutive vowels are each enunciated, instead of being blended into one syllable like we would in English with the ou in mouth. In paato, the vowel is held out for two syllables instead of just one. So, paato taimu is a six-syllable phrase (pa-a-to ta-i-mu) in Japanese, instead of the two syllable part time that we have in English.
The sixth graders are learning to read words made from roman characters--what we simply know as the alphabet. The teachers are all pretty good at reading English letters, even if they don't always pronounce them correctly. There are many reasons why they should learn how to read the alphabet. Internet addresses, for example, are generally written with roman characters, so it's important that they learn how to read them even if they don't plan on learning English. If they go anywhere outside their country (except probably China), they will most likely have to be able to read roman characters in order to properly understand and navigate their surroundings.
This is a reality the Japanese government understands, so they teach kids the alphabet in grade school. Their whole country is flooded with roman letters, so there are plenty of opportunities for practice. Because of the ubiquitousness of letters, they typically know how to pronounce them with crude Japanese pronunciation. In teaching correct pronunciation of English letters and written words, the problem lies in making them un-learn everything they've acquired while living in a place where most people don't know how to pronounce things correctly.
Today, the sixth graders brought papers with English words that they had seen around them, whether at home, on their clothes, or out in public. They hid the words, uncovering one letter at a time while offering three hints so that the other kids could guess the word. There were two problems with this game. First, most of the English words they chose weren't English at all, but brand names written in roman letters. Second, the kids were asked to give hints in a language using grammar and vocabulary that they hadn't yet learned. It's one thing to ask a Japanese kid to get in front of the whole class to speak a language with which they don't feel confident. It's another thing entirely to expect them to do it with words they haven't yet learned. That said, the kids did really well, in spite of the difficulties.
Some of their words were curious, while others were downright hilarious.
First, the acceptable ones:
Baby Mickey and Friends, Sesame Street, Converse: sure, they're proper names of products, but they generally have some lexical meaning outside of their brand name-ness.
Second, the non-English:
Nintendo, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba: Japanese brand names of Japanese electronics.
Marlboro, Nescafé, Nike, Adidas: American brands that have no meaning outside of being proper names.
Burcmüller, Zaturn: I have no idea what the first is, but it's most likely a German surname. The second is apparently the name of a roller coaster at the Japanese theme park, Spaceworld.
Next, the misspelled English:
Gorden Retriever, The World of Goldn Eggs, Emepgency: While it's entirely possible that some of these were merely misspelled by the kids who copied them down, it's highly likely that the source material was wrong. Japanese companies don't usually have copy editors to check their English spelling or grammar.
Last, my favorite:
Cannabis World: I kid you not. It wasn't as if the girl who wrote this one had seen it at a store—she actually owned a little kiddie pencil case bearing those words, complete with Jamaican colors, peace signs, and marijuana leaves. She had no idea what it was. How do you explain what marijuana is to kids that are better off not knowing? How in the heck am I supposed to help her come up with three hints for that? I just gave her a new word instead.
The homeroom teacher's example word for the game was the English “word” DVD. The v sound doesn't exist in Japanese, so to distinguish v from b, they say bwii (sounds like bwee) instead of vii. Dii bwii dii. I followed the incorrect pronunciation with the correct one. Here's how the dialogue went:
Teacher: Dii bwii dii!
Class: Dii bwii dii!
Me: D V D!
Class (correctly): D V D!
Teacher: One smore! (Should be once more) Dii bwii dii!
Class: Dii bwii dii!
Me: ...
I constantly have to fight incorrect pronunciation from the teachers. I feel really bad for them, because they didn't ask to be forced to teach English. They feel much more uncomfortable than I do. Sympathies aside, it would serve them well to try to model their pronunciation after the native-speaking assistant teacher. The kids haven't yet been fully corrupted, so they can often mimic my pronunciation. I like to draw simple diagrams of the mouth and speak in exaggerated tones so that the kids can see how to produce the sounds of English. Most of them pick it up considerably well. The teachers, on the other hand, just can't go against what they've had incorrectly ingrained in their brains for years.
One of the biggest problems I encounter is the prevalence of waseigo, which is the Japanese term for words that have been either altered or mixed from their English roots to take on different meanings or pronunciations. For example, a teacher once asked me something about some other person's charm points. I didn't know what to say. Did this person have a level-34 Charisma in the Dungeons and Dragons of life? I eventually figured out that charm point meant something like positive characteristics.
Other words are chopped off for convenience, like the convenience store, which is rendered in Japanese as konbini. Other include waapuro (word processor goes from waado purosessaa to waa-puro), pasokon (personal computer goes from paasonaru konpyuutaa to paso-kon), and dejikamu (digital camera changes from dejitaru kamera to deji-kamu). It's often difficult to know what people using waseigo are talking about, because we don't know what words they're changing.
Others make sense, but still sound strange, like beebii kaa, (baby car, meaning stroller or baby carriage).
Japanese people often refer to all sorts of companies as meekaa, meaning maker, while in English we might say brand or company. Sure, with cars, we sometimes we'll say make, or possibly even maker. But it's not common to do so for chewing gum companies, clothing, or video games.
This aspect of Japanese can be charming, but not so much when it's being taught to the children as correct English. It's not that words like maker and baby car aren't English words, or that there aren't people that would understand what you were trying to get across—the point is that the majority of people with whom you hope to one day communicate probably won't understand what you're saying. People are much easier to understand when they use the commonly accepted words.
For example, if you're searching for the Converse store (konbaasu) and decide to ask a Japanese person who doesn't know correct pronunciation, you might accidentally get led to a store that sells buses full of corn (koonbasu). Ice cream (aisu-kuriimu) is abbreviated to aisu, so if people ask if you want ice, they're really asking if you want ice cream. This is serious stuff here!
Some words change meaning altogether, like manshon, which came from the English mansion. You might get excited to hear that I live in a mansion, only to find out that it's really an old dilapidated apartment building with multiple stories.
If a word ends with a non-voiced consonant plus i or u, like su, shi, chi or tsu, the last vowel is typically weakened, and sometimes altogether omitted. So, words like shaatsu (shirt) and piinatsu (peanut) actually sound more like English shots and peanuts, respectively. There are many words, like juusu (juice), that get it right. The ending su gets weakened an ends up sounding like an s, so it sounds just like juice. But there are also many words that confuse. The English Note textbook that the kids use is full of examples, like the Donut Shop on the town map. In Japanese, donut is pronounced donatsu (like peanut, which became piinatsu). So, naturally, the non-native speaker preparing the graphics for the book writes Donuts Shop instead. My sister Emily likes an anime called Fruits Basket, which makes absolutely no sense in English. The plural fruits comes from the fact that fruit in Japanese is not just kudamono, but also the borrowed pseudo-English furuutsu (sounds like fruits). You don't need to pluralize fruit for us to know that more than one kind of fruit could fit in the basket. Even if the basket was for effeminate men, the same title of Fruit Basket would suffice.
I guess it was good that they were forced to look for letters and get more familiar with the alphabet. It's good that they're interested in English. I just wonder about the practical application of the words they learned. Who knows-—maybe someday, once the Earth has been evacuated due to “man-caused disasters,” and we're living in space, and the Japanese have taken over the new international government, we will thank the Japanese for their attention to detail. I can see it now:
EMEPGENCY. EMEPGENCY. GORDEN RETRIEVER HAS INVADED ZATURN. LET'S PLEASE LEAVE MANSIONS AND FRUITS BASKETS AND BOARD EMEPGENCY SHUTTLE BOUND FOR THE WORLD OF GOLDN EGGS.
