Japan Culture - Are you Fluent? (Part 2)

(Please continue reading from Part 1 below if you have time)

If you are going to understand a culture, and culture and language are entirely intertwined, it would then make sense to understand the language. Language shapes a large part of our understanding of everything, so this makes sense. If you do not understand the language of a culture, how much can you possibly know about that culture? Then, as you start to gain proficiency in the language, how much is enough?

The word "fluent" in English is probably one of the most contested as far as meaning goes. Just check out an internet forum about language learning if you want to see hundreds of pages of argument on it. It is an argument I am not going to get into. Instead, I'm going to quickly show why it is such a vague term (especially concerning Japanese).

Many people point to the following dictionary definition. I'm going to analyze a bit of it with 3 questions.

"Fluent - Able to express oneself readily and effortlessly"

1) "Able to express oneself readily and effortlessly" Would this include body language? In Brazil and other regions, the "OK" sign in America (making a circle with the thumb and forefinger) is basically challenging someone to a fight (symbolizing the butthole).

I have a friend who was lost and looking for help in Japan. He didn't speak Japanese. He started approaching a Japanese woman to help him. She was waving to him. It seemed to him like she was saying "yes, come on, I'll help you." But in Japan, the waving meant "no , no , I don't speak English. don't come here." The misunderstanding was so big, I mean picture it, each moment he's getting closer, and each moment she's waving harder and harder. She finally ran away when he got too close.

2) "Able to express oneself readily and effortlessly" On what topic? In day-to-day use, anyone can get by in a language with the basics (understanding the question the store clerk asks, yes and no, the basics. What if your hobby is music? How do you explain tone, tuning, scales, chords, etc.? If you are dealing with such a specific group of terms (one that comes naturally in your native language), does this fall under the cloud of "expressing oneself?" If you speak a foreign language, ask yourself about this. Could you explain and hold a conversation with someone in that foreign language about the things that interest you most? Wouldn't the things that interest you most be part of "expressing oneself?" Or is that too personal?

3) "Able to express oneself readily and effortlessly" Besides body language, does this also include speaking, listening, reading and writing? I've met many people here in Japan that can speak and listen very well but can't read/write at all. If they can read/write, it's the basic syllabary (alphabet consisting of syllables) (about 80 characters) as opposed to the Kanji (thousands of characters). If you can speak extremely well, are you fluent, even if you don't read and write to a similar degree? This will be the crux of part 3!

As you can probably see, it's a difficult definition, and it's a difficult word. I've heard people study for a few weeks proclaim fluency, I've had people say "you've been in Japan a few months, you must be fluent!" and I've had people say "you aren't fluent until you're mistaken for a native on the phone." There are a lot more claims and questions and levels and tests. It's complicated.

Then, above "fluent" we have "native." So, if you hold "native" up to a very high level, what is the difference between "fluent level" and "native level" language ability? It is all grey area, isn't it.

"Native" seems to make sense to me more clearly (you were raised from birth speaking it, or you raised yourself to that level - whether this second case exists is up for discussion, but anyway).

In Japanese, "perapera" is a word (onomatopoeia) that you can imagine sounding like a foreigner speaking some language that you don't understand. It's a sort of fast sound like the person and just blabbing away in something you don't understand. This word is used to mean fluency in the spoken realm. Speaking would also entail listening, so it's basically a term for being "fluent" (whatever that means) in conversation and so on. There are a few other words for fluency, but adding "ryuuchou" to the end of "perapera" seems to mean someone that can speak, listen, read and write a language at a "fluent" (whatever that means) level. So, to make things a bit more simple, I'm going to use "peraperaryuuchou" ("pprc" for short) to mean what my personal belief in "fluency" is - near-native use of a language in _all_ of the basic ways in which you can express yourself - body language, speaking, reading, listening, writing.

And it is this peraperaryuuchou that I think is required to start really learning about a culture (and especially Japan). Next, part 3.