Starting off a large series of posts on understanding Japan, I'd like to deal a little bit with what it means to understand the place in which you are living.
Probably most readers are in the country where they were born, speaking the native language, knowing all the cultural norms. Some others might be in a country they weren't born in, but the same language and same cultural norms. And some others might be in a country they weren't born in, but with the same language but different cultural norms, and then there is the group in which I find myself.
As I had quoted in a previous blog post, "Culture consists of ideals, values, and assumptions about life that guide specific behaviour." Most of those ideals, values and assumptions are communicated to each other through the language of the land, and the language itself forms certain ideals, values and assumptions.
You've all heard the (false) story about eskimos having 20 words for white and so on. But the point stands. There are cultures documented that have no future tense in their language (Japanese is arguably one of them). There are languages with no past tense (I've heard Chinese might be like this, but don't quote me).
Terence McKenna talked about a culture with no past or future tense in their language. Imagine how your world must entirely change, if the language you are brought up with is so different. It is not that they lack words for past and future. It is that their entire consciousness is focused on past and future as different phenomena than the minds of other languages would interpret it. (In the case of Japanese, present tense and future tense are generally spoken the same, but no one can tell the future, so usually something like "maybe" or "I plan to" is added).
English, on the other hand, is rich in tenses both past and future, and they're mixed to an amazing degree. Consider the sentence, "I was planning to take vacation, but I can't because my work project is unfinished and more important, so if I think about the future, I'll have taken a vacation when I have finished the project."
If you look at that sentence, we jump into the future tense (the time when the project is finished), then we jump past that, to when the project is already finished, then we jump before that to say that the vacation has been taken in the past (not in the past of the present but in the past of the future) and so on.
The effect this has on a native English speaker's mind is _huge_.
Imagine being at a restaurant and being torn between 2 dishes. You finally order dish 1. It comes and you taste it and it's awful. Think about that in English we might say something like "I should've ordered dish 2." This is a hypothetical past. Time doesn't move backwards, so you cannot order 2 (unless you have a big stomach in the present). "It would have been better if I had..." That time doesn't exist, it's just a structure created out of our language. As such, our understanding of time is really altered by our language (imagine a culture where the hypothetical past form doesn't exist - ideas like "regret" might not be thinkable to them). In fact that are a lot of languages and cultures that don't put as much emphasis on this hypothetical past form as native English speakers do. If you started speaking that language, do you think you might start thinking about such things less?
So, my point is, language and culture are entirely intertwined. I believe my post "The Other" gets into this a bit.
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Hi Ruina-San
I have been raised with frequent contact with Japanese families; being friends of my mother. As growing up, I was fascinated by how different everything they did was to that of the west. Personally, I find things that are different, or unusual, not to be feared; but attractive, as they are so interesting, rare and change the way your mind sees and thus interacts with the world.
I studies Japanese for 4 months when I was 18 in college and by some miracle got the top grade. My mother believed that studying a language at University level would be a waste, as there are many people who can naturally speak the language by being raised there or self study (like your impressive self!) . After a year doing a non-Japanese course, I lost motivation, believing that it would not bring me closer to where I want to be in say: the next five to ten years.
The music, reading material and videos that I watch for pleasure; all are predominately Japanese.
I am now 20 and have decided to start a Japanese and English Language and linguistics, combined Hons in the coming September. Reading your blog has truly been beyond inspirational; but an assurance, igniting my dwindled passion and answering a serious question in my life.
I am a native British and obviously only speak one language, like all the majority of all the other natives: It’s disgusting! My oriental friends all can speak two; sometimes even three languages. How reached do I feel when I go abroad and always resort to the old classic: "do you speak any English?”
One thing I know for sure in my life, one pillar of complete certainty amongst the turmoil of being young and pressured to get your act together; is that I wish to master a language to fluent proficiency. Japanese, being the only language that holds a place in my heart: beating day in, day out.
The new degree will take me Osaka University in the second year, for its entirety. Right now I have brushed up my Kana, basic grammar structures, but keep on being defeated by the verb forms/groups and the thousands of Kanji.
Ruina-San, do you think there is hope for me; reaching fluency? If so, what do you recommend in terms of self-study? I am desperate to make sure I will not become a typical no-language Gajin when I go there in my second year. Like, how many hours do you study, what techniques work for you, what materials should I buy; ones they may help in different aspects of the language?
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