Learning Japanese. First lesson

April 22nd, 2007

Konichiwa! Yesterday I had my first formal Japanese lesson. In fact, it was my first official class in anything I've had in quite a while. I've always considered myself a "good student", but man, I gotta tell you, I felt totally awkward yesterday, but I didn't beat myself up over it.

Having a spouse who is Japanese naturally predisposes one to be around alot of Japanese speaking people, and also brings up the possibility of you know, actually going to Japan - where I have been twice so far, and shall be returning again in a few weeks. (And yes Virginia, I'll be blogging about it). And despite my wife's best efforts and intentions my ability to pick up the language has hovered around somewhat less than zero.

I have of course followed Brian's Three Principles of Language Acquisition and Brian's One Principle of Cultural Understanding. The first being simply learning how to say "Hello, my name is ________.", "Where's the bathroom?", and "Where is my beer?" in any language. Those are the essentials. Anything after that is superfluous and can be addressed through guttural sounds and body language. The One Principle of Cultural Understanding is simply finding the one most common body language trait that is pleasing and the one that is most offensive about the culture you are traveling to. Do the first as much as possible and avoid the second at all costs. All this advice is free, remember that. I apologize in advance to all the actual accomplished world travelers who find my advice philistine at best, useless at worse - I'm learning here.

I have mastered a few phrases in Japanese, the important ones embodying the Three Principles of Language Acquisition of course, and the usual retinue of "Good morning...", "Good evening...", and "Excuse me, can I please have another beer?". That last one is strikingly similar of course to one of the base phrases in my Three Rules of course, but is a much necessary variation, especially in relation to the One Principle when in a Japanese cultural environment, being that being polite no matter what is the most pleasing trait one can acquire to safely and comfortably enjoy your Japanese traveling experience.

So anyway, as for the lesson. The teacher was excellent, and was painfully gentle with me. The lesson consisted of an hour of basic grammar and phrases - the usual "I am...", "This is a pencil.", "This is not a pencil.", "Suzuki-san works for Toyota." next time I will insist that my wife leaves the apartment as I found it embarrassing for her to be there, even if she was out of earshot in the other room. I found I couldn't really say things out loud, embarrassed I'd mangle the pronunciation in a such a new and inventive way that would have my teacher run screaming from the room. That didn't happen of course. It's difficult to learn a new language as an adult I tell you, but I am determined to at least get minimally conversational by the time I land at Narita Airport in four weeks time.

Well, I'll get more into the gist of the lessons next weekend after my second session. For now I have some homework to attend to, so I'm out. Wakarimasuka?

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