Nothing But Words

Today I sent out my template for having business cards made. Since I’ll be in Japan for six months, I’m getting two-sided cards: one side English, and the other side Japanese. Having business cards in Japan is vital. Learning the correct procedures for exchanging and handling cards was one of the first things we learned in my Japanese class. Your card indicates your “group” identity, your status, and serves as a social ice-breaker. If you don’t have a card, chances are you’ll be considered unimportant.

My Japanese teacher (who is a native speaker) was kind enough to translate my card for me. I showed it to Maria, and she thought it was unusual that she translated my first name as マイクル which is pronounced “Mai-ku-ru” (the Japanese phonetic syllabaries simply don’t allow for the English pronunciation of Michael). Maria thought it should be マイケル “Mai-keh-ru,” which she said is a more common translation. Jen, who also speaks Japanese, concurred. Then today I showed it to my co-worker Chris, who spent his childhood in Japan, and he agreed with my teacher’s interpretation. So I was feeling inclined to go with Maikuru, given it’s support by two native speakers (Maria and Jen both learned Japanese only as adults). Chris then decided to put it to the ultimate test: Michael Jordan is quite popular in Japan – how do his Japanese fans spell his first name? A Google search of Japanese sites for “Michael Jordan” generated a lot of hits, and quickly revealed a clear consensus: everyone spelled it Maikeru. A bazillion online Japanese Michael Jordan fans can’t be wrong, and if it’s good enough for Mike, it’s good enough for me.

So you can call me マイケル　トッパ (Maikeru Toppa). My last name translates perfectly: トis “tō”, パ is “pa” and ッ indicates that the following consonant should be doubled. The nice thing about a phonetic syllabary compared to an alphabet is that you never have to guess pronunciation (almost everyone mispronounces my last name if they’re going just by reading it, but with Katakana, you can’t get it wrong).

I’ll probably be posting sporadically for the rest of the year, as I’ve started my Japanese class, and one thing that’s already clear to me is that learning Japanese will be time consuming. The title of this post means “the weather is terrible, isn’t it?” which I picked partly because it’s raining out right now, but mainly because my vocabulary is so limited at this point that I can’t yet say much that’s particularly relevant to anything. The class has met three times, and the teacher is already conducting the class mostly in Japanese, so keeping up is a challenge.

The grammar we’ve covered so far is simpler than the equivalent English rules: verbs have a comparatively small set of conjugations and very few irregular forms (the main thing to note is the lack of a future tense – you figure it out by context), there is no distinction between singular and plural (again, you figure it out by context), there are no masculine and feminine forms for nouns (like English), and Japanese has a concept of “particle” words that serve as modifiers for the preceding word, making it very clear, e.g., what the object of a verb is (so Japanese is much less dependent on word order than English).

All of the above would seem great for an analytical thinker like me, but the relative simplicity of the rules we’ve learned so far means that understanding what is being said requires really following the fluid context of conversation, which actually isn’t so great for an analytical thinker like me. But it’s learning the vocabulary that’s the biggest challenge – unlike the Romance languages I learned in high school, there are no common roots with English, so it’s an exercise in sheer memorization (not counting the borrowed words from English, which are surprisingly common, e.g., door is “doa”). But I’m actually doing fine so far – from what I can tell in class, I’m doing just as well as everybody else.

Then, of course, there are the 3 different writing systems. My class will cover the Katakana and Hiragana syllabaries, each of which has between 50 and 100 characters, depending on how you want to count (many are just slight variations on others). We just started with Hiragana last night – wish me luck in mastering all the squiggles and curvy lines!

What’s funny is that I’m the only one in the class with a clear reason for being there. When we went around the room and introduced ourselves in the first class, the teacher asked us all to say why were interested in the class. The most common answer was along the lines of “I’m really into anime.” At 20 students, the class is full right now. I’m curious to see how many people stick with it. I would think that, without a really concrete reason for being there, it would be difficult to maintain the motivation to keep up.

I’ve already gone ahead and checked with Penn’s Japanese department. They don’t have a class in the summer, but they do have an introductory Japanese class I can take in the Fall. My goal is to not have to completely depend on Maria or pantomime for the entire time we’re living in Tokyo.

A while back Maria got me an instructional Japanese book, but until now I wasn’t motivated enough to dig into it. I skimmed through it last night, and learned that the Japanese never use more than one consonant in a row. And on my previous trips to Japan I learned that Japanese words always end in a vowel sound, with the exception of “N” (e.g. udon). The tricky thing with English words that have been assimilated into Japanese is figuring out what vowel the Japanese will stick at the end of them. The funniest one is “cheese,” which the Japanese say when having their picture taken, just like we do. But a silent vowel at the end isn’t good enough for them, so they say “cheese-u,” which means they often end up with a funny look on their face in pictures .

As you probably know, the Japanese can’t say “L”, so if you put that together with the above rules, when a Japanese person tries to say an English word like “drill,” it comes out at “diriro.” It also explains why, while living with my mother-in-law in California, every time she offered me a “salad” with dinner, I thought she was asking me if I wanted some “sourdough.”

But I’m sure the Japanese I encounter next year will have even more fun as they bear witness to me butchering their language.