The Language Barrier

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #12, 2008)

Living in a country where you don’t speak the language can make life interesting. Sure, I studied Japanese at university, but that doesn’t mean I can actually speak Japanese properly. I can sit down and read or write an essay in Japanese, but with the help of two very important things: an extensive online dictionary and lots of time. When I’m having a conversation with a Japanese person I don’t have those luxuries and am forced to fumble my way through on my own. (It doesn’t help that I finished studying Japanese two years ago – language ability generally disappears if you don’t use it. This is why many rugby players eventually forget how to speak English.)

My two main problems are that normal people speak fast and don’t always use full, grammatically correct sentences. This is downright rude, if you ask me. Then there are my high-school students, who speak a whole new type of Japanese, full of slang and dropped words. (Not that I’d understand what they were talking about anyway, what with all their ‘hip-hop music’ and ‘Nintendo 64s’). On top of all this, people in the Osaka region speak a different dialect to the standard Japanese taught at university. And then there are the extreme cases, such as the vice-principal of my school, who even the other teachers can’t understand. The man speaks in an unintelligible hoarse whisper – kind of like the Godfather, only more Japanese and far more interested in unnecessary paperwork. 

For work, language isn’t a problem, as I’m not expected to use Japanese at all in the classroom. Casual conversations with Japanese people are fine, too. If there’s something I don’t understand, then we can just shrug it off and continue talking. It’s when I’m dealing with important things, such as buying a phone, that it can get a little hairy. If I don’t get what they’re talking about, I can’t just laugh it off and move on. Plus there is a lot of industry-specific vocabulary, like ‘connection fee’ and ‘monthly installments’,  that I never learned at university. Often the conversation will be going swimmingly and then in an instant the whole thing gets derailed. “So if you pay for your phone now, then (something), but if you (something) then you’ll (something) 24 months (something).” “Uh… What were the options again?” If I don’t get it after a few tries, I’ll sometimes just nod blankly to end the conversational stalemate. (Lets just hope that I didn’t at some point agree to have my number listed in the neo-Nazi member directory.) Talking on the phone is the worst: without the aid of body language and hand gestures, I often have no clue what is going on. “You want to deliver what? And when is this? Do I want an extra pair of who?”

I am getting there, though. The trick is, of course, to just spend a lot of time talking with Japanese people and listening to them talk to each other. Give me a few more months and I’ll be speaking Japanese like a pro. Then who’ll be the one giving out 24-month phone contracts, hmmm? Well, probably not me since I don’t work in that line of business. But still.