How many languages do you speak? I remember my mother introducing me to distant relatives or friends, saying, “Oh, and he lived in Italy and Spain. He can speak Greek, Italian, Spanish…” And I couldn’t understand how you could learn so many languages, when I was struggling to understand the Spanish news broadcasts they made us watch in college.
How much language do you need before you can say you speak it? Why do people learn language? Do you want to just be able to order at a restaurant or find a solid friend from another culture? I just want to be able to chat up whoever I come across.
These are the kind of things I think about when the teacher is going on about English grammar in Japanese in class. In one of the third year classes, there’s a girl who spent time in an English school in Europe, and she can speak better English than the entire staff. I can speak to her in a way that’s lost on the teachers, but the other teachers have a more expansive vocabulary and knowledge of the language, so she still takes the classes to help her on the exams.
I finally decided that this is what’s important about language, at least to me: expression. The superficial parts of language are the vocabulary and grammar. What’s important to me are the more elusive elements like the music in the language and the creative twists people invent. I like the way people change language in dialects and contractions—it sounds more natural. But that’s not what they teach in school.
No less than half the students were sleeping in Y-sensei’s class, who has a talent for engaging students, but the other day, in his 6th period class with me, he decides to embarrass me by asking a question about grammar.
“Ah, Mr. (whiteguyinjapan), I have a question.”
“Oh, good. I like questions,” I said, trying to sound interested and stir up some of the students.
“Many students are confused by the word, ‘home.’ You can say, ‘I am taking the bus to school,’ but not ‘I am taking the bus to home,’ that is incorrect. You are a native speaker, so can you give us a satisfactory explanation?”
“English is strange.”
“That is your explanation,” he says, still smiling wide.
“Yes.”
“Ok, I will tell you. ‘Home’ is adverb, or a modifier, so you do not need to put a preposition before it…”
Another look at the class and only a few stragglers are managing to stay awake. Most of them have collapsed on their desks.
I like being involved in the class, instead of hanging at the side, or walking up and down the aisles, glancing at the Japanese translations that I can’t understand, but I wish he’d involve me by letting me ask students questions or somehow engaging them. I don’t think me talking about grammar in English really helps them. Are they going to go to America and chat up a guy about adverbs? In L.A they’d be robbed, and in New York they’d get punched for bringing up adverbs.
I haven’t been able to make myself get up at 6:00 to run for the last two weeks. I’m just getting more and more lazy as time goes on. I’m waiting for something to change, but I’m the only thing that needs to change. I forgot my lunch and my tea thermos at home today, and I ride to school slowly. I don’t worry about how I’m going to get involved inc class today, no, when I’m alone I think of darker things. I imagine what it would be like if the big earthquake would strike today.
I go by the train station and people are running to catch their train. Businessmen suck down cigarettes, nursing hangovers. Kids in different uniforms ride or walk to their schools.
I get philosophical and wonder what people want out of life. The English department head wants students to pass the Tokyo examinations, and to deepen his understanding of grammar. My mother wants to see our family together at Christmas. I don’t really know what I want, but I think it’s something very simple. Sometimes I just want coffee or beer or a good gyoutsa. But I’m wrong. A student rides by me on her bike and smiles. I have no idea what her name is, but I can recognize her face. She’s in one of my 17 different classes of 30 students each. They all have black hair and the same uniform.
“Good moring!”
“Good moaneen!”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
“Sleepy.”
“O, aa, me too!”