Is anyone but me watching "Heroes"?

[sparkofcreation]

(the one I've been meaning to ask since the start)
1. How's the Japanese? Do Masi Oka and James Kyson Lee sound like native speakers?

(and now the huge language-nerd question...)
2. Did anyone else see that red-haired girl start talking to Hiro in Japanese (in the trailer for next week) and think "Cool! A hero whose power is speaking other

Comments

[mactavish]

Is Masa Oka Hiro? If so, I sure hope he sounds like a native speaker, being as he moved from Japan to the US after he'd learned Japanese.

For the show, he translates his script into Japanese.

[mactavish]

(Masi Oka, sorry. Typo. And yes, I've since looked it up, and he's a native speaker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masi_Oka)

[sparkofcreation]

I actually did know he's a native speaker of Japanese, but I'd thought he moved to the US at a fairly young age.

I taught translation classes for years, and I'd say less than a quarter of the "native" speakers of Spanish I taught really spoke it in an educated way, much elss were able to translate it well. I'd say the dividing line (between having learned enough to be fluent and sound educated) for moving to the US was generally mid- to late teens (as in, those who moved to the US before that age didn't really have an educated grasp of Spanish, and those who moved here afterwards did), and I'd thought Masi Oka moved to the US at about 8 or 10 years old. Which wouldn't give one nearly the level of fluency needed to talk like a programmer in Japanese, let alone translate English programmerese to it.

[mactavish]

Which wouldn't give one nearly the level of fluency needed to talk like a programmer in Japanese. . .

That depends on whether he continued to use it or study it once he got here. If his family's relatively well educated and used it at home, it would certainly give him fluency. If he went back to visit relatives often, it would give him fluency. Kids' fluency, as they age, depends on how much they continue with their first language(s), and the contexts they're used in.

He also speaks Spanish, and graduated from Brown University. Maybe he studied Japanese and Spanish there. He's certainly quite bright, he couldn't not be bright and speak three languages, act reasonably well, and work as a programmer in day to day life. (He doesn't just act in movies, he works on special effects.)

[sparkofcreation]

True. But just saying "He must speak Japanese, he moved to the US from Japan" isn't a full answer. Six is a really, really young age to move countries and retain native fluency, and unless I'm mis-remembering my language acquisition theory, merely having parents (and siblings?) who speak a language isn't normally enough to preserve fluency. My best friend moved to the US as a small child, her mother is a doctor and her father is a programmer and they speak Urdu to each other to this day and it was a common language in the town they lived in here in the US; and she still sounds like a small child when speaking it (according to her husband, who moved here as an adult

[tisoi]

http://www.wizarduniverse.com/television/tvother/002273624.cfm

SCOTT PORTER: Were you originally from Tokyo, or were you born in Japan?

MASI OKA: Yeah. I was actually born in Japan and I moved to L.A. when I was six. But I’ve gone back like every year and I still read my manga and watch Japanese TV so that I’m still in touch with the culture. I had to go to like Saturday school over here. Saturday school was where they cram a whole week of Japanese education, including like math and science and history and language and society, into one day. So that’s how I kind of kept up with my Japanese culture.

[akibare]

Saturday school! Bingo.

Particularly in LA/Chicago/NYC.

[aindreas]

His Japanese sounds really good to a native speaker. My teacher was really impressed, said he had perfect Japanese, which is unusual for American TV shows.

[akibare]

I never heard of this TV show so can't really answer the question, but as a point of trivia, very many people who come from Japan to the US send their kids to Saturday school where they do the same lessons as Japanese schools, on the weekend. Kids who go to those schools would sound educated like regular high school kids, particularly if (as is the usual case) they speak the language at home too. They use the same books, and it's all designed for regular speaking kids

[maldito]

On EXTRA or one of those shows they mentioned how he was sent to learn Japanese as a kid. Not sure where he was born.

[tisoi]

Born in Japan, but came here when he was 6.