The trials of learning another language and deadlines
To those who celebrated it, Happy Lunar New Year! I spent mine in southern California, sort of. It was pretty much my first time driving for more than two hours toward a destination. I have to specify the "destination" part because during high school I'd drive for hours around my city but never really left it. I really enjoy driving, but driving freeways/highways for long periods of time is incredibly boring. You pretty much see the same cars the entire time, especially if it's a single or a two lane highway... it also sucks that female bladders are tiny, so I had to make frequent stops. I didn't go alone, so it wasn't too boring!
Most of you who have been reading my entries know that I've been studying Japanese for some time now. It's funny, but just a little over a year ago I had no idea that I'd use Japanese to this extent! I had always considered myself mostly an English speaker even though I know some Mandarin and use it at home, but after meeting most of my pixiv friends, I suppose I really am a trilingual now...
There are days where I feel really discouraged because my level of Japanese is not up to my native level of English. I want to express myself in a way that truly represents me to my pixiv friends because they are one of my friends just like any other of my friends, regardless of location or language. My level of Japanese might be "enough" in their eyes, but I feel it's not enough for me. I want to be able to express just how much I really admire the work they do and how much I really appreciate them. Even though I can easily search up a dictionary to find the words I might be looking for from English to Japanese and write a sentence that pretty much says "I appreciate you," but I just can't feel how accurate those words are to my feelings. Sure, I can say the same thing with English-- the way I feel is not always going to be completely expressed in the proper words. But I can damn well try.
Think of it this way: you learn your mother tongue as a child and use it throughout your entire life. One day, something comes along and you can no longer really truly speak in the same way you have. All of the language power you possess regresses and you cannot express your most inner thoughts in the proper way you wish them to be interpreted. However, you can still write! You can still express yourself through words, but you just cannot speak as well anymore. Can you feel that frustration of being unable to express yourself the same you always have been? The words from your mouth just never end up matching the words you write on paper, even if you could just read it off the paper.
It reminds me of what happened to Roger Ebert. (His story is here.) While not exactly the same story (I definitely have not battled cancer or lost my lower jaw), I can understand the frustration he must feel if he doesn't have a piece of paper or anything to express his feelings in words. This is sort of the frustration I feel when I talk with some of my Japanese friends--as with English I could joke and converse as I please. Do I want to make puns? Do I want to say how a dream progressed? How about what my next comic will be about? If I know the answer to these questions, it's so difficult to find the words in Japanese, yet in English they flow with ease. Of course, this depends on my comfort zone for English on a normal basis...
Reitaisai is coming soon, so many of my pixiv friends are entering the crunch zone. There's even been two deadline timers that has been passing around--one for when the Reitaisai event happens and the second one for when the deadline of your work has to be finished to make it to the printer so you can sell your doujin work at Reitaisai.
Yesterday it said 14 days. Of course, as of this writing, it would say 13 days. To try and meet the deadline, my friends are depending on what they call "the power of UST" or "the power of Stickam." Basically, they stream their work progress online. I think it's a pretty good method! If you feel like someone is watching you, you kind of want to entertain them or continue your work because they are watching specifically to see your progress. Even during a paint chat, I oftentimes feel that I have to be drawing something or else I am letting some of the members in the chat down. During these crunch times I see a ton of updates to pixiv with an image and the words "streaming now!"
The last two nights and even tonight, one of my friends is "Stickaming." She posts to pixiv that she is going to be streaming her progress and then starts up the stream. I like that I can see exactly how she works, so I can learn from her method as well as listen to the music she listens to while she works. The last few days it's been a mix of Japanese music with a few game tracks, but today it's English adult contemporary. I wouldn't be surprised if a Sarah McLaughlin song starts playing. It makes me think of the times where I couldn't understand the lyrics in Japanese music but now I am starting to hear and understand quite a bit. She can't speak English, so they must just sound appealing to her.
When she gets too tired, she decides to start up a Skype call. She streams the Skype call to the Stickam as well. It's funny because she starts calling some of her close friends rather randomly and without notice-- they pick up and start chatting with her, but then they say, "Are you streaming this again? You're doing another stream? Haha." Usually during Stickam sessions, she holds Skype conferences. It helps a lot when you have many people talking to each other so you can concentrate on your work and don't feel it's necessary to add to the conversation. I remember one of my pixiv friends updating Twitter with "I just wish I could be a part of a Skype conversation where they would just talk to me without needing a reply." It's in reference to having someone there while you're working, of course.
The Skype conversation has people I know and met in Japan, so my friend asks if I would like to join as well. The last two nights I have been in Skype with them and while I can write to a certain level of Japanese, speaking is an entirely different story.
I find myself very frustrated at the level of my spoken Japanese. Of course, this only means one thing: to do it more. If I could speak more, I could practice more, and then, I could improve. Still, I am a little discouraged-- at my age, I wish to articulate what I am able to in English into my Japanese. At times I think about my current ability and just feel "Ugh. It's just so much work!" But you know, it's the same way with any other skill, like drawing. I'm at that point where I feel I know enough to understand what native speakers are saying, but I don't know enough to express myself in the way I would like to be represented. I'm also a little frustrated at my art since I want to improve and draw something super cool but feel discouraged by the amount of work it requires to get where I would like to be. It doesn't mean I quit though. I haven't yet.
Back to the Skype conversation-- it was fun! Since they had all met me in person before, they pretty much knew what to expect. In person, I spent most of my time talking through keywords and my netbook (through typing in notepad.) In this call? Well, I suppose I could have used the Skype chat function, but I do need to practice. It's rare that I am able to be in a call with them since I never request it myself. At one point, we were all saying "Alice" in Japanese, and so I said it many times in a row and messed up on the last one. Messed up, as in, I said "Alice" in English instead of the Japanese way.
Immediately they all went silent and one of them told me, "Say that again?"
So I did! They went crazy! They started saying how cool I was! That they loved hearing it! Well, if they got excited from just "Alice," I went ahead and said the entire thing in English: Alice Margatroid. Funny thing is that a lot of my friends are Alice fans (makes sense, I suppose) so they went even more crazy with that. They basically said that my pronunciation is amazing. Well, I would hope that I could say "Alice Margatroid" in English, anyway!
Yesterday was kind of sad because during the conversation, my friend who was streaming fell asleep! Everyone else was chatting away at each other, but we noticed that the Stickam image hadn't changed or moved. We tried to call out her name, but she really had fallen asleep. She's always talking about how tired she is when she is working on her comics, but she really fell asleep... it's really tough. Eventually, I got tired so I left, so I have no idea what happened to her stream besides the rest of the members chatting away, probably. I woke up this morning to see that she wrote in the Stickam chat "oyasuminasai" in romaji and probably shut off the stream by then.
Today was one of those mornings were I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. The entire day I tried to talk about things but kept tripping on my words and couldn't express myself properly. It was very strange... it made me feel pretty frustrated, so I eventually took a nap and now I'm here and I'm okay again! Very odd! Just one of those days, you know? But I think I'd be sad if I couldn't at least speak English anymore, so I'm very glad that I know some Japanese at all. It's wonderful to be able to understand them even if I can't do it as well as my English. I truly hope one day that I can improve so much to the point my Japanese is almost at the level of my English... As in the words of one of my Japanese Twitter friends, " I want to use English like my Japanese!"
Edit: Forgot to say something. My English was terrible for a very long time because I learned it while I was also learning Mandarin. My family is Taiwanese so they spoke Mandarin at home. There was a point where my Mandarin was superior to my English, but that's when I was much younger. I can't say the same about it now.