There's Nothing Funnier Than a Good Language Barrier
Since coming to Japan the language barrier has been my adversary. In the past six weeks I have managed to butcher the Japanese language in more ways than even a Japanese person could come up with. There are just so many syllables it's easy to slip up. For example, "thank you" is "do-u-i-ta-shi-ma-shi-te." What a mouthful! And conjugation only increases their number. For example, warm weather is called "a-ta-ta-ka-i." If the weather was warm (past tense), you say, "a-ta-ta-ta-ka-tta." (try saying that three times fast) The pauses built into words only make things worse. For example, the double t at the end of "a-ta-ta-ta-ka-tta" indicates a short pause in the middle of the word, maybe half a second. For example, if I want to say, "he said 'banana,'" I would say, "'banana'-tte-i-tte-tta." 3 pauses! Japanese is truly "yayakoshii."
So now you have some background knowledge in the language- let's get to my botched Japanese. So I taught my Japanese friend Nana the expression, "I'll keep my fingers crossed," since I was wishing her good luck on her English test. She told me that the Japanese equivalent is "kouun o inorimasu," which is literally "I am praying/wishing for (your) good luck." So tonight after dinner I tried to repeat to my host mother what I said, except instead of saying, "kouun" I said "unko," or shit. My host mother started laughing hysterically, and when I realized the mistake I had made I started laughing myself. "I'm praying for shit." Can you believe that?! What would you do if a Japanese student said that to you?! I feel like the French foreign exchange student on the movie "Better Off Dead," when she's talking about her weird American host family brother.
French Foreign Exchange Student: He keeps putting his testicles all over me.
American Student: Excuse me?
FFES: You know, like octopus? Testicles?
AS: Ohhhh. Tentacles. N-T. Big difference.
Ah, the joys of being an exchange student. When you screw up as bad as I did, you can't help but laugh. One more nugget of joy before I sign off. Today my mother mentioned garage sales, and I asked her if they had garage sales in Japan because I didn't think that Japanese people even knew aobut them. So she said that they do in fact have them, but they are usually called "furii maaketto," or flea market. The Japanese pronunciation of r and l is abominable if you didn't already know before. They have a letter that is halfway between r and l, so most Japanese people cannot hear the difference between the two letters and cannot pronounce them. So when they use English words with r and l it all kind of falls into the r/l letter they have (which I have trouble pronouncing). Anyways, I explained to my host mother that Americans usually use the term flea market when referring to large, open places where people sell various goods, and it turns out the Japanese use the term for that situation as well. But my mother thought it was "free market" in English, not "flea market." She thought it meant "tada," like doesn't cost anything, and was confused as to why it was called that. When I told her that it is actually "flea market" like the insect that bites dogs and makes them itch, she was shocked. She told me that Japanese people have tried to explain the meaning behind "furii maaketto" as "no-cost" free and even "independence" free, but never with "the insect" flea. So I asked her to tell her friends how it is really said from now on :)
So now you have some background knowledge in the language- let's get to my botched Japanese. So I taught my Japanese friend Nana the expression, "I'll keep my fingers crossed," since I was wishing her good luck on her English test. She told me that the Japanese equivalent is "kouun o inorimasu," which is literally "I am praying/wishing for (your) good luck." So tonight after dinner I tried to repeat to my host mother what I said, except instead of saying, "kouun" I said "unko," or shit. My host mother started laughing hysterically, and when I realized the mistake I had made I started laughing myself. "I'm praying for shit." Can you believe that?! What would you do if a Japanese student said that to you?! I feel like the French foreign exchange student on the movie "Better Off Dead," when she's talking about her weird American host family brother.
French Foreign Exchange Student: He keeps putting his testicles all over me.
American Student: Excuse me?
FFES: You know, like octopus? Testicles?
AS: Ohhhh. Tentacles. N-T. Big difference.
Ah, the joys of being an exchange student. When you screw up as bad as I did, you can't help but laugh. One more nugget of joy before I sign off. Today my mother mentioned garage sales, and I asked her if they had garage sales in Japan because I didn't think that Japanese people even knew aobut them. So she said that they do in fact have them, but they are usually called "furii maaketto," or flea market. The Japanese pronunciation of r and l is abominable if you didn't already know before. They have a letter that is halfway between r and l, so most Japanese people cannot hear the difference between the two letters and cannot pronounce them. So when they use English words with r and l it all kind of falls into the r/l letter they have (which I have trouble pronouncing). Anyways, I explained to my host mother that Americans usually use the term flea market when referring to large, open places where people sell various goods, and it turns out the Japanese use the term for that situation as well. But my mother thought it was "free market" in English, not "flea market." She thought it meant "tada," like doesn't cost anything, and was confused as to why it was called that. When I told her that it is actually "flea market" like the insect that bites dogs and makes them itch, she was shocked. She told me that Japanese people have tried to explain the meaning behind "furii maaketto" as "no-cost" free and even "independence" free, but never with "the insect" flea. So I asked her to tell her friends how it is really said from now on :)