Language – Page 11 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, or Don’t Teach English in Japan

This story from Japundit was pathetic enough to finally end any illusions I had as to whether teaching English in Japan is “real” work. It is the best argument I’ve yet seen against ever considering English teaching in Japan as a career option.

There are thousands of people like David who come to Japan expecting a free lunch. This guy did even worse than most, starting close to the bottom because of some sort of hipster condemnation of “the man” and working his way down from there.

Of course, he learns his lesson at the end of the story, right?

Then why is he still in Japan working as an underqualified “teacher” of English?

Let’s get one thing straight: Eikaiwa is not teaching in any meaningful sense of the word. Since Japanese society has a backwards, racist view of language learning the vast majority of people are convinced that the best way to learn a language is to sit in a room with any random native speaker of that language. This is WRONG. The eikaiwa schools’ “learn-language-quick” approach to something that always requires motivation and years of patient hard work is nothing less than a scam. And just because the suckers are all too happy to part with their money that doesn’t make it right! Doesn’t it make you sick to your stomach to know you’re a fraud? David’s bad attitude toward the students speaks volumes:

I’ve been teaching English to children from ages three to 10, or at least trying to do so. Ah, children! They’re not just our hope and future, they’re also gaseous balls of snot and flatulence filled with demonic energy out to leech the very life from our bones. No, seriously, this experience has taught me to love kids, especially in lemon and butter sauce. Accompanied with a light Chianti, they can’t be beat.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on David. There are tons of other eikaiwa teachers out there who are bitter at their lot in life but are too chickenshit to do anything about it. It can’t feel good to be approaching 30 and still not have any marketable skills under your belt.

(On a side note, I don’t get why he doesn’t seem to have a problem when small-timers scam people out of their money but chafes at “the system” if a business is successful and grows large. Jealousy perhaps?)

Memoirs of a Geisha: If it isn’t one inauthenticity, it’s the other

Curzon pointed me toward Tom Barnett’s take on the new movie, citing it as evidence that Barnett “is a complete git.” Let’s quote:

Unfair to have Chinese playing Japanese? About as unbelievable as having Brits and Aussies play Americans? Or Americans playing English? Or Canadian Mike Myers playing Austin Powers?

Puh-leeze. Marshall went with these three ladies because they’re simply the biggest best stars available. Globalization, baby.

The hubbub over Chinese actresses playing Japanese characters is a bit misplaced, I think. It’s not directly comparable to Mike Myers playing Austin Powers: it’s closer to, say, Patrick Stewart playing Jean-Luc Picard. When it comes down to it, almost all of the visible differences between Han Chinese and Japanese are in language, mannerisms, and (often) dress. A well-coached Chinese person could play a Japanese person convincingly enough, but probably not with their default skill set. So Barnett’s take… not quite “git” in my book.

What bugs me more than the movie’s lack of racial purity is that the characters, who are supposed to be in old-school Kyoto, speak horribly-accented English for hours on end. And the Chinese actresses are speaking in Chinese accents… totally different from Japanese accents. I can’t foresee sitting through the whole movie without throwing things at the screen. Maybe it’ll be tolerable on mute.

On a related note, this is a snippet from a conversation I had with Adamu concerning the HBO series “Rome,” which, I should add, Curzon really likes.

[10:20] Adamu: does everyone have a british accent [10:20] Joe: yup [10:20] Adamu: good then its authentic

The economics of language learning

Following up on the last post, chew on this: although there are plenty of languages that seem useful, there is no rational reason for you to learn most of them.

Of course, it’s very rational (in fact, often unavoidable) to learn a language when you have no choice—if you live or work where that language is all that’s spoken. That’s part of the beauty of exchange programs and cross-cultural romance. But beyond that, you’re better off hiring a translator or interpreter when you need one: it’s much cheaper, and likely to be just as effective.

That’s why Americans rarely learn foreign languages: the benefits simply aren’t there. That’s also why children learn languages “more easily” than adults: they have much less choice in the matter, especially if their peers are speaking a different language. Adult professionals, like the aforementioned lawyers in Tokyo, can just outsource their language needs, and save a lot of time and money by doing so.

So what accounts for those of us who learn languages for the hell of it (including the authors of this blog)? Basically, we’re nuts. Not thinking things through. I love knowing Japanese and I keep learning more, but it hasn’t been particularly useful in my life, except when haggling with electronics dealers in Den-Den Town. Yet I keep learning it, probably because the amenities in Japan are so tempting, and, like most Westerners who know Asian languages, I have way too much fun flaunting the skills (what Jay Rubin calls the “look, Mom! I’m reading Japanese!” effect).

On the other hand, a professor of mine, who loves Japan enough to spend a few months teaching there every other year or so, has stopped bothering with language classes. For him, there isn’t much necessity: his family speaks English, his classes are taught in English, and a couple of lines from a phrasebook are all he needs to order lunch or locate an English speaker. Maybe if he were dropped into a high school classroom in Osaka, he would start figuring out those characters.

One of my favorite analyses on this issue comes from amateur linguist/online ne’er-do-well Mark Rosenfelder, who wrote a nice, meaty article on the “how”s and “why”s of language acquisition, and reached the same conclusion: language learning almost always comes from necessity, and the exceptions can be counted as strange obsession. So before you go off to learn a language for kicks, consider what your obsession is.

On language skills in the Tokyo legal market

If you head to Japan to find a legal job, you’ll realize something pretty quickly: What school you went to, what you did there, and what work experience you have, all trumps your Japanese ability. Easily. A person from a top-20 school who speaks no Japanese at all is miles ahead of a person from a second or third-tier school who’s totally fluent.

That’s not to say language doesn’t matter at all. It can save an otherwise crappy resumé (mine comes to mind), and it can qualify a person for a better job. If you have an Ivy League degree and speak Japanese, the town is your oyster. But it’s not nearly as important as the other qualifications that law firms look for back in the US.

I used to think this was just a matter of priorities: firms value nice schools over language ability, since the schools woo clients more easily, there’s no shortage of translators and interpreters to bridge the language gap, and many Japanese clients don’t expect to see a gaijin speaking their language anyway. No doubt all of these factors play a role.

But I was recently talking to a seasoned lawyer from a big American firm in Tokyo, and he said that language skills can actually be a problem for many clients. That made no sense to me, so I prodded him on. “It’s actually pretty simple,” he said. “In many cases, they don’t want you to know everything that’s happened on their side of the case. If you know Japanese, you have a way of independently finding out. So if you don’t know Japanese, they figure they have more control over you.”

So what’s the best solution? Know the language, but don’t make the fact readily apparent?

ROC Armed Forces English Manual

Earlier today I bought two neat old booklets from an old man on the sidewalk just outside Taiwan National History Museum.

Both books are from the same series, published by the Republic of China Military Foreign Language school in 1965.

As you can see from the table of contents, the range of material is a little different from the typical English textbook.

As you may expect from a language textbook published by the military of a fascist government, there is a certain amount of propaganda. For example, a sample sentence for the phrase”come from” is:

The refugees all come from the mainland.

Most the “humorous stories” are also demonstrations of the evils of Communism.

Budapest schoolteacher “What is the cause of the increase of population here in our capital city?”
Pupil: “The population increases because the people from the country flock to town.” Teacher: “Now think carefully, children. What could be done to prevent the influx of the country population?”

Pupil: We could set up collective farms here, too”

And a history lesson:

The arrival of Soviet “technicians” in Cuba brought forth this story from that Communist-dominated island:

A Cuban pupil in a local school was asked by his teacher: “Pepito, who was Napoleon?” “That’s easy,” the boy replied. “He was a technician who left Francee to help Italy, Egypt and lots of countries.”

What you might not expect is that the quality of the English is often very poor. Bold marks the phrase they are trying to explain.

At the same time he will do it if you pay him some money.

The very day at his marriage.

We have lived together for that time on. [The other example correctly says “from that time on.”)

It is better for a woman to marry a man who loves her not a man she loves.

When you’re very lucky, you can even find propaganda and poor English in the same text sample.

Why is the statement that the Principle of Nationality is equivalent to the doctrine of the state is applicable in China but not in the West?

Answer: The statement that the Principle of Nationality is equivalent to the doctrine of the state is applicable in China but not in the West? For the reason that China, since the Ch’in and Han dynasties, has been developing a single state out of a single race, while foreign countries have developed many states from one race and have included many nationalities within one state.

Random awesomeness – video sites, Japanese quiz

First up is Net Cinema, a project sort of similar to the English-language ifilm. Features original shows starring B-grade actors such as former porn star Ai Iijima (NSFW), my favorite nutty rightwinger with googly eyes Terry Itoh (pictured above, left), and second-tier okama (gay) comedian KABA-chan. I haven’t got into any of the shows yet, but given some free time I’m willing to give it a chance out of pure longing for some semblance of Japanese TV. (Hmm, after watching a bit of Iijima-chan bitch about her stocks I am getting skeptical…)

Then there is Japanese Govt Internet TV. This site brings you various government propaganda featuring Koizumi, Abe, and all your other favorites in “high” definition streaming video! It worked great after I downloaded Windows Media Player 10. Koizumi had a swank Ramadan party with all his Muslim ambassador friends.

I’ve mentioned KOKKAI TV (Diet TV — great taste, less filling than regular TV! Watch here: Lower House, Upper House) before, but now it’s new and improved, allowing you to see higher definition video and archived footage. Want to see that magical moment when the postal privatization bills were passed? Just click on October 14, 2005!

Finally we have a fun little Japanese quiz at ALC. I got the first one wrong, and so should you! Updated daily.

That’s what’s wasting my time these days. Enjoy!

The origin of “viking”

I was feeling a little curious, so I looked up the origin of the word “viking” (as in the Japanese word for buffet “baikingu” or バイキング)…

Apparently it was started when the Teikoku Hotel offered up its first buffet… They put out a call for suggestions within the company, and a few people wrote in saying that such a buffet reminded them of the feast scene in the Kirk Douglas movie “The Vikings“… Such an association was apparently common among Japanese people at the time, so the feasts were a huge hit and the name stuck.

(Source: Some random website)

What a boring explanation! I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting, but I hoped it would be better than the name of some movie…

Where do you draw the line?

[N]o sooner do we depart from sense and instinct to follow the light of a superior principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on the nature of things, but a thousand scruples spring up in our minds concerning those things which before we seemed fully to comprehend. Prejudices and errors of sense do from all parts discover themselves to our view; and, endeavoring to correct these by reason, we are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we advance into speculation, till at length, having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn Skepticism.

– George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge

In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe. In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them. But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.

– Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

The passages above describe eloquently an idea that has long lingered troublingly in the back of my mind, but remained unarticulated due to principally to my own laziness in fleshing it out. I don’t expect to exorcize all of my demons on the subject here, but at least it will be a start.

I’ve never perceived myself as being the type to fall easily into one camp or another on things. Consequently, I either find myself taking a position of devil’s advocate in order to participate in a conversation, or find myself sinking into a disappointed indecision. If I’m around conservatives, for example, I usually feel myself inexorably being pulled in the opposite direction. When around liberals, the opposite is true.

In either instance, I am left wondering, “how can this or that person be so sure about himself or herself?” Furthermore, I wonder, “how can I be so unsure of myself?” Granted, I may be objecting to attitudes more than to opinions in the aforementioned examples, but the questions still remain unanswered.

It’s not that I lack the ability to construct a logical argument and follow through on the conclusion. But on what basis are such conclusions ultimately derived?

Consider the following question: Is abortion right?

Now consider the following two answers to this question:

– Life begins at conception.
– The taking of a life is wrong.
– Abortion takes a life.
– Therefore, abortion is wrong.

Fine, but what about this:

– A fetus is part of a woman’s body.
– A woman has a right to do with her body as she pleases.
– Therefore, if she wishes to have an abortion, she is justified.

They are both simplified examples to be sure, and while I’m no logician, they suit my purposes here. There appears to be no problem with the arguments themselves; the rub lies in the assumptions. Then we are forced to ask: which assumption is right? That just leads to another argument, founded on other, more basic assumptions.

But if we keep digging, what eventually remains? I wonder how often people stop to ask themselves this question. It seems possible that one could rely on “sense and instinct” clothed in the type of arguments above without ever considering the soundness of their assumptions. For practicality’s sake we must we draw a mental line somewhere if we are to avoid a slippery slope that leads to relativism or worse. We can’t go around denying the existence of tables all day long. But where and when should that line be drawn?

What if the Flatlander has no home to return to?

I was reading this article about the humorous inability of the crazy Minutemen border patrol to even locate the Canadian/Vermont border, much less to patrol it, when I noticed a very curious term in the final sentence.

Even the Minutemen concede that their welcome hasn’t been perfectly warm. During their first patrol weekend, Buck said he found a note with a native Vermonter’s derogatory term for outsiders — indicating that someone thought they were already on the wrong side of a border.

“Flatlander, go home,” Buck said the note read.

Not having ever even been to Vermont, I have never been called a Flatlander (although after showing my vast gulf of ignorance regarding their state, I fully expect to have the epithet hurled at me vehemently should I ever visit. Of course, I turned to Google for an explanation, and here is what I found.

The term flatlander derives from ‘flatland’, which describes a geographical location as land that is predominantly flat. A flatlander would be a person who is from this type of a region.

To a Vermonter, the term flatlander takes on a whole new meaning. In the simplest terms, it means a person from outside the confines of Vermont. Often times, the actual geographical location of an outsider can be mountainous, but this weighs little on Vermont’s opinion. There is a gray area of where the flatlander boundaries exist, but to some die-hards, a flatlander is anyone not born in the state of Vermont. Others only consider the states south of Vermont that are located within New England. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island fall victim to the term by this definition, but it is unlike Vermonters to leave out New Jersey on their definition of flatlander. And for some, a flatlander is anyone with white plates on their car.

Flatlander is used as a negative slander on non-native Vermonters or visitors. In it’s basic concept, the term implies a person who visits the state or lives here that brings negative qualities from their home to our state. It is a person who is unfamiliar with traditional Vermont ways. Nathan Mansfield, a native Vermonter, defines the term as “Thinking they [a flatlander] can meld their beliefs of what Vermont is into our reality.” Unfortunately for the flatlander, even if they assimilate to Vermont culture and reside here for 50 years, they can never rid themselves of this label.

When too much language is not enough

One of my best friends from college is now working as a pharmacist in Florida (a hell of a job to end up with after so much time in school). She’s Japanese. When I met her, she didn’t speak much English at all; now that she has a difficult graduate degree under her belt, she knows a bit too much. She recently told me about one situation where she politely asked a patient about the “efficacy” of his medication. The patient had no clue what she was talking about. After a minute of miscommunication, someone else behind the counter suggested that she say “Does it work?” instead.

The story reminded me of one experience I had in high school in Osaka. I had an earache one day, and went to the local ENT clinic to have it checked. The doctor, a wizened-looking old lady, peered inside and told me, in English, “You have timpanitis.” “Timpanitis?” I asked. That certainly wasn’t in my vocabulary at the time. She repeated the word a few times until I eventually figured out it must be a fancy way to say “ear infection.”

There were many occasions when someone would ask me about a certain phrase in English, and I wanted to explain that the phrase was a metaphor for something else. In most dictionaries, the Japanese gloss of “metaphor” is in’yu. While I memorized that word, I never met a single Japanese person who understood what it meant, even when I wrote it out; after a few failed attempts to communicate, someone suggested that I use chokuyu (“figure of speech”) instead. That one actually works.

Anyway, knowing too much of a language can often have the same effect as knowing not enough. I suppose the moral, especially for those of us working in wordy fields like law and medicine, is to keep things as simplified as possible. Imagine how much easier things would be if we all followed that rule…

Afterthought: “Metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it.” – Benjamin Cardozo, former Supreme Court justice (apparently lacking a sense of irony…)