I think I’m learning Japanese

I figure anyone can learn a language*. Language is what humans do. Except that guy I met at a meetup here in Montpellier, who told me he refuses to learn French. He said that when he retired he told himself he was done with learning. Not just language learning, all learning. I thought, wow, and here I’ve already learned something today, that I’m done talking to you! I have no time for the incurious.

To be fair, there are some prerequisites. Notably: time, energy, and motivation, not to mention a fully functioning noggin. These are serious requirements that not everyone has access to. And no matter how much time, energy and inclination I could possibly muster, I’m surely excluded forever from understanding theoretical mathematics, which is a type of language. There are limits. Long story short, I’ve been studying Japanese for the past few months.

Every day I tell myself this is madness, completely absurd. I’m almost 63. According to actuarial tables, I’ve got an average of 22 years left (good lord willing and that creek don’t rise). Of those conjectural years, how many will be in good intellectual, physical, and mental health? I find this calculation creeping into my thoughts. Go there, do this, learn that, is this the best use of my remaining time and energy? And seriously, Japanese? A language that requires some 2200 hours of study to be considered an adept, vs 600 for a Romance language? With much less time and effort, I could improve and maybe become fluent in Spanish. Sadly, Spanish is too close to French and I wind up scrambling them. Several friends have suggested I study Italian because it’s close both linguistically and geographically. But that way truly lies madness, all of my foreign languages would merge into one great Babylonian babble.

Why even learn another language ? I could learn to paint, or play an instrument, or do something actually useful with my precious weeks and years. Or what the hell, reach enlightenment! That seems about as attainable as anything above a kindergarten level of Japanese. Like mountain climbing (something else I’ll never do), I’ve started up that 2200 hour slope because it’s there.

I’m learning Japanese because puzzling out alien sentence structures and the hieroglyphic kanji every morning over a cup of coffee is strangely compelling. It’s even fun, if you like having your brain wrung out and hung up to dry. Not to mention it beats my doom scrolling default setting, watching the decline of western civilization playing out in every more lurid detail from the alternate universe of my living room.

The best part is that language is the gateway to understanding a culture. That is what drives my curiosity. Every time I mention to French friends that they describe things inversely, they’re surprised. Pas mal–literally, not bad, means not good. You don’t say it’s cold out, you say it’s not hot. That guy’s not poor!

The French are masters of the understatement, whereas we Americans wear out our superlatives to the point where they’re ineffective and we have to invent new ones. Is anything really amazing, awesome, or (my most hated example) extreme? Things that are simply better than good are ridiculous, which is simply ridiculous. The French are so little given to hyperbole that when you’re using a French (virtual) keyboard, you have to go searching for the exclamation point on the second page and when you find it, it automatically puts a space between it and the end of the sentence, like you have to take a breath before getting that excited. This now my preference; smacking an exclamation point right on the end of a word seems somehow unrefined. But in Spanish you have to put a ¡ at the beginning of the sentence, as if to say, OMG, get ready, you’re going to be so excited!!! Just with punctuation, I have the impression of getting an insight into the differences in these 2 cultures.

I started out this adventure by memorizing the 2 phonetic alphabets. Why 2? One is for Japanese words, one is for words of foreign origin. If that doesn’t speak volumes about the Japanese national character, I don’t know what does. Yes, (I imagine them saying), we will borrow this word and use it, but it will never be Japanese. The writing system, the kanji, are pictogram-like characters, adapted and modified from Chinese centuries ago, so much so that they’re thoroughly Japanified. I like how reading a picture seems to bypass my brain’s linguistic center straight to meaning, though frustratingly, one kanji can have many definitions and many pronunciations. Mind, boggled.

Sigh. I really am crazy. Or if not, I will be. Or maybe this fool’s errand is what’s keeping me sane in this insane world ? Whatever. Tick tock, the clock marches on, regardless of how your spend your time. I feel like we’ve all fallen into a crazy alternate universe, and in this universe, I’m learning Japanese.

Kanpai!

Maer

* Yes, even you. I know you’re going to say you have no talent for languages, but if you put your mind to it you absolutely could. I believe in you !