I've been bemoaning of late my lack of opportunities to use Japanese in daily life. This might sound kind of strange seeing as I live in Tokyo, but I don't actually have a circle of Japanese friends that I can meet with regularly and chat away in Japanese with. I do have Japanese friends, but I tend to hang out with them one at a time, and this means we often use English, a) because I get tired of trying to speak Japanese quickly, and b) because more often than not, my friend's English is usually better than my Japanese.
I think it's important to find a group of friends to hang out with because then the conversation naturally tends to be Japanese, and it also means you don't have to be supplying 50% of the input.
Anyway, that's besides the point of today's post. My lack of opportunities for natural conversation emphasised the importance to me of the more manufactured experiences that you can make for yourself like the one that I had yesterday and I want to mention here.
Since coming to Japan I've tended to shy away from using the old style barbers you see dotted around town. I think this may have something to with the fact that when I first arrived here I remember naively walking into one of these barbers expecting at least some basic English ability from the proprietor and suddenly realising that I had to put my measly two-to-three weeks of beginner level Japanese study into immediate effect. This wasn't overly successful if I remember correctly, and may have left a bit of a mental scar.
Anyway, since then I've mainly been using the 1000yen - 10 minute - barbers you find in most train stations around Tokyo. It's quick and simple and doesn't require a lot of communication. Yesterday however I went to an old-style barber close to where I teach in Tokyo for a change, (my last 10 minute haircut was a bit of a disaster prompting me to take the plunge) and I realised I've been missing out on a great opportunity for some Japanese conversational workout these past few years.
The barber was a very friendly older lady— in her 60s I'd say. I asked for a short-back-and-sides, we negotiated over the length of the clippers, and she got down to work. After a few minutes of silence I dived in and asked her how long that particular barber shop had been open. That was all I had to do: we didn't stop talking for the next 40-odd minutes (Well, if I'm honest she did most of the talking, but I got a few questions in, and offered a few opinions on this and that—the Royal Wedding for example). The haircut cost 3000 yen and it took 50 minutes longer than at the station shop, but as far as getting a language workout it was time and money well spent—the haircut wasn't bad either.
Barbers are a bit like taxi drivers I think, wherever you go in the world, they like to chat. So I think I'll be avoiding the 10-minute "fast-cut" barbers from now on, and take advantage of these barbers who despite costing a bit more have time for a good old-fashioned chinwag.
Sunday 29 May 2011
Wednesday 11 May 2011
Why children learn languages faster than adults: my two cents
When reading literature on language learning, and talking to language learners, again and again you hear the refrain "children learn languages a lot faster than adults."
I've read a lot of theories as to why this is, and I think the most convincing for me is that children have less fear of making mistakes than adults.
I often get daunted by Japanese. I hear something, a construction or idiom, and it daunts me to think I've been learning for five years, but haven't come across that phrase yet. I begin to wonder, how many of these unknown phrases are there out there? And how incredibly long will it take me to come across them all?
So I got to thinking about how a kid overcomes these problems: what makes them so immune from this? Why doesn't a child get daunted when it hears its parents, or the television, babbling away in unrecognisable jargon?
The conclusion I reached was that children clearly just don't care. They couldn't give a monkey's elbow about what the two adults in the corner of the room are babbling on about, because it's not important for them. It doesn't relate to their world. A child will not bother to try to understand a phrase or idiom they don't understand because it's not aimed at them, and it's not necessary for them to understand.
The people children speak to, their friends, parents, or teachers, don't speak to them using adult language, they don't use the sort of language that they would find going above their head.
I think this is what makes it easier for a child to learn a language, they are at the right age to speak the basics of a language and they don't need anything else. They are able to gradually build their vocabulary and knowledge of the language as their social needs require.
As an adult language learner I should be doing the same.
Of course this raises it's own difficulties in that I have to restrict myself to childish conversations in the beginning stages of my learning. As adults we often find ourselves in social situations that require a certain amount of maturity in conversation, and when you enter into a conversation as a beginner language learner this is pretty hard to do to say the least.
The temptation is, therefore, to try to learn language early on that you would like to use in an 'adult' conversation. This is something I've mentioned before as being one of my biggest failings as a language learner: the temptation to get ahead of myself in my impatience to reach fluency.
This results in me often finding myself in awkward positions where I am trying to say something that I don't have the linguistic skill to do, which results in a silence and the social awkwardness that this entails. Confidence is then affected, and loss of confidence is the worst thing that can happen for a language learner.
So I guess, my point is, speak like a child when starting out in a language, and don't be ashamed of it. The more confidently you use childish language the quicker you will begin to make progress and begin to sound like an adult. If this means you have to restrict the number of occasions you are able to speak the language in the beginning stages then so be it—although I don't think there is anything wrong in making basic sentences in an adult setting, just be sure to do it with the kind of swagger of someone who is comfortable with the fact that they are a beginner and not someone who is trying to feign knowledge of a language they don't have: be like the impudent child who isn't afraid to speak up when the adults are having a discussion.
I've read a lot of theories as to why this is, and I think the most convincing for me is that children have less fear of making mistakes than adults.
I often get daunted by Japanese. I hear something, a construction or idiom, and it daunts me to think I've been learning for five years, but haven't come across that phrase yet. I begin to wonder, how many of these unknown phrases are there out there? And how incredibly long will it take me to come across them all?
So I got to thinking about how a kid overcomes these problems: what makes them so immune from this? Why doesn't a child get daunted when it hears its parents, or the television, babbling away in unrecognisable jargon?
The conclusion I reached was that children clearly just don't care. They couldn't give a monkey's elbow about what the two adults in the corner of the room are babbling on about, because it's not important for them. It doesn't relate to their world. A child will not bother to try to understand a phrase or idiom they don't understand because it's not aimed at them, and it's not necessary for them to understand.
The people children speak to, their friends, parents, or teachers, don't speak to them using adult language, they don't use the sort of language that they would find going above their head.
I think this is what makes it easier for a child to learn a language, they are at the right age to speak the basics of a language and they don't need anything else. They are able to gradually build their vocabulary and knowledge of the language as their social needs require.
As an adult language learner I should be doing the same.
Of course this raises it's own difficulties in that I have to restrict myself to childish conversations in the beginning stages of my learning. As adults we often find ourselves in social situations that require a certain amount of maturity in conversation, and when you enter into a conversation as a beginner language learner this is pretty hard to do to say the least.
The temptation is, therefore, to try to learn language early on that you would like to use in an 'adult' conversation. This is something I've mentioned before as being one of my biggest failings as a language learner: the temptation to get ahead of myself in my impatience to reach fluency.
This results in me often finding myself in awkward positions where I am trying to say something that I don't have the linguistic skill to do, which results in a silence and the social awkwardness that this entails. Confidence is then affected, and loss of confidence is the worst thing that can happen for a language learner.
So I guess, my point is, speak like a child when starting out in a language, and don't be ashamed of it. The more confidently you use childish language the quicker you will begin to make progress and begin to sound like an adult. If this means you have to restrict the number of occasions you are able to speak the language in the beginning stages then so be it—although I don't think there is anything wrong in making basic sentences in an adult setting, just be sure to do it with the kind of swagger of someone who is comfortable with the fact that they are a beginner and not someone who is trying to feign knowledge of a language they don't have: be like the impudent child who isn't afraid to speak up when the adults are having a discussion.
Sunday 1 May 2011
Trying to remove ambiguity from the meaning of words
Following up on yesterday's post.
I've just noticed another example of this dislocation between word and meaning. I'm watching politicians on TV and they keep using the word 地域（ちいき／Chiiki）: area, or region.
I can't disassociate this word with the English word 'cheeky'. They sound very similar—so similar that everytime I hear 地域 I immediately think about the word cheeky, and secretly snigger to myself about the similarity. Of course I remember that 地域 means region (using the cheeky similarity was a good mnemonic to remember the word in the first place), but it doesn't produce the same initial reaction in me that it would to a native speaker of Japanese, and therefore inhibits my understanding of the language. (Japanese speaker thinks 'region'; I think 'sounds like cheeky, snicker.'
Trying to focus on the real meaning of the word when I hear it would help to overcome this, but I think the best way to make the connection permenant is to have real, meaningful experience using the word.
For example, recently there have been a lot of problems in Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami, and I have learnt a lot of new words. There is no ambiguity for me in these words—放射線 means radiation, there's no doubt in my mind. It's a word that creates the same reaction in me as the English version: concern. This is because I've had real, meaningful experience with this word and the consequences it can cause.
I think this is a good example of the difficulty in learning new words. New words start off as a noise with no meaning; you can then learn the meaning and make the association, but does it really become meaningful to you until you actually have a reason to use, or think about the word, that actually affects you directly?
I've just noticed another example of this dislocation between word and meaning. I'm watching politicians on TV and they keep using the word 地域（ちいき／Chiiki）: area, or region.
I can't disassociate this word with the English word 'cheeky'. They sound very similar—so similar that everytime I hear 地域 I immediately think about the word cheeky, and secretly snigger to myself about the similarity. Of course I remember that 地域 means region (using the cheeky similarity was a good mnemonic to remember the word in the first place), but it doesn't produce the same initial reaction in me that it would to a native speaker of Japanese, and therefore inhibits my understanding of the language. (Japanese speaker thinks 'region'; I think 'sounds like cheeky, snicker.'
Trying to focus on the real meaning of the word when I hear it would help to overcome this, but I think the best way to make the connection permenant is to have real, meaningful experience using the word.
For example, recently there have been a lot of problems in Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami, and I have learnt a lot of new words. There is no ambiguity for me in these words—放射線 means radiation, there's no doubt in my mind. It's a word that creates the same reaction in me as the English version: concern. This is because I've had real, meaningful experience with this word and the consequences it can cause.
I think this is a good example of the difficulty in learning new words. New words start off as a noise with no meaning; you can then learn the meaning and make the association, but does it really become meaningful to you until you actually have a reason to use, or think about the word, that actually affects you directly?
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