Probably everyone who has a smattering of Japanese gets very much the same responses from Japanese who become aware of the smattering. Some of them go on being rather charming however frequently they are encountered. I think my favorite is: “Oh, you speak very well the Japanese.” Some are initially puzzling and presently become annoying and even infuriating. Perhaps chief among them is: “You speak Japanese better than I do.” All that can be said of it is that it is a bald-faced lie. The puzzle remains. All Japanese must know that it is a lie. So, why do so many of them go on uttering it? And at what point do they all learn that it is the thing to say? Do mothers instruct their little ones? “The peculiar creature coming towards us is a foreigner. If it says anything you understand, you must say that it was better done than any Japanese could do it.”
I think that if there is, in this regard, a remark that annoys me even more than the one just noticed it is almost exactly the opposite: “Japanese is a very difficult language.” People are always using them in rapid succession as if unaware of the contradiction (and probably, since it is all rather senseless, they are unaware). My favorite reply is: “All languages are difficult.” I think that this is true. Among the languages with which I am familiar, I think Spanish the friendliest and most approachable. It is easy to pronounce in a way that a native speaker can understand. The significance comes across readily. After three or four days in Mexico City, a new arrival can understand all the signs. This does not mean, however, that it is easy to speak and write well. Genuine fluency comes only with time and practice.
I would not wish to deny that Japanese can be very troublesome. Every language has its own peculiar complications, and in the case of Japanese, they can seem devilishly complicated. I wish to dwell upon two, and would not wish to suggest that they are the only ones. The first will not come as news even to the student who began yesterday. It has to do with the complexities of the writing system. This seems a rather striking example of Japanese perversity. Sir George Sansom, the eminent British historian of Japan, once remarked that there is something wrong with a written system which requires another system to explain it. (Am I condescending to the reader when I thus identify Sir George? I cannot be sure. All I can say is that the people who were considered eminences when I was young are rapidly vanishing into obscurity.) It may be said that the Japanese, when they set about having a written language, were unfortunate in having only a non-phonetic system before them, waiting to be taken over. The same was true of the Koreans, however, and they did not end up with the same complications. In principle they assigned a single reading to a Chinese character. The Japanese on occasion assigned a dozen or so. Korean newspapers have shifted over entirely to the hangul phonetic script. The Japanese say that it would not be easy to shift over to kana. I wonder. I suspect that they do not want to.
The second matter I wish to bring up is the rapidity with which the language changes. The emphasis here should be upon “rapidity” and not upon “changes.” They who think that languages can be prevented from changing, including, from what I read, a rather large number of French people, are out of touch with reality. All languages change, at greater and lesser speeds. If the concern of the French is to slow down the speed with which their language changes, I deeply sympathize. Of the languages with which I am familiar, Japanese changes the most rapidly. This I find frequently disconcerting and sometimes maddening. It should be clear that I do not oppose all change. To do so would be unrealistic, and would deny what seems to me the clear and present fact that some change is for the good. I have already brought up a matter in which change has been for the good, although it was in a different context.
The lady who gave her tiny one instruction on how to deal with foreigners most probably used for “foreigners” the expression gaijin, which ought to mean “alien” or “outsider.” In practice, it had a much narrower meaning. It referred to persons of European origin. Koreans, much the most numerous foreign persons in Japan, were not gaijin. They received the curious designation daisankokujin, “persons of third nations.” The expression gaijin was used most commonly, perhaps, in reference to crime. Gaijin hanzai meant “crime by European types,” and was automatically taken to mean crime by Americans, we being much the most common European types. There was a delightful bank robbery out in the northern part of Tokyo quite a few years ago, which was assumed by everyone, because of this terminology, to have been done by an American. The culprit turned out to be a Frenchman. Also because of the terminology, the term has gradually come to mean what it ought to have meant in the first place, an alien person of any race or nationality. European sorts are now a small minority. Crimes committed by Chinese and Latin Americans, mostly Brazilians of Japanese descent, are more numerous than those of all European types combined. This may not be the happiest of developments, but when a word comes to mean what it ought to mean we are all better off. A Confucian rectification of names has occurred. On the whole, these are to be welcomed. It is interesting to note, though not perhaps of great pertinence to the present discussion, that the Koreans, of whom the Japanese have such a low opinion, are rather law-abiding. I am much inclined to think, though it is none of my business, that they do not deserve the treatment they get.
The rapidity of change is the bothersome matter. Of the foreign languages with which I am somewhat familiar, I think Japanese most receptive to change. Young people who are just beginning to study it may be discouraged to learn that someone who has been at it for well over a half century is constantly forced to approach it as if it were a new language. This is, alas, true. I readily admit that much of the trouble arises from my inability to master the vocabulary of high technology. I have the same problem with my native language. Much that is not remotely technical, however, is incomprehensible. Recently and regretfully, I decided that I was no longer able to care of my Tokyo apartment in the manner it deserved. In search of help, I went off to the ward office. I went, in any event, to what had been the ward office. Before I went inside, I discovered that it was no longer designated by three solid Chinese characters. It bore a row of katakana which a moment’s deliberation revealed to convey “civic center.”
Inside, I faced a torrent of katakana. Much of it was immediately comprehensible as conveying English. I much pity foreigners who do not share the advantage of English. One word I took to be “disservice,” although this seemed a little abrupt and unfriendly in the context. I presently concluded that it was “day service.” “Silver service” I had less trouble with, though it could have signified “tableware.” I knew that my bus pass was known as an“silver pass” with reference to the hue of my hair. Doubtless in this instance too it had reference to my silvery tresses. Receptivity to outside influences would be all to the good if excesses were not so troublesome. English has on the whole been more receptive than the continental languages. German has remained German and French has remained French, and English has taken without reserve from the classical language and from French. A result is that English has probably the richest and most varied of any vocabulary in the world.
When the borrowing began, French was much the more sophisticated of the two languages. The case was similar with Japanese and Chinese when the former started borrowing from the latter. I think the Japanese made a big mistake with borrowing from English. At first, they translated the new vocabulary into their kind of Chinese. This worked on the whole rather well. One can readily guess the meaning of denwa, for instance, from the characters. The mistake was converting to katakana. So, I have a modest proposal. How would it be to leave borrowed words in the Roman alphabet? This might offend adherents of the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, but their resentment would not have much occasion to show itself. It might initially be a trial for Japanese typesetters, but they are ingenious fellows, and they would soon be performing with ease and aplomb.