My head hurts. I think I need food, water, And sleep.
As I thought about just now how my head hurts, I realized that I can express that fact/sentiment in five languages, and without even having to think about it.
My head hurts. (Duh)
Me duele en la cabeza.
J’ai mal à la tête.
Ich habe Kopfschmerzen.
あたまがいたい。
Rad, huh? My life is super blessed. Thank you, God. Now, I’ll have a bit more water, and then sleep!
Post-a-day 2017
I guess that whatever we are accustomed to having around us, ends up being what feels like “normal” to us. Like how my life never seems to feel very exciting or special – it has become my experience of “normal”, and therefore can’t seem exceedingly exciting or abnormal to me.
I regularly feel as though everyone can speak loads of languages, and so I’m nothing but average (or even below average) in that field. But who are my acquaintances? Well, we tend to end up spending time with people who, in some way or other, are quite similar to ourselves, do we not? It is no wonder, then, that I have so many friends who are bi- and multilingual, and who have not only visited but lived in at least one country other than their own. This isn’t to say, of course, that all of my friends meet this criteria. Certainly not. I just happen to have a lot of friends who do.
So, when I have a night like tonight, where my friends and I sound to an on-listener like we can’t seem to pick a language, as we constantly switch around between English (our one common language), French, and Japanese, I all too easily forget that this is not normal in the world. Sure, it is normal for me and for my life, but that doesn’t mean that everyone does it regularly. It doesn’t even mean that half the world could do it regularly, even if they wanted to do so.
Or perhaps they could. I think, nonetheless, that I severely underappreciate my language abilities, by subconsciously expecting that the people who most closely surround me are an average sample of the whole. What is normal for one person simply is what is around that person in life. And two people with closely aligned lives might find the same things as one another to be normal. So, of course the people who are out doing the same things I live to do, tend to see the world in a similar way to how I see it, and hold a subconscious standard of “normal” that is similar to my own. That’s why our paths cross in the first place – we’re all into* this particular kind of awesome.
Filing a room with awesome people doesn’t mean that they aren’t all still awesome, just because the standard in the room is about equal. It just means that you have an extra-awesome room that is full of a ton of awesome people.
I guess what I am aiming to say here is that, despite my feeling below-average and utterly “normal” and boring at times, I realize now that I am not viewing things outside of my nearest surroundings (so to speak), and that I realize that I am, in fact, awesome. And I’m proud and happy about that.
Peace, y’all. ❤
Post-a-day 2017
Last night, I went to a dance social in Tokyo. It was mostly friends and acquaintances, though plenty of other people I hadn’t known before the social last night. However, they were all adults, which makes the following scenario worth telling (in my opinion, anyway). As an important matter, know that I wore days-of-the-week underwear yesterday. And, yes, they were for the correct current day of the week.
At the social, I happened to be wearing a pair of blue linen pants with a drawstring. As such, they consistently slipped ever so slightly downward as I danced. With my shirt being longer than the waistband of my pants, that normally would be no biggie. However, seeing as this was west coast swing dancing, that means that my shirt regularly would get twisted or bunched up a bit, rising above the waist band of my pants for a couple or few seconds here and there.
Now, I normally am not opposed to such little glimpses of my midriff as my shirt-pants combination were displaying. However, since my pants kept slipping downward, little by little, in combination with the shirt going upward now and then, this meant that the waistband of my underwear was also showing on a regular basis as I danced. I guess I am not really opposed to this either, as they are nothing sultry, but I guess it is a bit of a social taboo when in certain company. I digress…
I chuckled when I first noticed my peeping underwear waistband, because, do recall, I was wearing days-of-the-week underwear last night. “See?” I thought, “I am just so dedicated to my job, that I am even teaching English after hours!” For, every time my shirt went up, “Tuesday” was visible in clear block letters all the way around my hips.
I shared this thought with a few friends, and we all had a good laugh at the silliness of the situation – that I not only was wearing days-of-the-week underwear, but was unintentionally showing them off to everyone, and found a cute little joke around its happening. One girlfriend commented, that it was a mighty fine and creative way to teach high schoolers English, removing clothing and showing the English off on parts of the body. I replied how I could only imagine how much the boys would love learning English. She then said that even she would be interested in seeing that lesson happen. After all, who could resist such a unique lesson, boy or girl, man, woman, or +? I know I’d want to see it, if something like that happened, because that’s just too ridiculous to pass up. 😛
Post-a-day 2017
While dying eggs for Easter tonight, my friend and I were listening to and singing along to various songs from various musicals. For the most part, this was all in English. However, when I decided that, judging the songs and musicals we’d had so far, it was time for a bit of Frozen, this all changed.
Frozen, you see, happens to be one musical that this friend doesn’t know too well in English, but really only knows in Japanese. I, naturally, picked up all the words in English due to the extreme cultural love of the songs back in the US. And, to make things more exciting, and to test our true knowledge of the songs, I happen only to have the soundtrack in French. (I know, I’m a special one.)
So, what does that all mean? Well, it means that my friend and I had a grand ole time singing along in Japanese and English to a song in French, both of us laughing regularly as we did our best to focus on the words we knew that we knew, but seemed so incredibly difficult to get out. I’m not sure that I have ever focused so much just to sing along to a song before tonight. It was somewhat intense and absolutely delightful. I’d totally do that again. 😀
Post-a-day 2017
Okay, here’s an anecdote from the wonderful dinner we had tonight (despite the fact that there were people smoking off and on in the restaurant).
My brother, his girlfriend, and I all had dinner with my brother’s private student tonight. He’s this older Japanese guy, perhaps in his fifties, who is quite fun and silly, and who loves his family and my brother. At one point in the night, we ended up on the subject of the pronunciation of English words in the Japanese style (Katakana English, as we like to call it), and specifically the struggle for Japanese people to say the word “chocolate” like a native English speaker.
My brother’s student was determined to pronounce chocolate like a native, and so we kept having to say it ourselves, and then analyze and critique the student’s pronunciation. Most of the time, there was some special vowel added to the middle of the word, because Japanese doesn’t have consonants side-by-side (only “ts”, “ch”, and guttural stops written as a double consonant [e.g. “tt”, “kk”, etc.]). So, instead of the native’s “choc-lette”, it tended to come out as “cho-koe-lay-toe” or “cho-ku-ray-toe” (They also don’t have R’s or L’s in Japanese.).
Back and forth, back and forth we went, my saying “chocolate,” followed by my brother’s student saying “chocolate,” the two pronunciations forever being different from one another. But the student and my brother’s girlfriend, being Japanese speakers and non-native English speakers, couldn’t quite hear the differences. Whereas my brother and I heard the difference every time, resulting in a good amount of laughter and face-making (You know how you make a face when something isn’t quite right? That.).
The student even called over two of the waitresses at one point, explaining the situation to them, and asking them to listen to me and him saying each of our versions. ‘Did the pronunciations sound the same to them?’ he wanted to know. Yes, they did. However, when I then said both versions myself, they heard a difference. So, having lost that bit of the battle, he had them try to pronounce chocolate like native English speakers. No, they couldn’t quite get it right, that middle “cl/kl” sound being the constant culprit in the matter. This, of course, created and even greater flow of laughter in our corner of the restaurant.
There is a Japanese comedian who goes around to places (I’ve only seen and heard of ones in the US, but he might go elsewhere, too), asking for different things, but using Japanese English and odd translations. For example, he walked around New York asking for a “boat-plane” or “sky mamma”. He was, naturally, looking for a naval aircraft carrier. The Japanese characters individually mean “sky”空 and “mother”母, and it is, of course, a sort of boat with airplanes. The whole purpose of his show, of course, is to be silly in interacting with the Americans who have no idea what he is asking. Having talked about this show earlier in the night, I eventually wondered what might happen if this guy were to try ordering the Japanese version of “chocolate” in, say, a coffee shop or restaurant.
My brother and I did our darndest in listening, but we couldn’t hear the words as people who didn’t know what was being said. That is, we understand and are accustomed to Japanese English, and so couldn’t figure out how it would sound to people who don’t understand Japanese English. So, we decided to send a voice message to my mom, recorded by my brother’s private student.
“White chocolate, dark chocolate, bitter chocolate…. please!”
(rather, “Waiito chocorayto, dahku chocorayto, beetah chocorayto… pureezu!”)
Naturally, my mother had no idea, no matter how she tried, what on Earth was being said. Then, when we went for some other variations, – that is, his attempts at pronouncing it as a Native English speaker – she thought he might have been saying something about a certain kind of energy used in Reiki.
As one can ascertain from that, his “native” pronunciation has some room for improvement. He declared that his homework was to practice only pronouncing “chocolate” all week. He even has a voice memo of me saying, “Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate,” on his phone for reference. We’ll see if he ever manages that native-sounding “choc-lette”.
Now, for anyone concerned about the fact that, ‘Well, chocolate does have an O in the middle,’ recall that that is not the point. They are not saying the word differently out of righteousness for the fact that the O is there and therefore must be pronounced, but out of the fact that the “cl/kl” sound is just somewhat impossible for Japanese folks. It makes for some pretty funny-sounding words in English, if you ask me. 😛
Post-a-day 2017
There’s a funny (meaning odd) sign in the train right now. I’ll see if I can get a photo of it after the next stop (people usually load off the train at the coming stop, leaving the train almost empty). 🙂
Post-a-day 2017
hannah ananas 