Adventures in Language and Culture

My experience in learning a new language so far

Recently, I can manage to have somewhat deep conversations with my Japanese teacher about cultural matters. Every week, more and more interesting topics come up that I thought would be great to write down. Yes, after four years of being here in Japan, it is only now that I start to have epiphanies about language and culture. As you may or may not know, the Japanese Language is quite difficult to learn and understand (except maybe for Chinese and Koreans), and the culture, even more so. Japanese culture simply goes way beyond what you see in Anime, Manga, Movies or Danny Choo. Those channels present a very small part of the big picture, of what the culture is really like. And so recently it began; my deeper understanding of a culture vastly different from my own.

They say you will never understand another culture unless you learn to speak their language. I used to interpret this figuratively, in the sense that, in order to communicate you must deliver it in a way that is simple to understand. These days however, with my progress in learning Japanese, I am discovering that I can interpret this quite literally. Disappointingly I have found that I have never truly understood the Japanese people and their way of life until I have learned to speak their language. More than understanding the Japanese Culture in a deeper way, I find that I am also seeing my own culture and rediscovering it in a different light.

The most surprising thing I discovered about the Filipino Culture is that I have finally come to understand why we are such an emotional group of people. You’ll find that it is quite common to find Filipinos exploding over something written bad about them on the internet.

Clearly, this goes way beyond maturity. One cannot simply conclude that ours is a nation full of immature people. This is something more than being an advanced civilisation. And I finally came to understand that of all things, from trying to learn another language. David Foster Wallace was right when he said that you really have no idea about water when you’re in it your whole life.

Filipinos are Emotional by nature, because expressing one’s feelings is one of the most important aspects for a group or individual, in our culture. This is demonstrated by the myriad of words we have for very specific emotions. If a culture has no need to express one’s feelings, then it makes sense that the language doesn’t develop words for it it either. In Tagalog, we have words like Kilig (a feeling of being intoxicated by the idea of love, whether subjectively experienced or through mirror neurons), Gigil (an extreme urge to squeeze someone or something, usually brought about by a cute or irritating object) or Pikon (a feeling of anger when one gets served a whoppin’ dose of poetic justice)***, words for which, doesn’t exist in less expressive (and dare I say, colder) cultures. I found myself unable to translate these words when I tried to talk about it to Japanese. I was quite literally, lost in translation.

In the Japanese culture, on the other hand, one’s position or rank in society is very important. Words like 先輩 (Senpai, the characters of which literally mean “Before Group”, is a term used to refer to a person your Senior at work or school) and 後輩(Kouhai, the characters which literally mean, “after group”, a term used to refer to a person your Junior), the endless levels of “cho” words in Corporate Japan, like Saicho, Kacho, Bucho, Kacho** (Japanese titles for company hierarchy), demonstrate this cultural trait very well. This heirarchical structure in the Japanese society is such a big deal that it is completely embedded in the language.

In trying to learn a new language, I found that “Language Barrier” is nothing compared to Cultural Barriers. It’s like a chicken and egg problem; understanding the grammatical structure of the language is pretty hard to understand without knowledge of this culture. I had been left to wonder why there are not as much words to learn about feelings; but there are tons of conjugations for honorific language*. But then you never really truly understand the culture until you’ve reached an intermediate level of understanding of the language to be able to fully appreciate it.

My teachers weren’t kidding when they told me that learning a new language requires an open mind. When you begin, there are so many foreign sounds that your brain just outright rejects it from your consciousness. You need to fight with yourself to allow your brain to flood itself with these unfamiliar sounds, and open your mind up. On a deeper level, understanding the life and customs of a Japanese person, and where they are coming from, makes learning the language and talking to them a whole lot easier.