Art and Science

Whenever the name Leonardo da Vinci is mentioned, we hear the statement that he was at once an artist and scientist.  The statement is certainly not untrue; but the expression is anachronistic.  Simply put, art was in his days science, and science was art.  Both concerned the accurate visual inspection of nature, as I wrote earlier, viz., Leonardo's Eye.  The distinction between art and science is a concept developed later in the 17th century. Even Newton’s discovery of gravity wa, at least anecdotally, his bodily experience of a falling apple striking his head.  

In the seminal study by James Ackerman, my lifelong mentor, he discusses the dictum Ars Sine Scientia Nihil Est, attributed to the French architect, Jean Migno, consulted in 1399 by the builders of the Milan Cathedral planned in the Gothhic style then unfamiliar to Italians. Although the statement may appear to mean that art of building  or architecture is naught without the technical knowledge, i.e., engineering, in the diction of the time and the context of the statement, it meant something close to the reverse.  It meant that the skillful craft of physically constructing a building is incomplete without the understanding of the geometrical order as its intellectual basis and manifested in the design.   

02.24.18

Translation is Adaptation

Translation in its basic meaning is rendering a text written in one language into an equivalent text in another.  It aspires to fidelity but this can mean truthfulness to the form of the text or its sense, and the sense can mean the text’s meaning or its aura; and, furthermore, the exact nature of the sense the translated text means to convey depends on the judgment of the translator.  

A translation may be passably successful but rarely, if ever, even adequately successful.  A translation at best only approximates the original text; it necessarily transforms and distorts; it unfailingly fails to capture the real character of the original text.  As Italians express so tersely, traduttore traditore. 

This is inevitable in so far as languages differ in their constitution, not only lexically but, more importantly, sonically — lexically because a word in one language differs from a corresponding word in another language in its semiotic territory and attendant connotations, and sonically because each language possesses its own particular sound, rhythm, and cadence.  Translating poetry is, for this reason, an ever unbeatable task.  The aforementioned Italian dictum, which may be translated as “translator is a traitor,” may be more naturally rendered as “translation is treacherous,” but in either case, the sense of the pun is lost as is the peculiarly Italian cadence.  

The problem is inherent in the art or science of translation, true, but more accurately and importantly it is that we are misled to thinking of translation as an effort to achieve equivalence just because the languages are all equally verbal.  But, rather, two languages are actually like two different mediums.  A painting redone in engraving is not a painting but an engraving, and they are appreciated and evaluated accordingly; even a watercolor copy of an oil painting is a different animal altogether.  A clearer example is a novel made into a film; the filmed novel never really reproduces the novel because words are abstract while pictorial images are inexorably concrete.  A sentence like “A woman stood at the window, looking down on her garden and beyond the fence” will have to be photographed in a film with a woman of a certain age and constitution, costumed in a particular style standing in a specific posture by a window of certain design, shot either from the back or from a distance outside facing the window.”  There is no such an indefinite entity as a woman, a window, a garden, or a tree in photographic representation.  A novel rendered as a film is an adaptation, even though many spectators expect it to be a faithful rendering almost like a translation; it should bear a title different from that of the original novel and described with the phrase “adapted from” or “based on.”  

A poem in translation must be understood, too, as a rendering that captures only some of the sense of the original.  Ezra Pound’s rendering of Chinese poems into English is far from faithful but show that he understood that translation can only aspire to very rough approximation.  He knew the truth that Translation is Adaptation. 

09.01.17

Words falsify and mislead

Language is never totally truthful.  That is because words are abstract; they generalize.  So, singly, they categorize, and categories never fully represent reality. Words are necessary for communicating, and they are useful.  Formulated into phrases and sentences, words are modified for greater precision.  And, yet, any verbal statement, spoken or written, never fully expresses what is in the mind of its author, not to speak of her or his sentiment.  We understand each other approximately, and that suffices by and large.  But there are moments when we say in retort: “You got me wrong; that’s not what I meant at all.”

Words are approximations, and they are incapable of representing perceptions and emotions even remotely with any accuracy; they falsify reality and, therefore, can deceive us and mislead us.   The clearest case in point is color.  We say “red,” and every listener conjures up a different color.  Even more specific names given to red — scarlet, crimson, ruby, garnet, strawberry, tomato, poppy, incarnadine, etc. — signify different colors for different minds.  Even the same tint, under different light conditions, is perceived differently, as is also when the same tint is applied on differently textured surfaces.  All words similarly lack precision.

Take any common noun, say, tree, grass, mountain, street, skyscraper, salad, face, window, etc., or any adjective like warm, sad, clear, solid, sandy, tall, gorgeous, hungry, etc.; they all lack specificity.  They are all adequate in use and yet imprecise in relation to the concrete things or phenomena they purport to describe.  Certainly, words are used in combination with other words which provide their context. When spoken rather written, they are moreover accompanied by other semiotic signs, such as vocal tones, interjections, and facial and bodily gestures.  Still, even the most precise description conceivable of anything whatsoever is always open to interpretations, for it never replaces the experience of the reality it describes.  What we say don’t always say what we really mean.  We can never fathom from what someone says what’s in her or his mind.  More or less, yes, but never totally. 

But the wonders of the imprecision inherent in words are their capacity to suggest and evoke which impels us to write poetry or at least rhapsodize poetically as we all can even if we are not poets.  

Similarly, and even more significantly, imprecision inherent in words is exactly what gives us rein to create figures of speech and exercise rhetoric as orators well know.  A figure of speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, synecdoche, and irony, characteristically does not say what it says, understood literally. Taken literally, a hyperbole is a blatant lie.  A mother tells her child: “I told you a hundred times; no, you can’t go out in the rain to play,”  To this the child might rightly counter: “But, mom, you said only five times.”  Hyperbole is possible precisely because words in their imprecision allow latitude in their meaning and use.  If we say so-and-so is a fool, we know that he is though not really; it is true and untrue.   A metaphor says at once what is and is not; speaking of a scorching heat wave, we are saying the heat feels like scorching which is saying that it does not scorch.  

Rhetoric is an art of saying the truth by lying, or, conversely, lying to suggest the truth.  Journalism deploys it, and political orations thrive in it.  But in our everyday language, too, metaphors abound. Black and white used in discussing race grossly misrepresent the reality that the skin color is a spectrum rather than categories.  The matter of gender discussed under the rubric of masculine and feminine is similarly misconstrued by these verbal categories.    In our intensely verbalized culture, we easily forget that any utterance expresses only a small part of our  reality.  Truth must sought and found in lived experience. 

Janglish Panglish

Every language has imported words in its lexicon. But the golden palm for the most adept and abundant adoption of English words goes to the Japanese language.  This is a distinct linguistic feature of the Japanese, and, as students of the language know from experience, learning Japanized English words can be unusually challenging. The American occupation of Japan after World War II may have something to do with this peculiar tendency; the American domination of the world in the second half of the last century may be a partial explanation. But it is culturally more deeply rooted and has a longer tradition as the following examination of English words in the Japanese lexicon demonstrates.

Open any Japanese magazine or newspaper, you will find plenty of gairaigo (words of foreign derivation), or loan words. They stand out on the printed page because by convention they are written in katakana.

Some of them are derived from German, -- noiro'oze (Neurose, neurosis), te'ema (Thema, theme), enerugisshu (energisch, energetic); from French -- anke'eto (inquête, questionnaire), dessan (dessin, sketch), aramo'odo (a la mode); from Dutch -- chokki (jak, vest), sukoppu (schop, shovel); from Portuguese -- botan (botão, button), biro'odo (veludo, velvet); and there are other derivations.

But foreign words in Japanese are overwhelmingly English. You may see a smattering of them in articles on any subject, words like nyuusu, marason, horumon, konkuri’ito, derike'eto, sense'eshon, chaamingu, shimpuru, and shanpuu, which are easily recognized, and those which are a bit more challenging: ton'neru (tunnel) , sarada (salad), sutoraiki (strike), erebe'etah (elevator), shatsu (shirt), raburetaa (love letter), barubu (bulb or valve), and sekushii (sexy). In writings on fashion, cooking, sports, the arts, and more recently, of course, the computer, English words sometimes overtake the text. Look at something like this, for example, describing a knit top (English words in italics):

Ha'inekku ra'in to chiisana botan ga kyuuto na se'etaa wa romanchikku na rabendaa-iro de bodi zentai wo messhu-nitto de matometa pure'in deza'in ga furesshu sonomono, gazen nao na rukku desu.

Loosely translated, it reads:

The sweater with a high neckline and cute little buttons has the bodice in Romantic lavender color, wholly unified by the mesh knit into a plain design; here is freshness itself, absolutely now in look.

Discounting particles, that is, prepositions and conjunctions, the text contains 19 words, mostly nouns and adjectives, and fourteen of these are English-derived words. 

This is an extreme example, of course, but the invasion is nevertheless real if also farcical. Purists decry, as do critics of franglais, espanglès, and Denglisch, that it is corrupting the language. We must take note, however, that the anglicization is entirely lexical. The syntax remains unmistakably Japanese. That's why the text does not quite make sense to a reader without some knowledge of the Japanese grammar even if she or he could identify the loan words. Consider the reverse situation where the English translation above is infused with Japanese words:

The sweater with a takai eriguri and kawairashii little buttons has the do'obu in Romantic fuji-iro, sukkari unified by the amime-ami into a kazarikenonai design, here is sugasugashisa itself, gazen now in look.

Alarming as it may seem, such an influx of foreign words is not unprecedented. Chinese words flooded the Japanese language in Nara Period, as the Norman invasion of England similarly swamped English with Latin-derived French vocabulary.

Now, a closer examination of this sample text demonstrates that the loan words are basically of two kinds, which I identify as Japanglish and Janglish.

On the one hand, there are words used for effect, words that are meant to give an air of Western stylishness. “Furesshu”sounds more trendy than “sawayaka” and “rabendaa” somehow more fashionable than “fujiiro.”  It is felt that ”kyuuto” is cuter than “kawairashii.” So, fashion writers also speak of “sofuto na ori’ibuguri’in no shiruku burausu” that is to say, “soft olivegreen silk blouse.” They remind us of Miss Piggy who likes to point to herself and coquettishly say “Moi?” Affectation is the name of the game, and the Meiji Japan popularized a word, still in currency, that is affected in the same way in itself and at the same time precisely described this kind of Westernizing modishness. The word is ha'ikara and its etymology was “high collar” of the Western gentleman. 

These are English words, then, that have been deposited in the Japanese text like foreign tourists, fashionable, often faddish, at times freakish. I choose to call these words Japanglish.  English is not quite together with Japanese.

Then, apart from these there are English and other foreign words that have settled in and become assimilated in the language because they had to. These are words for which there exist no Japanese equivalents. They arrived with Western science (ami'ibaa, neon, me'etoru), medicine (korera, insurin, porio), technology (enjin, mo'otaa, pisuton, ke'eburukaa), sports (tenisu, badominton, suki'i), fashion, cuisine, the arts, and other components of the Western cultural baggage (miruku, kisu, sutandaado, shisutemu), unless a substitute Japanese neologism was created such as yakyu for baseball, haino'o for rücksack (though there is also “rikkusakku”), nyuuryoku for input, museifushugi for anarchy, and the older word katsudo'o for moving pictures, and sekken for shabon (from Portuguese sabão, used today only for blown soap bubbles).

So, these were once exotic visitors but in time settled in for good, and I designate them Janglish to distinguish them from Japanglish.  In the sample text, se'etaa, romanchikku, and deza'in are assimilated English words. Even without Japanglish words, fashion writing still needs plenty of Janglish words: kaadigan, pi'itahpan karaa (Peter Pan collar), puriitsu (pleats), suutsu (suits), ribon, berubottomu, sasshu and beruto (belt), etc., and in cooking we cannot avoid fra'ipan (frying pan), renji (gas range), katsuretsu (cutlet, actually Wienerschnitzel), tomatoso'osu, sandoicchi, kyabetsu (cabbage), bataa (butter, not batter), etc.

There was, as in any language, importation through the ages whenever there was an intercultural encounter. So, certain imports, some from pre-Meiji era and others more recent, have become “naturalized” to the extent they sound Japanese.  The undershirt worn with kimono is jiban, and it is from Portuguese gibão; and zubon (trousers) is said to have been derived from the French jupon (underskirt). But this is suspicious because the word, related to jupe (skirt), meant a tunic in the 15^th century, from the Arabic jubbah, which in turn generated gibão. Tabako (tobacco) is from Portuguese (tabaco) but the old-fashioned long-stemmed pipe, kiseru, said to be from Cambodian khsier, sounds indigenous in opposition to paipu (pipe). There is the candy made of crystallized sugar in the shape of the Roman gladiator's spiked ball reduced to pea size; it's called conpeito'o, written in kanji (gold-rice-candy). Its etymology is confetto, a cognate of confectionary; and sugar-coated almonds distributed at weddings in Italy are still known as confetti whereas in America today they refer to paper flakes such as thrown about during carnival in Italy (in place of candies).  Flour for making noodles (udon) is udonko, but the more refined kind for baking is called merikenko, that is, American flour, as the wharf where foreign ships arrived was called meriken-hatoba.  Old workers call pulleys go'ohei after dock workers who christened them thus watching American sailors operating them shout “go ahead.” This is no joke; and it's not folk etymology, either. These words, as Japanese readers will recognize, sound almost native. 

There are certain Japanized import words with slightly or even considerably altered meaning from the original English words. Puuru (pool), for example, is specifically the swimming pool, taoru (towel) is only for terry cloth towels (which is Western) as opposed to plain cotton tenugui.  If you ask for a towel you might be told: “Sorry we don't have a towel but will tenugui do?” We hit a sutoraiku in baseball but walk with a placard in sutoraiki.” Madamu is a madam but only of a bar or saloon. Manshon (mansion) is a multistory housing project. Taitoru is not any title but movie subtitle. Comical examples of these words with modified meanings occur among Japanese tourists in America who ask for a mo'oningu saabisu (breakfast special) at the hotel and are directed to a chapel (morning service) -- “Do they serve breakfast in a chapel at this hotel?” They shop for a tore'enaa (training wear), and are directed to the trainer at the gym -- “Sorry, fellas, trainers are not for sale.” I'd like to think of these twisted words as Panglish. “Oh, the pangs!”

There are Panglish words that are characterized by truncation, retaining only a part of the original word.  Here are my favorites amputees:

paama from paamanento (permanent wave)

ohbah from o'obaako'oto (overcoat)

apaato for apartment house

depaato for department store

suupaa for supermarket (not superintendent)

infure and defure for inflation and deflation

interi for intelligentsia

sutando from standard lamp for floor lamp and also desk lamp

suto for sutoraiki (but not for sutoraiku)

Then, there are coinages that combine English words in new combinations Japanese style; they read like rebus.

sarariiman (salaried man; wage earner, office worker)

o'orudomisu (old miss; old maid, spinster)

bakkumiraa (back mirror; rear view mirror)

o'orubakku (all back; hair combed back straight)

But most befuddling of all is the art of telescoping for abbreviation that may seem arbitrary but is quite in accordance with the Japanese phonetic rules. The most recent is dejikame (digital camera).  But in Taisho Japan there were moga (modangaaru, modern girl, the flapper) and her counterpart mobo (modern boy). Well established by now and prevalent are these examples:

zenesuto from zeneraru sutoraiku (general strike)

masukomi from masu komyunike'eshon (mass communication)

minisuka from miniskaato (miniskirt)

sekohan from sekondo hando (second-hand)

e'akon from e'akondeshonaa (air conditioner)

basukon from ba'asu kontoro'oru (birth control)

waapuro from waado purosessaa (word processor)

pasokon from paasonaru kompyuutaa

These, I claim, are veritable Chanponese. The prize winner among these is sekuhara from sexual harrassment. Though totally inappropriate, it cannot stop making me laugh. Seku is to fret; hara is belly. Chanponese, indeed.

I don't believe anyone can deny that the versatility and virtuosity of the Japanese to absorb and internalize foreign words through the nation's history is short of miraculous. . . well, staggering at any rate. Chanponese only demonstrates what is known as syncretism in Japan's cultural evolution. The new never outstrips the old; it is always another layer on top of earlier layers, all smoothly Japanized, Just consider. How is e'akon adapted to the shōji-screened naturally ventilated Japanese house? 

Transcribed from Champon 07.18.02 with restored typography

Habit, Custom, Costume

The clothes we wear day-to-day, that is to say, habitually, can be called habits for this reason, as are the habits of nuns and monks and, for that matter, uniforms of all kinds; but we don’t customarily wear costumes; these we wear theatrically when we present ourselves at special events as when we perform on stage or in arena, parade in festivals, or else act a clown or go out “trick or treat.”  But the clothes of an exotic culture, worn as costumes, are more habits than costumes for those in their own culture since they wear them habitually.  Conversely, our everyday wear is a costume to the extent that, choosing what to wear and not to wear, we are conscious that what we wear carries in the eyes of others who see it a certain image and therefore a particular significance. Clothes make the man and the woman, and the world’s a stage where we are willy-nilly players donning costumes to fit their roles.  A new dress always feels like a costume but grows less so as as we get accustomed to it repeatedly worn; when it gets out of fashion it again feels like a costume, and when it is threadbare from continuous wear we don’t wear it out on the street because it feels as out of place as a costume representing an impoverished, unless it is a pair of jeans torn by design and in fashion to be worn customarily.  So, a costume, if worn habitually, even if trendy is only a custom wear, ready-made or custom-made. 

Diction defines Character

In any language diction defines the speaker’s character because the speaker has a choice in the way of phrasing what she or he would like to say according to the notion of propriety or appropriateness in the context of the speech uttered, for example:

Let’s go.

Shall we go?

Are we ready to go?

We’d better be going.

We are going.

C’mon, move!

OK, fellas, get going.

For each of these variants we can imagine the situation and to some extent the speaker’s character.  In Japanese the speaker’s diction defines more precisely her or his gender, age and social position as well as the situation, using only lexical variants, that is, without changing the syntax. Consider, for example, this dialogue:

  I’m hungry.  Shall we go for lunch?   Yeah, let’s. I’m starving.

In Japanese one can say it this way:

Hara ga hetta, hirumeshi kuini ikôka.  Un, sô dana, pekopekoda.

   腹が減った、昼飯喰いに行こうか。うん、そうだな、ぺこぺこだ。

Here, the speakers are both clearly men, and the subject (understood) is unmistakably “俺  ore,” though it is unstated, only implied,  Subject pronouns are often omitted in Japanese precisely because the diction makes the pronominal reference clear enough.   

            

Alternatively, the translation of the above sample sentence might be:

Onaka ga suita wa, ohiru tabeni ikimashôka. E’e, sône, onaka pekopeko.

    お腹がすいたわ、お昼食べに行きましょうか。ええ、そうね、お腹ぺこぺこ。

Here, the interlocutors are women, with “atashi あたし” as the understood subject. 

If the relationship between the two women is formal, a more polite form has to be adopted, and the fact of hunger is elided because the mention of hunger is a bit vulgar, as it might be in English as well:

Are you perhaps ready for lunch.  Yes, thank you. 

So, in Japanese:

Soro soro ochûshoku ni mairimashôka.  Ha-a, dômo.

    そろそろお昼食に参りましょうか。はあ、どうも。

Here the speaker is a woman; the respondent is a man; a woman is likely to answer  simply: E-e えぇ。

The greatest hurdle in learning Japanese is the grammatical rule governing the diction differentiated by gender, age, and class. 

Japanese is a language which embodies a complex semiotics of hierarchy.  So, the simple imperative, “Let’s go,” can take these variant forms without modifying the basic meaning:

Ikô. 行こう (standard)

Ikimashô.  行きましょう(polite, feminine)

Mairimashô.  参りましょう(very polite)

 Ikube’e.  行くべえ (rustic)

It gets even more complicated with “Come here” because involves the relative social positions of the interlocutors involved:  

Koko ni kina.  ここに来な。

Kocchi e koi.  こっちへ来い。

Kocchi ni oide.  こっちにおいで。

Koko ni kitamae. ここに来たまえ。

Koko ni kitekure.  ここに来てくれ。

 Koko ni kinasai. ここに来なさい

Kocchi ni kiya’agare. こっちへ来やぁがれ。

Kochira ni irasshai. こちらにいらっしゃい。

Kochirani irasshai na. 　こちらにいらっしゃいな。

Kochira ni oide kudasai. こちらにおいで下さい。

Kochira ni oide kudasaimase. こちらにおいで下さいませ。

Kochira ni okoshi kudasai. こちらにおこしください。 

Kochirani dôzo.  こちらにどうぞ。(This way please)

Each of these expressions defines the character of the speaker, the social relationship of the speakers to each other, and the circumstance in which the statement is made, and this is only a partial list.  The complexity comes naturally to the native speaker of this curious, marvelous language.  

Listening to Japanese dialogues in a play or reading them, and imagining writing lines to give the characters, I became keenly aware of the remarkable pliability we have in Japanese in defining a character by diction. 

Diarist's Diary

I keep a diary; I have been writing diaries over several decades.  As I write daily entries, I had this thought.  Whatever actually had occurred but was left unrecorded in the diary,  deliberately, negligently, or totally inadvertently — an event, an experience, or a thought -- can only be understood by the readers, other than the diarist herself or himself, as never happened, unless it could be deduced otherwise from other writings -- letters, memos, news reports, someone else’s writings, or whatever.  A diarist can conceal but also fabricate; but what is the point of keeping a diary unless it commits itself to actuality, at least as best as its author possibly could.

You know?

A young man said to me, “Yeah, I kinda know, you know, but I don’t know, you know, if I really know, you know, maybe, you know, I only think I know, you know, um, I don’t know, you know, ’know what I mean?”

I said, “I know, you don’t have to tell me."

綴り方

文章を書く事を、通常作文と云いますけど、あたしが子供の頃の小学校では綴り方と云ったものです。綴るとは繋ぎ合わせる事。有り合わせの布地を縫い合わせて綴れ衣。それで、言葉を連ね継ぎ合わせて、文章が出来あがるのですが、実際、あたしは、文章を書くのにすらすらと行かず、言葉の選択に気を使い一言ずつ吟味して繋ぎ合わせるもので、その経過を表すのは,［書く」よりも［綴る」の方が、ぴったりとしていて好きです。

Foliage

日本語に、英語の　foliage 　に値する言葉のないけど、これは何故だろう。

The word foliage is defined as “leaves of a plant, collectively.” Physically, it is a collection of leaves of the same tree, shrub, or plant of any kind with leaves. Visually, it is the entity in which leaves are not individually recognized. So, in a distant view, foliage is a total effect, a mass of color without individual leaves, like clouds, as any landscape artist draws or paints without thinking -- a purely optical phenomenon.  This was first observed and recognized in the West by Leonardo da Vinci, who drew the foliage of distant trees as a blur of quick horizontal strokes in his pen-and-ink landscape drawing of the Arno Valley, which he signed and dated (5 August 1482).  Chinese painters understood this earlier, first by Fan Kuan in his  renowned Travelers by Streams and Mountains (ca. 1000) and in subsequent centuries; and Japanese artists imitated them much later.

So, it befuddles me that Chinese and Japanese lack the word that corresponds to foliage in their vocabulary.  Both the Chinese and Japanese dictionaries give us the phrase that corresponds to the English dictionary definition: collection of leaves, i.e., 群叶 qún yè, or 群葉 gunyô, or else, simply leaves.

Foliage is called a collective noun.  But it differs from those collective nouns that refer to groups of items which are physically so identified with their components distinctly recognized, like flock (of sheep), herd (of cows), gaggle (of geese), school (of fish), fleet (of ships), etc. Then, there are those in which the word specifically refers to the whole as a unit or mass and blurs the individual components, examples of which are litter, faggot, plumage, bouquet, etc., and their Japanese counterparts give us definitions.  Furniture is expressed as 家具一式 kagu isshiki, or literally, a collection of pieces of furniture; and it’s similarly 一應家具 yi ying jia jú in Chinese.

Spring foliage in Japanese comes out as 春の青葉 haru no aoba, i.e., green leaves of the spring; autumn foliage as  秋の紅葉 aki no kôyô, i.e., red autumn leaves.

So, there is no word in Japanese that corresponds to the English word foliage, and I wonder why.  This comment is inconclusive; but I’m a bit bothered.

てめえのこったぁ

面白いですね。「てめえ」は「手前」の変形ですが，手前とは目の前の事。そういう訳で自分の事も手前、話している相手も手前。「手前ども」と言えば謙遜、で「手前の渋っ面」といえば軽蔑。相手を見下げた時には，「てまえ」が「てめえ」になりますけど、それでも、 おめえもてめえ、あっしもてめえ。どっちがてめえだ、「文句はてめえがいってるんだ、てめえは黙ってひっこんでろ」だ。「お」を付けりゃ，茶道の御手前。「わい」も同じ様、自分をさしたり相手をさしたり。

No way whatsoever translating this into English, no sir.

Studying Languages without Learning

Studying a foreign language without learning it? It is like embarking on a trip and forgetting once on the way about the destination so that you can pour all your attention on the scenes, scenic or otherwise, and absorb them as fully as you possibly can. For most people taking up a foreign language for study, the motivation is utilitarian. You need it for one reason or another; the idea is to learn it so that you can at least read it, speak it, and possibly write it. It is a charming idea to know Italian in preparation for a trip to Florence; it is a generous gesture to try to learn Spanish to be friends with your new neighbors; it is an admirable thought to want to read Goethe in German, Flaubert in French, and Pushkin and Chekhov in Russian. It is a matter of responsibility to learn a particular language in order to read untranslated documents necessary for a research work. After a few years of study, you may be gratified with the result of your study. But, short of a degree of mastery, the effort is felt to have been in vain. Dropping the study after a while, unable to go further, you feel disappointed and even humiliated.

But studying a new language has a benefit of its own apart from achieving any pragmatic outcome. Language lessons, by and large, demand an enormous amount of time in building the vocabulary; but learning words is a mechanical affair which can be done on your own with a dictionary and flash cards. The essential part of language study is the mastery of the syntax rather than the lexicon. That is harder but more rewarding. Studying the syntax also exposes the semiotic boundaries of words unique to the particular language. For example, the English word “sister” covers two semiotic realms in Japanese which distinguishes “ane” (older sister) from "imôto" (younger sister) and lacks a single designation like "sister." Conversely, one Japanese word “yubi” identifies the “finger” and the “toe,” and “oyayubi” (literally, parent finger) covers two English terms “thumb” and “big toe” Every language has words that are untranslatable -- in the sense that there is no corresponding single term in another language, like “die Stimmung” and “l’esprit.” It’s the exposure to the syntax and semiotics of a new language that necessarily gives the learner a glimpse into some aspect of the culture of which that language is a part, a sort of kink in the way of thinking as seen from one’s own mother tongue; we learn in our encounter with a very different way of formulating ideas linguistically a possibility of a different way of thinking and, therefore, of viewing the world. In turn, it makes us aware of the peculiarities of our own culture which we readily take as unquestionably natural. Even if you dropped the study after a few weeks into the course, you come to realize an alternative way of thinking without having learned to use that language even passably. Even the basic understanding of the tones in Chinese as signifiers and the phonetic detail like the French “t,” which is not aspirated as the English “t” is, can be a revelation if we manage to stop and think about it. More removed the foreign language is from one’s own, say as Chinese, Arabic, and Swahili are to the English language speaker, the greater the benefit of becoming enlightened about the different modes of thinking. In order to gain an insight into another culture, you must study the language of that culture for what it is, not toward learning it to put into use.

Studying a subject for its own sake free of its utilitarian end is, indeed, the humanistic nature of the liberal arts education; it may appear to be a useless pursuit but in reality studying without necessarily trying to learn is as valuable as studying in order to learn. For a further observation on this matter, see my essay: The Usefulness of Usselessness.

母音調和 Vowel Harmony

日本語が、トルコ語、蒙古語、ツングース語とともに、アルタイ系で, 遠くはウラル系のフィンランド語やハンガリー語と縁がある、とする根拠のひとつに 上代日本語に顕著に見られる 母音調和が屢々あげられる。近代日本語では、一単語に同じ母音を連続繰り返す形を、広い意味で母音調和と呼ばれる。古い語彙とされる体の部分に例が多い。例えば、頭、鼻、頬、耳、喉、肩、肘、乳、腹、尻、腿、体、などがある。他に、父、母、爺、婆、男、男の子、山、川、中、外、魚、逆さまがある。

Vowel harmony, seen conspicuously in Ancient Japanese, is often cited as one evidence that the Japanese language belongs to the Altaic language group which includes Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungus and is remotely remotely related to the Ural languages like Finnish and Hungarian. In modern Japanese, the form of repeating the same vowel in one word is, broadly speaking, called vowel harmony. It is abundant in the age-old vocabulary of words referring to body parts, for example, atama (head), hana (nose), hoho (cheek), mimi (ear), nodo (throat), kata (shoulder), hiji (elbow), chichi (breast), hara (belly), shiri (buttock), momo (thigh) and karada (body). We also find chichi (father), haha (mother), jiji (grandfather, old man), baba (grandfather, old woman), otoko (man), otokonoko (boy), yama (mountain), kawa (river), naka (inside), soto (outside), sakana (fish), and sakasama (upside down) are other examples.

一般に、日本語の語彙には、やたらと同じ母音の連続が多い。片仮名に始めて、あからさま、宝、殆ど、泥棒、響き、石鹸、進む、映る、など例は後をつきない。日本語の又別の特徴の擬音語の多数が母音調和をなす。しょぼしょぼ、ざんざん、ぐずぐず、ひりひり、がらがら、むずむず、などなど。

Aside from these words of older vintage, Japanese lexicon is, in general, inordinately rich in words with a single vowel repeated one after another: katakana, to start out with, then, akarasama (self-evident), takara (treasure), hotondo (almost), dorobô (thief), hibiki (echo), sekken (soap), susumu (to proceed), utsuru (to be reflected), etc., ad nauseum. Repeated vowels are rampant in another Japanese feature -- onomatopoeic words: shoboshobo (as of drizzle, or low-spirited), zanzan (as of a downpour), guzuguzu (as of dawdling), hirihiri (as of a stinging pain), garagara (as of rattling noise), muzumuzu (as of itching and impatience).

ウラル、アルタイ系の言語と日本語に、ある程度の統語、構文的な共通点があるとしても、語彙の類似は全くない様です。母音調和も、同一母音連続の語句、文章が構成出来るのは、まさに日本語唯一の特徴ではないでしょうか。例えば、
「東京と京都の男の子の行動」
「農村と漁村の情報」
「男の心、少女の想像、子供の頃の事」
「今日の午後そこの倉庫の構造の状況もろもろ所望の所」
おもろい、おもろい。

There are certain syntactical similarities between Ural-Altaic languages and Japanese; but there is no significant lexical correspondences. It is apparently uniquely Japanese that long phrases and sentences can be formed with one and only one vowel in repetition. For example:
-- Tokyo to Kyoto no otokonoko no kôdô (Boys’conduct in Tokyo and Kyoto)
-- Nôson to gyoson no jôhô (News of the farming and fishing villages)
-- Otoko no kokoro, shôjo no sôzô, kodomo no koro no koto
(Man’s heart, the girl’s imagination, an event in the days of my childhood)
-- Kyô no gogo soko no sôko no kôzô no jôkyô moromoro shomô no tokoro
(Requested this afternoon all the structural conditions of that warehouse)
It’s a lot of fun - Japanese.

I miss you

There is no way to say “I miss you” in Japanese -- quite that way -- as saying “I love you” in direct translation sounds very false. This has to do with the inherent passivity in the use of verbs in the Japanese language. It is significant that the expression of love is more naturally stated from the point of view of the recipient than that of the giver. “Do you love me?” can be rendered as 「あたしのこと 好き？」「僕の事愛してくれる？」-- something like “Do you have affection for me?” and “Will you have love for me?” So, “I missed you” comes out as “It’s been a long time; it was so lonesome” -- 久しぶりね。淋しかったわ。It so happens that in French we don’t say “Je te manque” but “Tu me manques” meaning you are missed, you are missing from me, even though one can say “Je t’aime.” So, it is in Italian: “mi manchi,” and in German: “Du fehlst mir.” The English language is direct, and when an oblique expression is attempted, it sounds less than honest, as in the excuse “Mistakes were made,” and “Stuff happens.”

Arguably

More and more I see people writing "arguably" when they mean "unarguably." "Arguably" means "open to debate," and if one means "indisputably" the word is unarguably "unarguably."

Disabled toilet

Disabled Toilet is the sign that appears on certain doors of public toilets in London. I took it to mean at first that the toilet is out of order; but what it meant was actually the toilet for the handicapped, or disabled, persons, not the toilet that is disabled. This is like the road sign that reads "Deer Crossing," which I always find amusing and shout, "Where, where? I don't see any, do you?"

Epigram

I am better at writing epigrams than extended expositions. Following Michel de Montaigne, I developed a taste for brevity; after all, I come from the land of haiku. But I also chose to be tutored by those literary women like Lady Sei Shônagon and Madame de Sévigné who elevated mundane observations into a literary genre, and for wit and irony I aspire to copy myself after Wilde and Shaw -- however feebly.