Commentators are important to a couple things; politics and sports in particular. There are people in these fields who may have not participated in these fields, but they know an awful lot about them. They may be able to break down a game play by play, have and extensive lexicon of specific terms, and a mental library of all the rules and players. But they may not be able to shoot a free throw to save their lives. I mean, Shaq can’t either, but that’s not the point. So, why does this practice of commentating seem to exist for Japanese learners as well? It’s not uncommon for Japanese classes, study sessions and ahem…Japanese study forums to be done almost exclusively in English. One might talk about Japanese, but not actually use or write in it. I don’t know how common that is for other languages, but it seems to be the case for Japanese in particular.
My theory on this is that is the fact that a high number of the Japanese learning community also consists of anime fans/geeks/and scholarly individuals. There is a ton of commentary on anime in English. A ton of memes, Youtube videos, online discussions, social media posts, even Crunchyroll has a comment section for each episode. Anime, along with manga in the US is something that is literarily infused. For most fans, if they aren’t reading a manga or a light novel, they are likely reading subtitles while watching anime, maybe all three. Anime fans on average, probably read more than the average person and often develop a good command of the English language which is also evidenced in their manner of speech which is also much more annunciated than the average person. (Sometimes to aggravatingly annoying levels) But that in turn, tends to create and conundrum. Having a high command of English can often lead to the refusal of giving up the command and control one has in conversations and understanding. Anime fans tend to thrive on their command of English to enjoy, discuss, and debate anime. I see it in my local community every week. So when they start learning Japanese and realize that they will not have the same amount of control and will likely not have it for a very long time, there is a sense of rejection. Relinquishing that command becomes too hard, but speaking about Japanese in English necessarily doesn’t.
With Japanese culture, history and many aspects being so popular, we have a gamut of content translated from Japanese. Everything from videogames to entire news networks like NHK at our fingertips. With same day releases and quick fan-translations, we can have instant access to so many things people in Japan have. Comparatively, it’s a different story in the Philippines when it comes to English content. A good majority of people in the Philippines speak English and relatively well. They are very much into Western movies, music, culture, games, you name it. When speaking to a co-worker while there a couple years back, he stated “We learn English because if we want to watch a new Marvel movie, we don’t get a Tagalog version, not even subtitles, it only comes out in English here, so we have no choice by to learn English if we want to enjoy it”. Can you imagine what it would be like if we were forced to learn Japanese in order to understand and enjoy anime? Some of us actually have to pretend that there is no English or subtitled version available so that we’re not reading our shows.
Not understanding the things you want to understand can be frustrating, not saying what you want to say is frustrating. I think everyone in this forum knows that feeling. In my time interacting with various learners, I’ve met some legitimately intelligent people. People with money, degrees, careers, who made straight A’s and were often good at anything they tried to do. People who were charming and intelligent who had the ability to say things, and have people hang on their every word. Intelligent people, or people who perceive themselves to be intelligent (which there are plenty more of) like to talk about complex subjects such as politics, science, psychology, economics, and culture. But a lot of these people could not even form the most basic sentence in Japanese, not for the lack of trying, but the unwillingness to give up their high command of English. They might have been able to break down a grammar point, explain the cultural nuances of a translated Murakami novel, or talk about their thoughts on は and が in excruciating detail. But the minute they dropped the subtitles, or tried to say “pass me the salt” in Japanese, everything would crumble.
And about that elephant in the room, yes I realize I’m pretty much doing the same thing right now. Giving my thoughts on learning Japanese instead of actually using Japanese or writing in it. That being said, I’m not undermining the importance commentary on Japanese language and culture in English. It’s very much necessary in order to bridge the gap of understanding. Without it, I think so many people would never even discover their passion for Japanese language and culture. But in the English speaking world, it becomes all to easy to immerse in things like anime and Japanese culture without having to learn the language. And it’s just not native English speakers, people whose second language is English often times fall into the same place, considering that they can also easily enjoy Japanese anime and videogames translated into English. The constant exposure to Japanese language and subtitled media almost gives a sense of knowing the language without actually knowing it.
I’ll close with this story that actually happened to me once to illustrate my point. I was once in a clinical study many years ago, was in between jobs. I was quiet and kept to myself, but I wasn’t anti-social either, and it was a good opportunity to catch up on things, so I brought a Japanese newspaper along with me. Within my vicinity, a group of guys who I very much knew were monolingual started talking about language and language acquisition. They talked about it for a good 10-15 minutes. While they went on about their thoughts and opinions on language learning, I kicked back in my bed and was reading Japanese newspaper. They were in my vicinity, they saw that I was reading a Japanese newspaper, a few of them had also heard me speak Spanish to the staff before. Do you know what they asked the only person in the area who actually knew another language and was studying another one? Nothing.
November was a consistent month for immersion, along with a great travesty;I have turned on the subtitles. Well, the Japanese subtitles actually. You didn’t think I’d actually revert to English subtitles did you? They have certainly helped in understanding more, although sometimes I do get the feeling that I’m reading my shows instead of watching them. It’s probably something that I will use on and off seeing that listening is still my weakest skill. Didn’t read as much as I would have liked, which I intended to originally do, but I got a bigger Kindle to remedy my aging eyes. Watching (深夜食堂, Shinya shokudō) which a whole lot of Japanese learners seem to like. I like it quite a bit too and it’s a good break from all the anime, especially Cyberpunk: Edge Runners. My advice, don’t watch Edgerunners dinnertime, but do watch shinya shokudou at dinnertime, if not it will make you hungry.