Dear Matt,

As Japan’s global role shifts from fearsome economic power to lovable cultural hotspot, the tenor of foreigners living in Japan is also in flux. The majority of “foreigners” in Japan are Asian immigrants, of course: those working “immigrant jobs” and living at the margins of society. But if we may narcissistically limit the following conversation to Japan’s immigrants of economic comfort — those like ourselves who are here for more complicated reasons and/or have no obvious way of blending into the dominant racial paradigm — I would argue that the widespread respect for contemporary Japanese culture has summoned a new breed who enthusiastically embrace the Japanese language rather than see it as a noisome barrier for colonial English universalism.

Thanks to more effort, the quality of foreigners’ spoken Japanese is greatly increasing. PhD candidates outshine professors. Granted, the quality of Japanese pedagogy at learning institutions is much better than decades previous: less instruction from White grad students droning lines from textbooks. Most Japanese teachers overseas are now native Japanese, and classes focus on real-life speaking, not reading dead texts (or breaking military codes).

Books like John Nathan’s Japan Unbound give the impression that speaking Japanese to a Japanese person will result in desperate confusion: how can this non-Japanese racial individual speak Japanese? Maybe this was true in the late 1950s, but speaking Japanese fluently in Tokyo is no longer so problematic. Of course, you may have to answer a few preliminary questions about why you speak Japanese, but after those matters are settled you can start communicating without much cultural (or racial) interference.

So now the question is no longer, “can foreign residents speak Japanese?” or “should foreign residents speak Japanese?” but “what kind of Japanese should we new immigrants speak?” This is a pedantic exercise, no doubt, but language will be a primary means of creating an identity within Japanese society. For some, “becoming naturally fluent” will mean speaking as much slang as possible, but I personally fear becoming the analog of a Japanese resident of Brooklyn, New York greeting his friends, “Dawg, whassup?” And there are other issues beyond clunky use of slang: for example, the widespread abuse of the “foreigners do not have to learn to speak politely (keigo)” exemption. But how can we be welcomed linguistically without actually working within the full language?

I know I am asking for trouble, but here are some thoughts on basic guidelines/goals to guide fluent foreign speakers:

• Hyōjungo (standard textbook Japanese) is a best bet, with regional dialects only being used in unforced provincial contexts
• All gairaigo (foreign loan words) must be pronounced as close to the Japanese as possible. DVD should be “DI-BUI-DI” and schedule is “SUKEJUURU”
• No obnoxious use of yonmoji jukugo or other literary expressions in everyday speech
• As little slang and “degraded” verb forms as possible, unless actually talking back to someone using these

Obviously, foreign residents want to show Japanese speakers that they have a strong command of the language, but going overboard may be counterproductive. “Showing off” immediately reminds the listener of your foreign status. You become a foreigner speaking silly Japanese, not an individual communicating. In other words, there should be as much effort to sound like a normal Japanese person as possible. If they aren’t pulling out gruff verb forms or obscure maxims or talking a million miles a minute, neither do you.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this.

— David

PS – Thanks to Adam from Mutantfrog Travelogue for the suggesting we tackle this topic.

Dear David,

Trying to show off will generally backfire, I agree. The difficulty lies in defining where “speaking well” ends and “showing off” begins.

You might say, well, where your language tricks start to impede communication, there’s the line. But is that really a good rule of thumb? Perfect communication with zero friction is a desirable goal in some cases (“911, what is your emergency?”), but speech is often more about performance and display. Sometimes you need to meet crudity with crudity (good-natured argument in an izakaya) or wax especially eloquent (first time meeting your significant other’s parents). If you were always perfectly clear and unambiguous, you would by definition be incapable of telling a joke. You would also probably find it hard to get much of an emotional reaction from people in general.

Hōgen/dialects (along with “slang and degraded word forms”, many of which are actually just Edo/Tokyo hōgen, so same thing) raise similar issues. Your proposed guidelines include the exception “unless talking back to someone using these,” but this is so broad that the actual guidance intended is unclear. It’s not a major issue for you because your Japanese roots are in the Tokyo area, but what advice would you give to someone who has lived in and loved Osaka for five years, can switch fluently between hyōjungo and Osakan dialect, and is now moving permanently to Tokyo? Should they always use hyōjungo now because everyone else around them does? Or should they stick with Osakan, even though that will make them stand out, because that reflects their personal history and their sense of self?

As for yoji jukugo, sure, overuse of these is as tiresome as overuse of dead clichés in English. But surely you can’t be contemplating a personal ban on ever saying 「一石二鳥」 or 「一所懸命」 again. There’s nothing showboaty about these — they’re common, useful phrases. So, again, the problem is not “yoji jukugo” so much as “yoji jukugo that make you sound like a tool”.

Ultimately your guidelines boil down to “Don’t be a wiener.” But that’s not really useful. Who is a wiener on purpose?

Learning a language as an adult takes more than just technical fluency and contextual knowledge. It also involves building a new personality, a “language ego,” to speak it. There is some danger in building a personality before you fully understand how others will perceive it. We all know That Guy who talks in a high-pitched voice and gestures like a girl when speaking Japanese because he learned it from his Japanese girlfriend back home in the States. No-one wants to be That Guy. But on the other hand, if we always err on the side of the unremarkable, aren’t we condemning ourselves to mediocrity and blandness?

Let me play devil’s advocate and ask: exactly what is your beef with a hypothetical Japanese resident of New York saying “Dawg, whassup?” Is it that you don’t think a non-native speaker can ever develop a personality of which “Dawg, whassup?” is a natural, unaffected expression? That these could only ever be set phrases picked up from 50 Cent songs and deployed like awkward raisins in a flavorless textbook English pudding? Why should this be?

Two areas we can definitely agree on are loanwords and keigo. The gray area described above doesn’t really exist for loanwords: if the word contains sounds or sound combinations that don’t exist in Japanese, the person you’re speaking to may be unable to understand the word unless you pronounce it Japanese-style.

(As an aside, the opposite problem often vexes me, too: speaking English, I pronounce “Tokyo” to rhyme with “Soho”, but when it comes to minor place names, what’s best? Should I pronounce 大宮 “Ōmiya” exactly as in Japanese, or Anglicize it to “Oh-miya”?)

Keigo is the new Japanese: many people seem almost proud of not understanding it, dismissing it out of hand as impossible and unnecessary. But if you can speak fluent Japanese but haven’t bothered to learn how to show formal respect, well, folks will draw conclusions. Future generations will look back on keigophobia the same way we do the ridiculous “Oh, no foreigner could ever learn Japanese — it’s far too illogical and mystical for the Western mind” attitudes of yesteryear.

— Matt
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