Japanese

How I went from never speaking Japanese in my life to speaking with my Japanese dad 100% of the time… in one year.

My father is from Chiba, Japan, and he never spoke a word of Japanese to me until I was 20 years-old. People are often surprised to find out that I never spoke Japanese with my dad growing up. Just Samurai-sounding English. People assume that because I’m half Japanese, I should speak it fluently. The only Japanese I was exposed to was misunderstandings because of my dad’s thick Samurai-English accent. A common one was, instead of “In Japan we eat RICE” he says “In Japan we eat LICE.” So how did I go from only hearing Samurai-English with my dad to now only speaking Japanese with him? It wasn’t “practice, practice, practice”, like most people would tell you. The answer is… a clear goal and a clear process. Seriously, when I started studying Japanese in a University when I was 19, I was VERY clear about what my goals were. They were clear and did not require hours and hours of practice and memorizing vocab daily. I studied for 8 months in the USA, and then 2 months in Japan. Now I speak with my "Otosan" (father) 100% of the time and we get along great. We have a lot in common and love to talk about Japanese stuff.
People often ask me, “What are you going to do with a degree in Japanese?” My reply is simply, “Speak Japanese.” My point is, our “career” or “occupation” should not be dictated by what society tells us is a good idea, or makes a lot of money. My plan was originally to go to the University of North Carolina to get a medical degree and eventually become a dentist. But when I got there, I was so unhappy with what I was learning. I wanted to study East Asian culture, music, and languages!!! And that’s what I did… because I WANTED to. Now I can go anywhere in Japan by myself and visit old friends, relatives, family, and even get a job because I decided to learn something USEFUL. That’s the beauty of language learning. Learning and getting an education is a joy for me, not an economic need.

Japanese is my fourth language, and is my most fluent foreign language.

My GOALs in Japan:

GOAL: To sound like a native Japanese speaker in 2 months

PROCESS: I met as many new people as I possibly could within the 2 months that I had. Over the course of my 2 months in Japan, I traveled to a total of 9 different Prefectures and made more than 200 new Japanese friends. The benefits of meeting many new people are INVALUABLE. When we meet someone new, we naturally try to give them our BEST first impression. This human nature applies in language as well. In terms of language, we always try to make ourselves look and sound as fluent as possible in the language. When we get used to speaking to just a few people, we develop a very limited and comfortable vocabulary that we only use with that small group. Thus, the more people we meet in our target language, the more fluent we become. It’s the single fastest way to sound native in any language. I experienced this first hand in Japan and Korea.  

GOAL: To surpass my Korean level of proficiency in Japanese

PROCESS: This is where comparing different languages becomes useful. I studied Korean before Japanese, so I was able to see how they are very similar in grammar and also vocabulary. If you studied a foreign language before, comparing that language with your new target language can be very useful if done right. After I studied my first few languages and deconstructed the grammar system, I began to realize all languages have linguistic properties that are strikingly similar to each other. That’s why learning 3, 5, or 7 languages becomes easier and easier.

GOAL: To focus on mastering key phrases commonly used in Japanese.

PROCESS: This one is simple: I Google searched: “100 most frequently used Japanese phrases” and I studied whatever list I could find. When learning a new language, we have to get OUT of the habit of memorizing endless vocab lists that we soon forget anyway! We have to ENTER the habit of memorizing phrases and “blocks” of words put together. If you just memorize one-word vocab lists, you’re only going to be able to give one-word answers when asked a question. When we read English, do we look at each and every word in detail? No, we look at the words in “blocks” and we understand them as a phrase that has a certain meaning. 

Benjy Uyama
September 3, 2013 (Home)