Radicals and Porn
So I had my first Japanese lesson today and after two hours I officially give up.
I thought that having isolated themselves from the rest of the world for so many centuries that the Japanese would have been able to come up with A writing system. ONE. Apparently they were too busy drinking tea, having festivals in the jinjas, cultivating rice, calculating how much silk to use when making a kimono, and what to feed men to make them into sumo wrestlers so big they can’t wipe themselves. As a result they settled on three writing systems. So you want to read Japanese? Forget that sometimes the characters are written from top to bottom and need to be read right to left, verses the rest of the time when they are written horizontally and read from left to right. Forget that the characters are nearly indecipherable collections of squiggles. Let’s start with the fact that there are three alphabets. Three sets of these squiggly lines. THREE!
The first collection of squiggly lines is called Kanji. These are the characters they imported from China. Am I the first person to wonder if the ruling imperial family upon seeing Kanji for the first time, made the decision that if this is the kind of crap you get by opening up your country and importing stuff that it would be better to stay closed and isolated? I am just asking. I have time to think about these things.
In case you don’t know, the idea behind Kanji is that each word gets its own unique set of squiggly lines. These lines theoretically look like the thing they represent. This means that if you live in China you need to know about 20,000 different characters to say, read the newspaper. There are between 3,000 and 5,000 you need to know for Japanese. For those of you out there that fall into the pure grammarian rules sect, you will be glad to know that the equivalent to this in Japan is those that feel that Japan should only use Kanji and continue creating new characters for each new word. What do you need to major in to get that job? What is the Kanji for floccinaucinihilipilification? What is the Kanji for supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? I am just asking. I have time to think about these things.
Then there is Hiragana. This is the first set of squiggly lines that I am learning. Scratch that. This is the first set of squiggly lines that my delusional teacher thinks I am going to learn to recognize and recreate. She is just doing her job. She has time to think such things. There are about 100 of these little sets of squiggle lines, totally different from any of the 3,000-5,000 Kanji. Hiragana is based on sound units (a vowel by itself or a consonant plus a vowel.)
Then you have Katakana, the third set of squiggly lines which is used for words that have been loaned to Japanese from other languages. Does this mean there is a library? When are they due back? Is there a fine if they are late? Does this mean Prime Minister Koizumi, when not running for re-election, has to make sure the library card doesn’t expire? Or is this the Crown Prince’s job when he isn’t working on his world class bug collection or doing interviews telling the Japanese people that the crown Princess, who is pushing 40, can’t conceive a male heir because there is too much pressure on her. I am just asking. I have time to think about these things.
Did I mention that the sounds represented in Katakana are exactly the same as the sounds represented in Hiragana? Did I mention that there is little to no similarity between the squiggly sets of lines for the same sound? Did I mention that my teacher pretends that there is a correlation by saying things like, “look, the strokes are going in the same direction.” Well, that is very helpful if I am watching you write them, but doesn’t help me after they have been written.
Confused? Good. Me too.
Now try reading them. Confused? Good. Me too.
Or looking them up in a dictionary. Get this; the dictionaries classify the characters by Radicals. Really! I am not making this up. Honestly, what could be more appropriate than to describe tiny sets of squiggly lines with some supposed historically based pictorial representation as Radical? Finally! Something makes sense: Radical sets of squiggly lines.
So I am sitting there listening to my sensei as we have just determined that in the grand scheme of things, I out rank her. Just a quick tangent. I promise, just a quick one. Before we left the States a friend asked if I was practicing my bowing. I said, “No, because I always expect to be the most important person in the room.” (I am flat out rocking with these predictions I made before we left!) Well, it turns out that a Speech Language Pathologist in Japanese is called a Language Counselor, and is a highly respected position. We began our lesson with common greetings and introductions. My sensei was clearly very nervous, but acted all casual and laid back. Then she realized that I am a speech-language pathologist and she momentarily went into polite formal mood and gave me a very low deep respectful table bow. Carte Blanch. I can do anything, and she will attribute it to my greatness and the fact that I out rank her. I mean I have searched all my life for someone who can determine in less than five minutes that I am great and need to be highly respected.
“Lawyer” in Japanese is bengoshi. Because of all the education a person needs to be a bengoshi, they are always treated with great respect, and the polite forms of language are always used. Even when the person isn’t there. You might want to think that this means that Pam should always be more highly respected and bowed to even lower than one would bow to me. But, my sensei, told me to use the word “Kanai” when introducing Pam to others. Pam was livid when I told her this, because she had always been taught that kanai is a somewhat demeaning word that means “that woman that stays in the house.” It just drips with irony doesn’t it? Well, sensei said that I could call you “Kanai,” which makes me the most important person in the house. (Granted, I am generally here by myself.)
So, tangent finished, we are sitting there and she is explaining how this little set of squiggly lines is different from another set of squiggly lines and all of a sudden, it hits me: Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. (Yes, these are the things that actually run through my mind when I should, theoretically be, say, paying attention and, oh, maybe actually trying to learn something .)
Who was Justice Potter Stewart? Stewart is the U.S. Supreme Court Justice who said, when trying to make a ruling on pornography, “I can’t define it… but I know it when I see it.” Japanese characters are like porn, inexplicable, but the truly educated know it when they see it.
written07/24/2004
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