The Language We Use Shapes Us
so I think we could all stand to take a Japanese language course.
Ask nearly any official language-learning or linguistics expert, and they will tell you that Japanese is one of the most, if not the most, difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn, ranking up there with Korean and Mandarin Chinese—different places will give you different rankings, but those three consistently take the “Top Three” cake. Hilariously (in retrospect), when I first moved to Tokyo, I told myself I would allow myself to use limited English with my Japanese friends for three months and then would never speak another English word with them. Hah. If you’re lucky, you can learn how to order food at a restaurant in three months. If you’re even luckier, in three years with committed, structured language study, you can somewhat engage in deep conversation without making a complete fool of yourself—”complete” being the key operating word there.
Why is the Japanese language so difficult? Well, first, look at this sentence. この文章は理解しづらい。See? Do any of those look even remotely like the English alphabet? Exactly. Secondly, the sentence structure is completely different. You can’t “speak Japanese well.” You “Japanese (を)well (に) speak.” And the two Japanese characters in that sentence are “particles,” which is a type of word that doesn’t even exist in English. Finally, there are multiple levels of politeness in the Japanese language (some people count up to six), and depending on who you’re talking to, you have to pick the correct level. Some people will be gracious to you if you accidentally speak too casually to them. Others…not so much.
(“Rachel, you learned Italian and Spanish quickly, so you’ll definitely learn Japanese quickly,” said all the people who have never learned Japanese before.)
As wakarinikui (difficult to understand) as the Japanese language was, as I slogged through, I rarely resented it. Let me give you an example of why that was. Bogged down by homework as I forever was in Tokyo, the beauty of four specific verbs never ceased to astound me.
もらう(morau) = to receive (the casual word)
いただく(itadaku) = to receive (the formal word)
くれる (kureru) = to give (casual)
くださる (kudasaru) = to give (formal)
When you receive a gift from someone, you morau it. When someone gives a gift to you, they kureru it. But it’s not just physical gifts. See, these verb forms are added to any sentence in which someone does something for you. For example, if someone reads a hard word in Japanese for you, they kureru reading it. In other words, they “give you the act of reading” it. If you email someone in a much higher ranking of authority than you, you itadaku being able to send them an email (you receive the privilege of being able to send them an email).
This is all very difficult to explain! Basically, when you’re talking about anything that you receive, or anything that someone does for you, you use a verb form that emphasizes the fact that the other person gave you a gift in doing so.
After living several years in Japan, my perspective began to change. Slowly, slowly, my heart became more aligned with the language of gratitude and respect. For example, if someone showed me the way to the bus stop, they didn’t just show me the way—I received the gift of being shown the way. Using these words in daily conversation made me realize more and more how much grace I receive daily. My heart began to stand in awe of someone bagging my groceries, lending me a pencil, opening the classroom windows for me.
At first, I thought, “I’m just making this up.” An interesting conversation with a friend taught me otherwise.
While enjoying sushi with a friend, I was told (received the gift of being told) a story that proved I wasn’t alone in this linguistic musing. “My Japanese coworker told me that after moving to America and using English almost exclusively, her way of thinking has become less grateful, and she thinks it’s partially due to the way we express ourselves through language,” my friend told me over a dragon roll. “And she says she’s not the only one who feels that way.”
Can it be that not only the words we use but also the words we don’t use shape the way we think about our lives? I could extend this conversation beyond those four verb forms and wax highfalutin about all the Japanese phrases and expressions that have taught me respect for my elders. Gratitude for people who have worked hard. Awe of the beauty of God’s Creation (and therefore God, too). Attention to what is honorable and what is not. And not only are there different levels of formality with verb forms, there are also levels of humility on the speaker’s part. When even the very sentence structure of a language is crafted to humble the speaker and honor the listener, your perspective changes. As I said before, you begin to notice how much daily grace you receive—and how much you want to give back.
For those of us who are limited to one ungrateful language day in and day out (which is usually me, too, because I don’t speak as much Japanese with my Japanese husband as I ought to….), there are ways of working around this. Making sure to say thank you SO MUCH, or I SO appreciate the kindness you showed in doing this for me, can alter our minds from focusing on what we look to celebrating what we are given. We can deliberately shift the gratitude-setting on our language to “overflowing.” And if we do so, we may often find that it doesn’t sound “overdone” because we actually grow to mean it.
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Too long, didn’t read?
The way we speak becomes the way we live.
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I want to celebrate with you all that I received word of being published for the third time ever (not counting academic publications) last week! To those who have cheered me on—cough cough especially Mose and Amelia and Allison and Michelle and Kelly cough cough—thank you for giving me the gift of believing in me. Or rather, believing that God will say what He wants to say by using a few of my words on occasion. :)
Dear Rachel, THIS Kelly?! Regardless, I am SO thankful, blessed, and humbled to know and to love you.
Rachel, I’ve seen you use “I so appreciate” in conversation!
This is lovely. Language is incredible 🥺 Praise God for such beautiful intricacies…