Lingua Franca? I Think Not.

In the HUSA program, we have students from all over the world. Besides us Americans, there are British, Koreans, Chinese, French, and a couple of Germans, to name a few. Since none of us are perfectly fluent in Japanese, we have to use another language to speak to each other. Lately, English has become the lingua franca in the world, a language that various people can speak. You'd think that this would make life easier, that we'd be able to communicate somewhat easily. HOwever, this has turned out to be a false assumption.

I was talking earlier to one of the British guys. He's one of three British people, and they all come from three different parts of England. But, as I told him, I cant hear any difference between them. I imagine that if I listened carefully to them speaking I could hear some kind of difference, but to my American ears, they just sound British. But as my friend explained to me, although they spoke close to Received Pronunciation English (basically Standard British English), the other two sometimes slip into their own accents. One guy is from the northern part of England, and speaks as they do. The other, a girl, is from the London area, and sometimes uses a slightly different vocabulary. Luckily for my friend, he's from the middle part of the country, apparently where the two accents overlap.

Among us Americans, we all feel that we speak "American English", and I dont think anyone one of us has a particular regional accent. That is, we dont have a Bostonian, New Yorker, or Texan. In fact, if no one told me where they were from, I probably would never have been able to guess. It is accepted by all of us Americans that we speak the same language, with the same accent: Standard American English. But according to my British friend (and really everyone else), one of us Americans has a particularly strong accent. They cant fully articulate what it is, but the accent is so strong that it sometimes overruns the pronunciation of certain words. It has been described as a long stream of "grrgrgghrhrgghrhrrg" or something. To be quite honest, the Americans do not understand the problem.

It was at this point that my friend asked me to speak in my accent. Unfortunately, I couldnt perform for him. I was raised to speak "proper English", so using Hawaiian Creole English, aka HCE aka pidgin, has always been a bit difficult for me. However, I've noticed that when I become agitated, eg upset, sad, extremely happy, it starts to come out more. Also, since entering college, I've started using it a lot more. I think it's because I made a few new friends after high school, friends who had no problem speaking HCE. Since I couldnt show my friend, I turned to the great resource that is Youtube, and found this video. It's a pretty accurate and educational video on how a lot of people in Hawaii speak. It's also pretty legit, because I think I've seen the "Pidgin Advocate" before. I linked it on my facebook, but on the off chance you missed it, I'll repost it here:




To be quite honest, I love talking and learning about dialects. Perhaps not enough to push me into linguistics, but I do enjoy looking at the "cracks" in the monolithic thing that is a language. I feel that language education is a bit of a lie. It presents the target language as a single way of speaking, one that all natives of a country or ethnic group speak. However, this is not true. What we call a language is really just a heading, a way of seperating large distinctions in the world. Within a "language", we have different dialects and accents, and even within those subdivisions, there are even tinier divisions. My native language, English is a perfect example: There's British English and American English. Within American English, the English that's used in New York City is different from the English used in California, which is different from the English that's used in Hawaii. And in Hawaii, the English I use is sometimes different from people from another island. I'm slowly learning that the same is true about Japanese. The Japanese that I watch in dramas, that I hear in music, that I'm learning in class, is the dry, dusty, boring Standard Japanese (標準語). But that's different from the Japanese I'm trying to learn, which is the Hiroshima Dialect (広島弁). And 広島弁 is different from what my friend is learning in Kyoto, 関西弁. It is simply fascinating that there is so much diversity! Doesnt it make you want to learn another language?

New Year's in Japan!

Much more elaborate than usual. But also, much more fake than usual. But I still like it. =)


あけましておめでとうございます。今年もよろしくお願いいたします。
Happy New Year's everyone!
^_^

Like Christmas, New Year's this year was very different from previous years. I didnt have ozoni that mother made, nor any kind of mochi at all. And more importantly, I didnt spend it with my family at all. But on the plus side, I did watch the entirety of Kohaku for once, and also I went hatsumode!

New Year's Eve was a pretty low key event for me. During the day, I attempted to clean up my room, which is slowly getting messy again. A few of the other HUSAs got shelves for their rooms, and I'm beginning to wonder if I should get some too. But the main thing I did last night was watching 紅白歌合戦 Kohaku Uta Gassen. For those of you not in the know, it's a big end of the year concert that NHK hosts. Male and female singers are split into two teams (White team for men, Red team for women) and compete. While there is a panel of judges, votes from the audience in NHK Hall, as well as the general public, are counted to determine the winner. It's a pretty big deal, imho. In Hawaii, I had seen it performed before, because both KikuTV and NGN broadcast it. But because of location and licensing, what's shown in Japan is slightly different from what I've seen in Hawaii. So it was a nice change to have the end of the contest to be near midnight on 大晦日.

This year's lineup was a bit different from years past. For one, the hosts were different from the last five years, almost. Nakama Yukie was a judge, when she had usually been the Red Team host. And instead of Nakai Masahiro, the White Team was represented by 嵐 Arashi, a pretty interesting idol group. But what struck me most interesting and a bit sad, was that the singers for each team were different from years previous. There were a couple of regulars, like Wada Akiko, Hikawa Kiyoshi, Koda Kumi (!!!), and Kitajima Saburo. But there were a lot of missing singers. I always do Fuji Ayako's songs at karaoke, but she was absent again this year. So was Mikawa Kenichi, who always has the most gender-bending performances. I usually look forward to Nakashima Mika and Otsuka Ai, but they didnt show up either. As sad as I am that I didnt get to see them perform, I'm happy for them. While it is an honor to be invited to perform on Kohaku, that means that they dont get to spend New Year's with their families. They're human too, and I imagine they like to spend time with their families too.

As for the songs that were performed, a lot of them were the most moving I have ever heard. Not gonna lie, I ended up crying a lot during this year's performance. Kobayashi Sachiko's song, お母ちゃんのひとり言, was about a child reminising about their mother. How their mother may have scolded them when they were younger, but they still loved her for it. And 嵐 performed a song, that I dont remember its name, but it was about ふるさと, or one's hometown. Having not seen my hometown for about three or so months, it was a little heartachey to hear about going back home and cherishing where you're from. But by far the most moving song that was on, was 植村花菜 Uemura Kana's トイレの神様 "Toire no Kamisama". Translated, it means "God of the Toilet", and it is a strange title. But the lyrics were just so beautiful. When she was a young girl, she spent a lot of time at her grandmother's house, and helped out doing chores there. Her grandmother told her, that the reason why she had to keep the toilet clean was because inside lived a beautiful kami. And that by cleaning it everyday, one day she could become a beautiful lady just like the kami. Later, her grandmother was hospitalized, and the day after she visited her grandmother, she passed away. And even though she wasnt the best grandchild, she feels that her grandmother waited special to see her one last time before she left. I have a feeling that this song is true, because she really did start crying when she was performing. As someone who was really close to their grandmother, I really felt something with this song. I think of all the performances, I really enjoyed hers the most.


This is the music video for that song. Maybe one day I'll translate the lyrics. You interested?

Today, New Year's Day, I decided to go to the local shrine and actually do 初詣 hatsumode, or the first visit to a temple in a new year. While there are shrines in Hawaii, I have never actually gone to them, much less do the whole 初詣 thing. So while I'm here, I decided to actually do it. It was actually a lot of fun!



This is the shrine we went to, 御建神社 Midate Jinja. It's located behind the train station here, and part of another srhine complex thingy called 松尾神社 Matsuo Jinja. There was a really long line to get to the shrine, and normally, that wouldnt be so bad. However, this being in the middle of winter, it was FREEZING, so waiting was a bit of a pain. Me and a friend that came with me stood in that line for a while before we were up to the temple. After carefully observing the 日本人 in front of us, we threw our money, rang the bell, and prayed for the coming year. While up there, we also got 御神籤 omikuji, which are basically fortunes. My kanji isnt so good, but between the two of us, (hopefully) we were able to read and understand them. They didnt sound too bad, so we kept them. We also took a drink of the sake that was up there. Apparently, the 日本人 behind us were amazed to see my 白人 friend drink so much sake without problems. We also bought お守り omamori, which are good luck charms. I got a normal one that I'm going to give away as omiyage, and a card one for myself. My friend also bought some お守り, as well as a 神矢. She got it with a little bit of hesitation, because we didnt know what those things were called. I have seen them before, so I knew they were for luck, but I've never bought one myself. Also, my dictionary on my iPod didnt give a reading, so we were kinda shooting in the dark with かみや kamiya, which is the reading for those two kanji. I thought that since we got it, but MS isnt accepting it as a proper input for it. So I have no idea. Haha, oh well.
XD



Like Christmas, I missed out on doing the usual routine for New Year's. I missed another "family holiday", and missed out on some favorite traditions. But I did make up for it with things that I have never done before. While I usually fall asleep halfway through Kohaku, I actually stayed awake through it all. I even got a few good cries out of it. On New Year's Day, instead of spending it lying around the house and calling Aunty, I went on my first hatsumode (is it my 初初詣? XD) and had a grand old time. 2011 surely started out wonderful. I can only hope that the rest of it will be as enjoyable!