LOST IN TRANSLATION

When you are living in Asia, and you're Canadian, unless you were actually, like, a student in your university days, and actually, like, studied and stuff, you probably don't speak the language of the country you're living in. You are, in essence, a child.

Why? Because a child can't read. When a child is lost, he or she can't look at a sign and figure out which highway sign leads to Lindsay and which leads to Pembroke. (Not that a child should be looking at highway signs. I'm not advocating children driving. And if you don't know where Lindsay is, you're not from Ontario. Or, if you do know where it is and you're still not from Ontario, that scares me. People shouldn't know where Lindsay is. Some places should remain unknown.)

So, in Asia, at least for the first little while, we're infants. (Actually, I guess I was an infant back home, too, but that's for another post.)

I've been in Cambodia for seventeen (?!?) months, and I can't speak barely a lick of Khmer. It's not that I don't want to; if my life was measured in centuries, rather than years, I wouldl earn Khmer, and woodworking, and the rules of American football, not to mention Canadian football, and I would try my had at pottery, as well. But I'm getting up there, you see. Time ain't forever, Tupac Shakur's mother said in POETIC JUSTICE, and she was right. (And if you're wondering why I'm quoting old Janet Jackson/John Singleton movies as if they were scripture, well, I'm the kind of guy that quotes those kinds of things, is all. And I didn't go to church, no, but I went to the Fairview Mall cinema every Friday, so there you go.) I'm not sure how useful Khmer would be back in St.Catharines, or Ottawa, or Canada, or, um, the rest of the world.

Of course, that didn't stop me from trying my hand at Japanese, which sure as hell ain't the language of choice in Oshawa or thereabouts.

Why did I study it (albeit briefly)? Because I'd been in Japan for two years and I couldn't speak it, for one, and I wanted to see what studying a language did to my head, for two.

I wanted to know what it meant to study a language. I don't remember how I learned English. I'm not quite sure what's happening when I try to write English. The words come, and I transcribe them, and occasionally they're in the right order, and often they're not, and, well, so be it.

Learning a foreign language makes you a kid again, and it forces you to think about, well, thoughts in a way that you've never had to before. It's really, really hard, and really, really gratifying, and, the cool thing is, it doesn't matter how smart you are, or how many degrees you have, or how man other languages you speak -- when you learn a new one, welcome to infancy, babe. Nap time is at three.

Of course, knowing other languages does help you to learn a new one. I took lessons at the Association for Japanese Language Teaching in Tokyo (and if you think that sounds strange coming from this St.Catharines kid, imagine being this St.Catharines kid, sitting in a Tokyo classroom at eight a.m. on a cold winter's morning in that land of the rising sun, an expression that most Japanese have never heard of, come to think of it), and in my class there was a French couple and an American Chinese and a Brit and an eccentric German professor, mid-thirties, married to a Japanese, Japanese kids, but he didn't speak the language, and he wanted to learn. Considering he spoke German, French, English, Thai and Malay, I thought he wouldn't have a problem.

But he was just like me. He came to class early in the morning, and he wore glasses, and his hair was never combed. (Like I said, just like me.) Difference was, he was smart. He under -
stood languages. Both of us were inept at Japanese, but he understood that was this was necessary, and essential, and unavoidable.

At a certain point, about four months into our lessons, he turned to me, excited, and said: "Scott, I zink ve hav reached a turning point. Ziss is vere we go forward."

Or words to that effect. (With apologies for my German transcription.) There does come a point where things click, and words fall into place, and you do things by reflect that you used to have to by, well, thinking.

Simplest example: When a waitress brings you your food, do you consciously think about saying "thank-you." No. It comes out. (And if you are one of those people who don't thank waitresses, I hope you burn in hell, eternally.)

The thing is, when you learn a new language, you do think about it. And think again. Until, after five or ten or twenty times, presto-changeo, out they come, the words, and you didn't think about it, and you've made a leap. First it's a word, and then it's a sentence, and then, when you learn the vocabulary, it's a conversation. (Or a monlogue.)

Ah, but there's the rub -- vocabulary. How do you learn enough words to be fluent?

You have to read, and listen, and speak, and it's repetitive and boring and endless, but I'm starting to believe that if you don't speak another language, you're not in touch with some -
thing fundamentally human. If you only speak one language, you're living life in black and white.

Learning another language brings out the shades and subtleties, the yin and the yang of how we communicate and how we identify ourselves. Thoughts are words, nothing more, and words are thoughts. They're our currency. You speak another language, bam, you're rolling in dough. And you get to wheel and deal with people and concepts outside of your normal frames of reference. You get to continually access and wield something ancient, lasting and open-hearted.