Illiterate Professor!

Yes, I could learn to read Japanese. I was getting there at one time; even now some Japanese are startled at some of the characters, words, even sentences I can identify properly. But the fact remains: I am illiterate. Desire has given way to weakness, to complexity, to vastness, and, to tell the truth, to distrust. It saddens me, this resolve, for the simple reason that I will never be able to read my lovely wife's lovely writing. She demurs, but I know that she is talented.

There is one very positive reason for my steadfast refusal to acquire literacy in Japanese. I am staunchly committed to learning this language through my ears, through the world of sound. So far, so good: I can hold a decent conversation on an extended range of trivial topics, and occasionally can get part way through a discussion of a more serious focus. One perhaps useful reason for my insistence on the role of oral learner has only recently revealed itself to me.

I have been working as a teacher of oral English in Japan for some years, trying to lead Japanese into the world of English as a soundscape. This is difficult if not fated: the Japanese are largely visual learners, not by nature perhaps, but certainly in the context of what is slowly becoming their entrenched culture. They have learned almost everything they know from reading, or at least they think that is so. As my years in Japan have lengthened like a late afternoon shadow, my knowledge of my students" language has grown, and I now can easily say that I speak Japanese better than my students do English, with only a very few exceptions. This is not a matter of knowledge: my vocabulary or pattern mastery does not stand up to inspection. No, I am just more oral than they, perhaps quick in that domain by nature, but certainly the more fluent, if fluent means flowing of utterance (which I think it really does).