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The Iroha pangram
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The broad perspective on language (Japanese, in this case) learning goals:
1) "Dis-cover [and share] a new vision of the world" (per McGilchrist); a multicultural perspective.
2) Understand Japanese conversations, films, and books.
3) Teach (as substitute) にほんご in school classes (or えいご in Japan).
4) Pass JLPT or Kanji Kentei?
Writing:
• Hiragana and Katakana (originally derived from Chinese characters).
• 3002 Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary (includes the 2136 jōyō kanji) composed of 214 radicals.
Speaking:
• Approximately 3,000 - 5,000 words.
Habits to assist this goal:
1) Cultural: Access to language learning materials. Remember: "It is impossible to step in the same river twice". Early
learning practices will yield diminishing returns; so freely improvise and transform as you go.
2) Social: Maintain correspondence with a "retinue of connectivity"; practice good calligraphy skills.
3) Psychological: Keep one's things in order and one's schedules synchronized.
4) Biological: Sleep, diet, and good health.
5) Physical: Breathe diaphragmatically. Exercise routinely, with muscle control so precise you can "flex" individual kanji with your abs.
Japanese cultural aesthetics:
間
(ma) – 'betweenness', a gap, space, pause, or the perception of an interval in
time or space without necessarily requiring a physical compositional
element. The space between things rather than the things, it signifies a peculiar ambivalence - both “distance” or “interstice” and “relatedness” or “polarity”.
幽玄
(yūgen) – the subtle profundity of things, that
which is beyond what can be said. It is about this world, this experience, not an allusion to another
world. Yūgen values
suggestiveness.
渋い (shibui) – beauty that is simple, subtle, and unobtrusive.
侘寂 (wabisabi) – beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
無 (mu) – without
初心 (shoshin) – In Japanese calligraphy shoshin is a state of mind of the practitioner, one that addresses and counters the paradox within calligraphy where the more one practices, the more the quality of the calligraphy may suffer.
無常 (mujō) – transience, impermanence.
物の哀れ (mononoaware) – the pathos of things, an awareness of ephemerality.
一期一会 (ichi-go ichi-e) – "one time, one meeting", treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment.
もったいない (mottainai) – "Do not destroy (or waste) that which is worthy."
Introduction
As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When is the best time to learn a foreign language? From birth? In primary school? In college? Maybe the best time is when exploring a foreign country for work or pleasure. Or after making a new friend who grew up speaking a foreign language. Is it when the interest strikes you, or when you want to help someone else speak a language that they might be interested in? Is it when you are retired and have more free time to do all the things which you had to put off before? Of course, any of those could be your situation. There is no single "best time" that will apply to every person. Your best time is going to be different from everyone else's. For me, it came after I had the opportunity to think about the sort of things that language was created to help us convey. But I did study language earlier. In fact, I took several years of Spanish in high school and college, mostly to fill undergraduate degree requirements in humanities. I also took a few courses in linguistics. The polyglot professors were impressive, and I recall their personality and anecdotes more than the actual content of the classes they taught. Michael Krauss was one of these extremely impressive linguists, an expert in Eyak, but who knew many other languages besides. He didn't teach the few classes in linguistics I took, however he was a very engaging guest lecturer. Linguistics provided a functional and developmental analysis of language, but also an historical perspective on how various languages formed, related to one another, and spread across the globe. The idiosyncrasies of etymology helped to illustrate this. These topics were usually never given more than a cursory glance in most language learning classes, but they do help to shed considerable light on that pursuit (as Jack Halpern will have more to say on later). A few years later I met my wife and resumed trying to pick up a second language, this time Japanese. Life was just beginning for my young family. About twelve years later I took the same classes again, from a different teacher. At that time, it wasn't family but global issues (society, technology, politics, and environment) that I hadn't worked out, but which began to press on my conscience as matters I felt an ethical need to attend to. Another period of time, about six years, passed by. Now, much older than when I initially encountered foreign languages for the first time, I am returning to them, but with a new perspective on a journey I hope to complete this time.
What has changed? My children, having grown up in a monolingual community speaking English, are now old enough to begin taking the first foreign language classes offered by the local schools, and have expressed a budding intellectual curiosity about Japanese. There is no better time to explore it than together with them over the next several years. Additionally, the global issues I had been studying have led me, incrementally, stage by stage, to the conclusion that philosophical theories grouped under the general heading of "perspectivism" lie near the core of our ability to address them successfully (more on this in an earlier article). This underscores the importance of understanding alternative perspectives, an ability that is significantly heightened through exposure to other cultures and the forms by which they are expressed, i.e. language. Now it might be objected, and with good reason, that we have fast and reliable translation technologies today that are progressively making foreign language learning an unjustifiable expenditure of time and effort. However, this is not the case if what we are truly after is an unmediated and authentic understanding of cultural perspectives and forms of interaction, so far as that may be possible. Translation can at best only provide a faithful facsimile, a rough model or approximation that, while serviceable, lacks the detail necessary to afford a more complete understanding. Indeed, while our understanding of perspectives is always a matter of degree, the difference here is significant enough to make the effort worthwhile.
What incremental stages led me to perspectivism? Those which immediately preceded that conclusion included a brief survey of the processes of meaning making (primarily biosemiotics), cognitive synchronization (such as the generative models of active inference), and network dynamics. Each of these share features with perspectivism, which handily unites them together and extends our understanding of each as inherently relational and, well, perspectival. I had much to say on that in my earlier article on the subject, and even speculated on the implications for language learning: "One can think of an environment as consisting of multiple perspectives, an 'ecology of observers'. If we want to truly understand the perspective of someone who comes from a different culture and speaks a foreign language, translation alone may not be enough. Translation is a “mapping”. Maps can be very good, but they can also be deceptive if they contain convincing errors. We must agree with Alfred Korzybski that “a map is not the territory”, and recognize that as the complexity of what is translated increases, the fidelity of the map tends to decrease. Eventually one must learn the territory itself, the language and culture, and dispose of all maps, pass through all the filters, until reaching the final barrier which even those who share the same culture and language cannot penetrate, the irreducible features of perspective that language itself was invented to bridge." Just within the last week Iain McGilchrist published his latest book, The Matter with Things, which contains the following lines: "Against the view that whatever we have come to love, celebrate and honour is 'nothing but' something else, I suggest a different view: nothing can ever be 'nothing but' something else, because nothing whatever is ever the same as something else; that all that exists is more than we could ever be in a position fully to understand; that, far from being much less than we imagine, we are almost certainly far more than we can imagine." So, now that we have been suitably humbled (and awed) in regard to our perspectival capabilities by McGilchrist, it is time to begin, and see what exactly we can imagine.
Conceptual Approach
“One hesitates for an epithet to describe a system of writing which is
so complex that it needs the aid of another system to explain it. There
is no doubt that it provides for some a fascinating field of study, but
as a practical instrument it is surely without inferiors.” - Sir George
Sansom
In the foreword to Andrew Conning's "Kanji Learner's Course", Jack Halpern wrote "Sino-Japanese characters consist of logically interrelated parts that form a network of interlinked symbols functioning as an integrated system. The traditional approach to making sense of this system has been through the study of etymology." He goes on to explain how various mnemonic devices can helpfully aid in this study. ...Here I will suggest that this historical, etymological approach can be compared to the approach to physics used by Lee Smolin which he calls the "causal theory of views" (CTV). Briefly, every thing is the product of a causal chain extending backward through time (aka the 'light cone'). This applies to etymology just as well as it does to physics or phylogeny. So what Halpern is saying here, is that to understand the system as a whole, we can consider the relative "view" that each part of the language system has individually, as well as how these views intersect and develop in tandem to form a discernably coherent system. Understanding the integrity of this system is the goal of language learning, so it can be helpful to keep the broad outlines of it in mind even as we bring the finer details progressively into focus. But as Sir George Sansom pointed out above, natural living languages do not evolve in a top down manner but rather they accumulated elements in a piecemeal fashion over a long period of time. In consequence of this fact, the integrated system that is finally revealed to us is less "systematic" (in the everyday sense of the word) than might be desired. Most educational materials, by necessity, will try to impose a simplifying order on the language, despite the numerous exceptions they've acquired to most "rules". Sansom's comment is a compliment as much as an expression of frustration: that's not a weakness, but rather a strength of a language to retain and display numerous complexities, as these provide us with a window into the deep causal history of the language, the subtleties of its development, and the cultures that contributed to it's current form. The unique features of this "fascinating field of study", now illuminated by a perspectival consideration (Smolin's CTV), will be our aid in learning. And because language is a living system, it's evolution is never finished nor complete. As language learners, we become a part of that system, part of the causal chain of it's development and subsequent projection into the future. In that regard, there can be no "wrong way" to learn (which isn't to say that some methods won't be more effective than others).
If you love "big data", then you might love Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script. This makes collation in dictionaries a challenge. The radical-and-stroke sorting method is used to organize kanji according to their graphical parts (graphemes) derived from the 214 Chinese radicals. These radicals are primarily lexicographic tools and learning aids. They have become increasingly disconnected from meaning, etymology and phonetics. Words in dictionaries are sorted according to the way they are pronounced, normally using the gojūon (lit. "fifty sounds") ordering, or less frequently the iroha ordering. These features of the language have been cleverly leveraged by language learning websites to assist in memorization.
In Basic Japanese Grammar, Everett Bleiler wrote “Japanese grammar is very different from English grammar. This difference is not just a question of different forms and endings, as is often the case between English and German or French or Spanish or Russian; it is frequently a question of a different classification of human experience. You must be prepared when you study Japanese grammar to suspend your ideas of what the parts of speech are and how they are used, what a sentence is and how it is constructed, how ideas are expressed and how variations on these ideas are indicated. Do not limit yourself to memorizing the construction of forms and idea-equations between English and Japanese. Try also to understand the psychology of language that lies behind this often very different way of talking about experience. You will find this very broadening, for you soon learn that many of the standards that you hold (consciously or unconsciously) about language are not necessary. You will be surprised to discover that many of the concepts that we consider indispensable to "sense" can be stripped away and discarded, with no real loss to meaning. In some ways Japanese is simpler than English, and in other ways it is more complex. It can be extremely simple in its expression of basic ideas, yet very elaborate in expressing the speaker's feeling about the ideas. The conversational situation affects expression more than it does in English, and forms of courtesy enter much more than they do in European languages. Japanese is extremely regular in its grammatical forms; the exceptions to the grammatical rules of formation can be counted on your fingers. On the other hand, syntax and sentence structure can become very complex, and idioms are numerous.”
Technique and method of learning
We can talk first about a general disposition and approach. Benny Lewis, who recommends spaced repetition, said polyglots are able to learn "because they're passionate about the language, the literature, the movies, being able to read in a language, and of course to use it with people." He said, "When I changed my approach to learning, I was able to learn languages myself." Hardcore polyglots often swear by Anki, an app that uses the ‘spaced repetition’ method to help you learn and retain information. Stephen Krashen highlights the importance of comprehensible input to learners and recommends extensive reading. Basically, this means consistently exposing yourself to language content that’s just above your current level – close enough to what you already know that your brain can work to fill in the gaps and raise your language level.
Andrew Scott Conning sets a "goal of 2300 kanji" to learn (the total in his book). He wrote "The mind is far better at remembering ideas that are accompanied by sensory and emotional impressions than those arrived at through logical abstraction". His approach is eclectic, as it uses the method that works best for any particular context. But he consistently favors concrete visual imagery over indirect and abstract methods of study, and emphasizes the importance of sequence and learning graphemes in logical groupings. In cognitive psychology, this method is called "chunking", and hints at the hierarchical (loosely fractal) way in which we form our "memory palace". A chunk is "a collection of elements having strong associations with one another, but weak associations with elements within other chunks". Michael Lewis utilized this in his "lexical approach". Intense language programs, like the Defense Language Institute and the
Missionary Training Center, focus on immersion and teach using common
phrases and sentences. Taking Conning's advice, we can borrow tools from these as well. In his book Remembering the Kanji 2 James Heisig wrote that foreign language learners should not mirror the methods used by native speakers of Japanese. Unrelatedly, he also noted that:
“Relating one compound to another by means of similarities of sound is to be avoided at any cost. It merely clutters the mind with useless information. The fact that the two syllables sensei can mean teacher (先生) or astrology (占星) or despotism (専制) or oath (宣誓), depending on the kanji assigned to them, may come as such a surprise that you are tempted to make some use of the coincidence. Resist the temptation. Second, it is best not to try to learn on and kun readings at the same time for the same character. The idea of “conquering” a character in its entirety will be supported by nearly every textbook on the kanji that you pick up, but is nearly as mistaken as trying to learn to write and read the kanji at the same time.”
Meaning, writing, readings can all be learned in isolation. "Divide and conquer" with patience, connections will be found later, seems to be his motto. Interestingly, he pointed out that Greek and Latin roots are to English as Chinese readings are to Japanese words, in each case this adds dimensionality to the language. Language learning, and almost certainly retention, may occur largely under the level of conscious awareness and involve intuitive processes. Iain McGilchrist wrote in The Matter with Things, "Experiments performed by Lionel Standing found that recognition memory for pictures is almost limitless. He was referring here to both accuracy and capacity. The unconscious memory can work on shapes, pictures and images, juggling many factors, in very short periods. Standing reckoned that the mind could search over 50,000 pictures in unconscious memory."
Practice
After you have the "big picture" view of the language as a living, interconnected system and it's historical development, and the "little picture" view of how all the parts fit together, then the real work of acquiring and practicing language proficiency begins. This requires putting in some time, daily if possible, reading, writing, and speaking. It can be a considerable challenge when not living in a Japanese culture. Consider establishing a routine writing relationship with a pen pal, or become a diarist, as writing and reading can be done alone during one's free time. Keeping a diary in which to note the events of the day means that you’ll have a record of your progress over time and be able to practice different verb tenses, for instance, as well. Conversational practice will need to be fit in whenever an opportunity presents itself. During the early stages it is frustrating to try to express oneself using a very limited vocabulary, but this can also motivate acquisition of new words and phrases.
In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist noted that the Japanese language (or is it the culture?) tends to reflect a healthy skepticism about language itself, rejects a view of a reality that could be arrived at purely by reason, places more emphasis on individual existing things than on generalities, is more intuitive than cognitive, and is not so easily swayed by logic or system-building. He later remarked "I’m told that in Old Japanese there weren't even abstractions for “good” and “bad”. It was inherent in the nature of what one was judging as good or bad; it had to be contextualized in the real world. And there’s still very few abstract nouns in Japanese." (But then there's Akira Kurosawa's film "Ikiru" about Japanese bureaucracy, paperwork, and pointless friction, proving that bad habits can insinuate themselves into any culture, and changing them to find the peace that eludes us can be very hard.) Learning, reading, and journaling with all this in mind can lead to a deeper understanding. ...If I'm permitted to dream, perhaps an ambitious plan is to examine the coincidences between the brain lateralization work done by Iain McGilchrist (médecin savant) and Gaia Theory work done by James Lovelock (geophysiologist). What one is for our cultural mind, the other is for the body of Earth, but more importantly they both value an embodied, implicit, intuitive perspective. And I think this resonates deeply with Japanese culture, animism, and Eastern philosophy more generally, as we can see through examples such as Zhuangzi's Fishnet Allegory, and the concept of "cultivation through non-cultivation". Naturally, any product of such investigations would have to be published in Japanese as a manga series illustrated with beautiful line drawings. Why, I'd become the nation's first a "Gaian taranto" (a play on the slang "gaijin taranto")!
In Benny Lewis' podcast "Fluent in Three Months" he recently interviewed Luca Sadurny and asked him "What time management techniques do you have?" Sadurny replied, "It's important to keep a balance between family, work, and language learning. If language learning is a priority for you, then you have to make time for what's important. I schedule my learning sessions. I wake up at six and start the day with a short study session, about 10-15 minutes. This is a gift to myself; it's doing something for myself. I learn new phrases or review them. So I might study just 20 minutes on weekdays, but 40-50 minutes on weekends. I also use little tricks like scheduling it on my Google calendar and turning on notifications on my phone, these remind me to study when I receive them. Effectively, I've made an engagement with myself, and I'm choosing to respect it. My approach is that of Leo Babauta, who said 'Make it so easy you can't say no.'" ...A voice reaches out across time. It's mine. "Old news is the new new news," it says. "What?" I reply. "You are no longer a news hound. Others can do that. Instead you will work with ancient news, languages. A deeper kind of work." Oh.
Resources
• Wikibook: Japanese (including a list of 1000 words).
• Lexilogos Japanese resources
• John Gallagher. How to learn a language (2021)
• Michael Lewis. Implementing the Lexical Approach (1993) Per Leo Selivan, the core principle of the lexical approach, the dictum "language consists of lexicalised grammar not grammaticalised lexis", did away with grammar/vocabulary dichotomy. Language consists of being able to understand and produce "lexical chunks" (phrases), and instruction focuses on fixed expressions that occur frequently in dialogues.
• Scott Thornbury. Learning language in chunks. (2019)
• Stephen Krashen. A Conjecture on Accent in a Second Language "Language has two functions: To communicate and to mark membership in a social group, which is why we do not always imitate the accents we hear the most. Getting people to talk like members of groups they do not belong to may be similar to convincing someone to wear inappropriate clothing - a tuxedo at an informal lunch or a jogging suit at a formal dinner." Accent trumps race in guiding children’s social preferences.
• George Kusunoki Miller (Joji): "Japanese 101" short episodes under pseudonym Filthy Frank.
• Dave Spector, Kent Derricott, and Kent Gilbert are gaijin taranto. Derricott and Gilbert initially arrived in Japan as Mormon missionaries (who actually have a 'language boot camp') before deciding to stay. Perhaps one could be a Gaian taranto (a different sort of missionary)?
[
Here's the original 2009 post, since replaced:] An awareness of the transciency of things forms a solid basis for prioritizing one's tasks. I should pay attention to whatever in my life is most fragile or most likely to fail, and concentrate my energy on that first. This echoes what I wrote back on May 3rd of this year: “only I can rescue my work and elevate it to its rightful position. It suffers the most of all, and it desperately needs my attention and compassion more than anything else. Were I to neglect it, it will surely die. Of what else could this be said? I think I should attend first to those things that suffer most for lack of my attention, and only later on those that can survive just as well without me.”
It is impossible to understand transiency without understanding time.
