Jeffrey Angles Lecture

きょうはごご2じにJenkins-Nanovic HallでJeffrey Anglesせんせいのこうぎ (lecture)でした(was)。

The first thing that struck me about Dr. Angles was his enthusiasm. His genuine love and dedication to languages and translating further fanned my passion for the same.

I've studied Korean by myself for a while, so many of his insights into foreign language learning rang true to me, and he taught me many new things. He first talked about how there is a "Japanese version of you" that's waiting to come out with enough Japanese study. I've heard this before in the online language-learning community, but I thought it was a fluffy feel-good notion until I made friends with international students here. Seeing them speak in English and their native languages, I picked up on changes in their humor and confidence. My one Ukrainian friend made more jokes in Ukrainian than in English, and I realized that I'm missing out on a side of her by only knowing her through English. 

Things like jokes and word play rarely translate perfectly, revealing a hurdle to expressing oneself in a foreign language. Ito Hiromi's poem 意味の虐待 (The Maltreatment of Meaning) paints this problem in a refreshing, revolutionary way. My Korean is still basic, so I've experienced something like this when trying to express something so basic as what happened today. I want to explain the plot of the movie I just watched, want to share my philosophies on language learning, want to make jokes, to become quick friends with them. But I can't. 

Not yet.

But I will.

Dr. Angles' ideas and stories about learning Japanese showed me what more language can be than the mere hobby I've treated it as. It's even more than the vessel for conversation that I've grown to see it as. It's a bundle of hay to set fire to and hurl into the unknown; you simply cannot know the great things that will happen because of it.