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Feynman on Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 1 of 23 24 April 2011 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The physicist Richard Feynman has been mentioned a few times on the forum, but I did a search and as far as I can tell this interesting anecdote about his struggles with Japanese has not been mentioned before. (found in Wikiquotes)
____________________________________________________________ ____________ While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour. One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?" I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned. "No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, 'Would you like to see my garden? you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite." "Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use. Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens..." I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see." "No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?" Three or four different words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're doing it, it's elegant. I was learning Japanese mainly for technical things, so I decided to check if this same problem existed among the scientists. At the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the office, "How would I say in Japanese, 'I solve the Dirac Equation'?" They said such-and-so. "OK. Now I want to say, 'Would you solve the Dirac Equation?' -- how do I say that?" "Well, you have to use a different word for 'solve,' " they say. "Why?" I protested. "When I solve it, I do the same damn thing as when you solve it!" "Well, yes, but it's a different word -- it's more polite." I gave up. I decided that wasn't the language for me, and stopped learning Japanese. Edited by William Camden on 24 April 2011 at 3:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| w1n73rmu7e Newbie United States Joined 5943 days ago 31 posts - 46 votes | Message 3 of 23 25 April 2011 at 4:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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Feynman was clearly missing some important fundamentals of the language - except for a few irregular verbals, forming humble polite and honorific polite verbals is just a matter of conjugation. For nominals you do need to learn multiple words in many cases (i.e., 家 vs お宅), but even that isn't that bad. Edited by w1n73rmu7e on 25 April 2011 at 4:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 23 25 April 2011 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Feynman may have found Japanese, like many natural languages, to be illogical, and become frustrated with it.
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| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6952 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 23 25 April 2011 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Exactly. It's a just a conjugation, and a simple and regular one in most cases. I think it was probably the concept of conjugating for politeness/humbleness that baffled him, rather than the difficulty of the thing itself. It's sad that these kind of exaggerated reports of the mystical and inscrutible Japanese language abound in the first place, but its doubly disappointing that such an intelligent and admirable person felt the need to resort to such a tired old cliche. EDIT: I had thought he was just talking about ます form and the like, but on second read, it seems that he's talking about 尊敬語 and 謙譲語, which indeed in many cases use a different root word (as in 見る・ご覧になる・拝見する). However, these are so rarely used in everyday speech (I actually had to look it up just now to refresh my memory, and I think many Japanese people would have to do the same if they were asked about it!) that it seems strange to teach it to a foreigner who is just starting to be able to get round in a taxi. Maybe Dr. Feynman just had a really weird teacher and got discouraged. Edited by Lucky Charms on 25 April 2011 at 4:48pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5786 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 7 of 23 26 April 2011 at 6:39am | IP Logged | |||||
This was my impression as well. If we were to base it solely on this one account, I would say that the teacher and colleagues had failed Feynman. Perhaps they were not trained teachers or perhaps they simply didn't grasp that they would have to slow things down for someone whose brilliance was as readily apparent as Feynman's. Regardless, their apparent failure to distinguish between grammatical and communicative language and what could be considered esoteric (linguistic) culture resulted in another frustrated student. While I disagree with much of what is normally presented as "learn like a child," I think the politeness levels in Japanese (and Korean, etc.) is one case where it's acceptable to do just that. Japanese children master the plain language first and must be explicitly taught many of the polite forms. I see no reason not to do the same with foreign learners.
I'd say the Japanese spend enough time working to consider the business register as a part of everyday speech, which makes it uncommon but not quite rare. Still, by the time native speakers have reached adulthood I don't think many of them need to look up the vocabulary, but I would agree that even many adults cannot correctly apply this knowledge without additional training and some extra attention. If they could, there wouldn't be shelves at the local bookstore dedicated to brushing up your 敬語(keigo). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6668 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 8 of 23 26 April 2011 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
He seems to have successfully learned Portuguese though. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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