Though I spent eight months learning Telugu and two years trying to perfect it - culminating in speaking in Telugu with a group of wonderful women at Telugu Women's University only a few weeks leaving HYD - I'm currently endeavoring to replace it with Japanese. For the last six weeks, my neighbor (Japanese wife of American FSO) has been kind enough to come over once / week for one hour to practice speaking and reading with me. Luckily, the Japanese department at the State Department's language school sent me their intermediate materials, so "lesson plans" are simple and all she has to do is show up, usually in exchange for some cookies or banana bread :)
Though I've been speaking Japanese off and on since age 10, the transition has been harder than you might think. For one thing, the grammatical structure of Telugu and Japanese is the same (modifier comes before the noun, particle usage, verb at end of sentence), so I have to think in reverse when speaking in both languages. And for another, I haven't actually spoken Japanese since 2007, where as I conducted 80-100 interviews a day in Telugu for two straight years from 2009-2010. That's a lot of Telugu talking!
The first few lessons were quite difficult: Telugu kept on coming out. I quickly learned which words I must have used the most frequently when I spoke Telugu, because I continued to say those words despite my best efforts. Six weeks later, though, I'm doing much better, and Japanese is again regaining its place as the main language in the section of my brain devoted to foreign languages. Today, I even remembered the word for "human rights violation" out of the blue, which my neighbor had even forgotten. Yes, I'm taking this study for my language re-test seriously, talking about all those diplomatic-type things and not spending much time on useful topics like food or travel. It's all about studying for the test, right? Just like the SAT in high school.
Why retest, you might ask? Language scores in the State Department are on a scale of 0 (no ability) to 5 (university professor level), with a 3 representing normal functional language capability on a variety of professional topics (hence the importance of phrases like "nuclear reactor accident" or "rice import tariff"). Scores last five years - so I tested in Japanese in January 2008 at a 2+/2+ (speaking/reading) and my score will expire in January 2013. We're hoping to bid on some jobs in Tokyo for our next tour, so I want to have an up-to-date score. Hence the extra effort now.
It pains me to say goodbye to Telugu - after all, not that many people without Telugu ancestry speak it, and it reminds me of a happy tour in HYD. Not to mention we gave this blog a Telugu name! But, this job is all about transition, so out with Telugu and in with Japanese. Wish me luck for my test at the end of August. The weird thing is, this might all be for naught. For all I know, we could end up in Bishkek or Ulaanbaatar next, another casualty of the job.
Though I've been speaking Japanese off and on since age 10, the transition has been harder than you might think. For one thing, the grammatical structure of Telugu and Japanese is the same (modifier comes before the noun, particle usage, verb at end of sentence), so I have to think in reverse when speaking in both languages. And for another, I haven't actually spoken Japanese since 2007, where as I conducted 80-100 interviews a day in Telugu for two straight years from 2009-2010. That's a lot of Telugu talking!
The first few lessons were quite difficult: Telugu kept on coming out. I quickly learned which words I must have used the most frequently when I spoke Telugu, because I continued to say those words despite my best efforts. Six weeks later, though, I'm doing much better, and Japanese is again regaining its place as the main language in the section of my brain devoted to foreign languages. Today, I even remembered the word for "human rights violation" out of the blue, which my neighbor had even forgotten. Yes, I'm taking this study for my language re-test seriously, talking about all those diplomatic-type things and not spending much time on useful topics like food or travel. It's all about studying for the test, right? Just like the SAT in high school.
Why retest, you might ask? Language scores in the State Department are on a scale of 0 (no ability) to 5 (university professor level), with a 3 representing normal functional language capability on a variety of professional topics (hence the importance of phrases like "nuclear reactor accident" or "rice import tariff"). Scores last five years - so I tested in Japanese in January 2008 at a 2+/2+ (speaking/reading) and my score will expire in January 2013. We're hoping to bid on some jobs in Tokyo for our next tour, so I want to have an up-to-date score. Hence the extra effort now.
It pains me to say goodbye to Telugu - after all, not that many people without Telugu ancestry speak it, and it reminds me of a happy tour in HYD. Not to mention we gave this blog a Telugu name! But, this job is all about transition, so out with Telugu and in with Japanese. Wish me luck for my test at the end of August. The weird thing is, this might all be for naught. For all I know, we could end up in Bishkek or Ulaanbaatar next, another casualty of the job.
1 comment:
I love it when, in the middle of a night shift, I'm trying to speak in Spanish to a patient (no interpreters at night and the phones are mediocre at best), and in the middle of an otherwise Spanish sentence one word of Japanese comes out. It's never the same word, and it's usually not one I've used in a while, but it just kind of jumps out. The patients usually look at me like I have three heads :)
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