「年を取る」ということについて、日本ではnegativeに感じるのかなぁ。電車で席を譲るのにも気を遣います。人によっては席を譲られることでショックを受ける人もいるでしょうし。

Benさんがもし電車の中で席を譲るとしたらどのような人に譲りますか？　その判断はイギリスにいるときと日本では違ってきますか？

In reminiscence, I probably was able to do that because of the impetuousness associated with younger age - I would not be able to perform that function smoothly at my present age, probably because I now know too much.

Since it is relatively short, I will reproduce it here:

MULTILINGUAL ABILITY

Quite sometime ago, in fact, many years ago, I was in Switzerland as part of my trip to Europe. I took a train from Italy and arrived at Zurich to come to that beautiful country high mountains and perennial peace.

As it was my habit wherever I went, I ended up in one of the local bars and sat at the counter, flanked by local people as I had several glasses of beer. I struck up a conversation with one of the customers who were sitting beside me, who happened to be a Swiss folk of the German descent. He was probably in his fifties then and I probably was a bit younger than him at that time.

As we drank our beer, we talked in English and he was quite fluent in it with a slightly thick accent. We talked about each other’s nationality and he said he was a Swiss of German descent and I told him I was Japanese.

To maintain our conversation, I asked him “Is it true that Swiss people can normally speak several languages?” He said that it is generally true and he himself spoke German, French, some Italian and English. He also said that he also could handle some archaic Swiss tongue that the people do not normally use.

I asked him what gave the Swiss people such multilingual capabilities and he said that the Swiss communities ordinarily comprise different ethnic groups which together made up that country so that the ability to speak many languages was the necessity of life in Switzerland.

I asked how would one develop such multi-lingual ability and he said, after a pause, that it probably is because the children get exposed to such multi-lingual environment early on. “So it is not because of the education system you have?” I asked. He said that the education system in Switzerland certainly supplements that environment but it does not initiate it.

He said that it is your first conversation you have, greetings or what have you, that sets the linguistic environment. For example, if you go to a bread shop in the morning, it is the first sound you hear, “Bon jour” or “Guten Morgen,” or “Good morning,” that triggers the linguistic environment for that particular situation. Thereafter the conversation automatically follows that linguistic environment.

I said “I see (the truth was that I did not truly see) but how you deal with translation problems?”

“Translation problems? What do you mean translation problems?”

“I mean if you are not clear as to what was said; wouldn’t you refer to your knowledge of your mother tongue, such as German, to see what was said?”

“What do you mean ‘mother tongue’? There is no such thing as ‘mother tongue’. You assume my mother tongue is German, but it is not correct. Yes, I probably understand the German language much better than French or Italian, but I don’t think that’s why my ‘mother tongue’ is German. When I speak French, I speak French and when I talk in English, like I do now, I speak English. If you do that, there is no ‘translation problem’ that you speak of”

It started to dawn on me what this man was saying. He was telling me that his brain or mind, or whatever, works in compartments. If he used one of those linguistic compartments, his referent is that compartment only. He was like three or four persons, each speaking his own language, but none of them deal linguistically with any other one of him.

This revelation of how multi-lingual abilities work flabbergasted me. I immediately put that to practice, in reading books, writing letters and in doing everything that involved my Japanese and English. The complete dissociation of these two compartments (in my case) did not come easily, I think it took several years for me to develop and nurture this double linguistic personality. After many years, I think I have come close to doing that, and it also made my life easier because when I think in Japanese, I don’t have to think also in English, and vice versa.

I still have translation problems but thy have largely become selective merging of the dissociated linguistic compartments of a higher order (and I don’t even bother myself to see how that expression appears in Japanese).

June 1, 2007