Manabu's lesson
I was free on Friday because I showed my classes the movie "Dumb and Dumber" this week. So, I attended Manabu's Japanese classes, and it bummed me out. He teaches like a master, engaging each of his students, putting them at ease with great humor, mixing light-hearted conversations with harder-edged grammar and pronunciation lessons.
So why did it bum me out? Because I realized that I will never truly know Manabu, because I'll never speak Japanese. The guy I eat dinner with every night, fumbling through English in a comical way, transformed before my eyes into an eloquent, articulate raconteur. And I realized that, as a person changes languages, so too does the person change personalities.
Whereas Manabu is a bit passive and insecure in English, he's vivacious and extremely confident in Japanese. Whereas he pauses long and hard before almost every sentence in English, Japanese flows out of him thoughtlessly, smoothly, in a steady stream. His forehead is relaxed. His shoulders are loose. In English, his body language conveys tightness and unease.
His lesson reminded me of a story by Garrison Keillor, in which he pays homage to New York's cab drivers. In part of the passage, Keillor writes that the cabbies will never be as funny, never be as articulate, never express themselves as clearly in English as in their native language. And Keillor writes that they are true heroes.
I now more fully realize that all of my foreign friends through the years, who've come to America and left their old language and customs completely behind, are my heroes. And my students who walk around campus every day at 6 in the morning, reciting English aloud, are my heroes. To change into a new language, and adopt a new personality, and know that the new will never match up to the old, and to go ahead anyway, full-steam, that's courage.
