Malanginspirasi.com – I recently got back from a 2-week Japan trip. It was a refreshing change from my usual routine as an assistant professor at Universitas Ma Chung, Malang. I had the opportunity to visit Osaka and Kyoto during my trip and it personally inspired me as an academic.
I teach linguistics classes at university level, such as introduction to linguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics to name a few. Among those classes, sociolinguistics is my favorite class to teach. Sociolinguistics studies the use of language in society.
We may learn a foreign language and be taught how to do certain things using that language (e.g. greetings, expressing gratitude, apologizing, etc). However, the experience of classroom-based learning and observing how the language is actually used in real-life context will most likely differ by a significant margin.
In my case, I thought (and taught) that expressing gratitude in Japanese is commonly done by using the phrase “ありがとうございます” (arigatou gozaimasu).
Nobody had taught (or informed) me that the locals (at least at the shops in Kyoto and Osaka that I visited) say the phrase in a particular way. They don’t actually pronounce the arigatou part as clear as the gozaimasu part. My linguistics sense was boggled. I didn’t actually ask them why they do that so that I can have an answer straight from the native speakers mostly because of the language barrier.
However, my academic guess is because the arigatou part is contextually obvious making it less important to articulate clearly (thus, often said quickly) while the gozaimasu part needs to be stressed to show politeness and respect.
Another example I can give is the equivalent for excuse me in English is 失礼します (Shitsurei shimasu) or at least that’s how I was taught during my university Japanese class.
During my trip, I never actually heard people use that phrase to grab the waiter’s/shopkeeper’s attention or when you bump into someone during your commute in the super-busy-morning-weekdays in the subway stations. It’s always すみません (Sumimasen) that is used as the equivalent of excuse me in English.
In English for Global and Creative Communication at Universitas Ma Chung, we understand how important real-world language usage and how to incorporate that in our language classes.
For me personally, this is the most important aspect of learning languages. We don’t want our precious time spent studying languages to be met with a harsh reality. We also need to do some research on how the language is actually used by the locals so we can communicate effectively and ultimately enjoy life as the locals do.
Written by:
* Ounu Zakiy Sukaton
Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Universitas Ma Chung
