Great Ways to Learn Japanese

You already know some Japanese. Really! And not just words like sayonara, samurai, or karaoke. A sentence. Here's what it is.

Ohayo, which is pronounced "ohio". That means good morning.

Ha means tooth, or teeth (no distinction on most plurals in Japanese).
wa is a particle in Japanese grammar. It means, roughly, "as for ____,"
ii is a modified form of the word yoku, which means good.

SO.... Ohio Hawaii means, approximately, Good morning, my teeth are fine!

I'd never thought about the advantage I sometimes have with English as my native language, until I moved to Japan to teach it. I've studied six foreign languages, and when I was studying, I'd often wished osmosis would occur. I'd put a dictionary of that language under my pillow at night, hoping to simply absorb all the words and grammar in my sleep. Of course, that never happened. I had to study and practice like everyone else, making mistakes and learning along the way.

In the first years of learning Japanese, I often made mistakes with word choices. I'd forget the word I wanted, or say another word instead, rendering a completely different meaning to the sentence. I still make mistakes but they are usually of the less interesting, mundane, grammatical sort. In the early days, my mistakes were funnier.

One night at dinner with the family I was living with for the summer, there were many people sitting around the table, all of us eating and talking and having a good time. I was mostly listening, since I didn't understand 98% of the conversation. At this point in my Japanese language journey, I was fluent in numbers and colors, but not much else. At dinner that night were aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, boyfriends and girlfriends-it was a large, happy group and everyone was quite jolly. They were happy with me and encouraged my stumbling attempts to communicate. Fortunately, several members of the group also spoke English, so we all had a backup.

After awhile, the food was being passed around for the third or fourth time. I was so full, but I thought that saying "no" was considered impolite, so I tried a different angle. I was very polite and I turned down the offer for more food, believing myself to say, "My stomach is full." Immediately, everyone thrust their hands at me, palms up, as they grinned from ear to ear. I must have looked pretty funny at this unexpected reaction, and I searched the crowd for someone who would tell me what was going on.

And this is how I memorized the difference between the words for "stomach" and "money." You could say this was osmosis of a different sort!

(For the rest of the story, please click here.)