Charlotte Journal: English 05/10/2013

Charlotte Journal　　5.10.2013

 

It was a pleasure to see Dr. M, Dr. N and Dr. K in Washington DC when they visited the US to attend a meeting of American Academy of Pediatrics. I enjoyed talking to them in Japanese over good meals. There is no Japanese in my workplace or in my neighborhood, and I do not have a chance to speak Japanese.  I was especially happy to have a dinner with them speaking in Japanese. I had not spoken Japanese that much for a while. Well, but it does not necessarily mean that I can speak English much. I will talk about English this time.   Japanese language has a group of foreign words called Gairaigo for the words originated in the Western language. My Chinese colleague who studied in Japan tells me that Japanese language is good as we use Gairaigo words with the original sounds and those Gairaigo help us understand the meaning of foreign words. He says that, in Chinese, all foreign words are translated in Chinese. Indeed, we learn dozens or hundreds of English words from daily Gairaigo words without realizing that they are English words. We often use a word “Innovation” in Japanese today. I learned that word from the TV.   Those Gairaigo are good as they increase our English vocabulary, but they are also confusing because many of them often have a meaning and a sound different from the original words. For example, ”claim” usually means “to complain” in Japanese, but it means to make a demand for money in English. When I receive a letter and a document with a word “claim”, I still wonder if I have done anything wrong to be accused, and I feel uneasy. A “concent” does not make any sense in English either. A little part at the end of the cord of an electrical device for making an electrical connection is called “a plug” in English. There was also a case that I thought it was an English word but it wasn’t. I realized a “marron” is not an English word when I saw the person I talked to stopped and looked at me in wonder. A “marron” is derived from French as I looked it up in a dictionary, and it is “a chestnut” in English.   The pronunciation of Gairaigo is also confusing. My colleague did not get it when I said /shu re’ daa/ for a shredder. “Collagen” is not /ko raa gen/, and “a catheter” is totally different from /ka tee teru/. There are Japanese doctors fluent in English and proudly use the original sound of Gairaigo. But I have never met anyone pronouncing a catheter in an English way. They don’t say that in the English way because Japanese people don’t understand it, or are they fully accustomed to the German style pronunciation that the Japanese medical world has been using since the Meiji Era?   These are the bad effect of having Gairaigo words in Japanese. We are rather shocked when we notice the confusion, and it leaves us an episodic memory. It can be an intellectual wordplay to enjoy the difference.   I have many more stories about the confusion of Gairaigo words. Lastly, I will share with you the most hilarious episode of mine. It is about “oh ta san”.  “oh ta san” means Mr. Ohta in Japanese, and Ohta is a fairly common name. When my boss and I were talking about the laboratory work, he repeatedly said “oh ta san” and “oh ta san”. I did not understand what he meant by “oh ta san”, and was a little panicked. I could only think of Mr. Ohta for that word, but there was no Mr. Ohta. I could have guessed from the context, but I was caught by the image of Mr. Ohta and could not think of anything else. Especially, when the word is of the main topic that I should be familiar with, I get more panicked but stuck by the first image of the word. Can you guess what the word was? The answer is “ultrasound”. Well, I could have got it if I had known the word. It is not commonly use, but may be worth remembering.