It's interesting to see what happens to people's mother tongues when they've been away from their home country for a long time. I remember the American nuns that taught us in Gaya, India started to speak a form of Englindi (a bad attempt at compounding English and Hindi) after a while and this was particularly evident when they stuck 'ing' at the end of nouns. The classic Indian tailor's shop will advertise 'shirtings and suitings' (or the other way around).
Today the boys started karate at a local dojo and the sensei that runs it with his wife has been in Australia for over 28 years. Now, I know that Japanese people have difficulty talking to someone in Japanese when they are in an environment where they do not expect that person to know the language i.e. me in Australia, but the sensei and his wife were having trouble talking to each other in Japanese not just me. I'm sure when they are at home they have no problem (or at least I hope not), but they really seemed to be caught between two worlds - not sure whether to talk to each other in English or Japanese and ending up with a mish-mash of both. I hope that never happens to me and I don't think it will if only because in Japan we have a lot more access to English than the Matsumoto karate family could ever have had to Japanese in Australia. And, of course, thank heavens for the advent of the Net.
Posted by Joe at July 15, 2003 09:18 PMThis is a great story! In fact, it reminds me of the time my son's karate instructors - a husband and wife team - came to the international school to see him graduate from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts. Afterwards the husband remarked that he hadn't known Joey could speak English so well! He'd only heard him speaking Japanese in class.
Posted by: DJ at July 16, 2003 07:15 AM