Yoko Meshi - Inherently Japanese

HyeSung Roh

Mr. Garrioch

English Composition 11v3

September 19, 2014

Essay Option 2.

In French, there is no difference between "conscience" and "consciousness." In Japanese, there is a word that specifically refers to the splittable wooden chopsticks you get at restaurants. The German word “fremdschämen” encapsulates the feeling you get when you’re embarrassed on behalf of someone else. All of these require explanation in order to properly communicate their meaning, and are, to varying degrees, untranslatable. Choose a word, tell us what it means, and then explain why it cannot (or should not) be translated from its original language.
— Inspired by Emily Driscoll, an incoming student in the Class of 2018

New to the Tongue

             When the tongue encounters food with a pungent stimulation, it reacts with sores. It is sort of a defense mechanism to prevent further irritation. Similarly, we all have the experience of suffering over acquiring an alien language, including our days as toddlers learning mother languages, or at junior high school taking foreign language courses. I myself, as an apprentice of a few foreign languages, know how it tastes just too well. Even if the brain may thoroughly grasp a language's grammar set and its vocabularies, it is not appealing to talk it out to life because simply the words touching the tongue don't seem right. A term to feature such phenomenon is 横飯, reading "yoko meshi", a Japanese phrase which illustrates a particular stress one may feel when speaking out a foreign language.

             My Spanish teacher loves to tell us, "repeat after me". We sing, act out, and chant the texts in our Spanish textbook. To that extent, being able to speak a language and making the tongue used to the sound is crucial in learning it. I do admit bashfully that of the generic "four areas of language": reading, writing, listening, and speaking, my speaking skills are pretty vulnerable. My speaking marks for any language finals have been the lowest, all my foreign language teachers told me to practice regurgitating texts from books and radios, and well, even though I've been studying French and Hindi for more than three years I'm still having difficulties in properly communicating with a native speaker. I was able to put myself in the shoes of "yoko meshi" the moment I encountered the phrase.

Japanese writing

             Despite most from all over the world would gladly identify with this term, it remains Japanese - in other words, unable to be translated into English - mainly because of the massive cultural discrepancy between the two. One of the most striking disparity between Japanese and English is their directions: Japanese goes vertically, English, and most of the other languages, go horizontally. However, if we take this phrase letter-by-letter - meshi for "boiled rice" and yoko for "horizontal" - we're left with an interpretation that tells "a meal eaten sideways". Therefore, regarding the literal meaning of this phrase, this term is strictly Japanese in a sense that it illustrates effectively how the Japanese people would feel distressed by acquiring a new skill, and distinctive manners, while learning a new foreign language. It cannot be translated into another language which is written sideways because it inherently means the difficulty in seeing things horizontally; even if it was to be translated, one still may not totally get it.
             A language is an expression of culture, whereas culture is a closed room that must be entered and explored before fully understanding words and concepts. With such logic, unless one thoroughly fathoms Japanese culture, he is unable to apply the phrase, or be able to translate it, because language projects culture.

             But yes, everyone feels the same way about learning a new language.