My Brother-in-Law Is Depressed

 

My wife’s sister married a British man, so my brother-in-law is an English gentleman.

 

Shortly after I married my wife, my parents-in-law, my brother and sister-in-law, and my wife and I visited Kyushu, which is located in the south part of Japan. Many of my wife’s relatives lived in this area. We traveled almost all around Kyushu. During our travel, I left my mother at an elderly welfare facility. I was released from taking care of my mother who had Alzheimer’s disease. This was my first visit to Kyushu. I was overjoyed to travel.

 

However, my brother-in-law looked depressed. I worried about him. Maybe he was tired. Or he had a jet lag. Or he hated Japan. But my assumptions were all wrong.

 

My brother-in-law really loved Japan. He had studied Japanese every week in England, but he couldn’t understand most of the Japanese conversations during our travel. It didn’t mean he was lazy in studying Japanese. It also didn’t mean the language school taught him wrong Japanese. Actually, even I couldn’t understand half of the Japanese conversations I heard.

 

In most cases, language schools would teach standard Japanese. Usually I use standard Japanese, but when I talk to relatives and childhood friends, I speak the Nagoya dialect.

 

People in Kyushu have a strong accent. My wife’s relatives met us when we went there. They knew each other well, so they omitted some details in their conversations. They spoke in short sentences in a strong accent. This type of conversation is difficult to understand for outsiders, including me.

 

I was a stage actor. Actors are trained to speak in standard Japanese. If an actor is offered a role who speaks in a dialect, the actor learns the dialect. However, based on my experience, learning dialects is very difficult. We have to train hard with a dialectologist. Native dialect speakers can easily recognize fake dialect speakers. In my opinion, mastering a dialect requires a person to live in the region for a long period. I had lived in Osaka for six years and tried to learn the Osaka dialect. But sometimes some native Osaka dialect speakers would point out, “What are you saying? Your Osaka dialect is so fake!”

 

Dialects are the final hurdle for language learners.

 

My brother-in-law was a beginner Japanese learner, but he tried the final hurdle. That experience could be valuable. I believe he will have remarkable progress in the future.

 

Picture by Furainyan