Americanization

 

 

In the 1990s, I studied at a university in the USA. My classmates came from all around the world.

 

One day, we discussed Americanization. I am not sure if the tendency to discuss that is still strong now. At least in the 1990s, most countries were influenced by the USA. American movies and TV dramas were popular all over the world. Japanese people used English words to describe new concepts every day.

 

But some people worried about Americanization. They thought it might destroy their traditional society.

 

The class had discussion time. I listened to many opinions from other students.

 

The teacher asked me my opinion.

 

I told this story.

 

I had Korean and Taiwanese classmates at that time. I confessed to the teacher that we often cheated during classes. We have different languages, but we used common letters: Chinese characters. Our pronunciations are different, but the meanings of the words are almost the same. So, when we had difficulty communicating in English, we often wrote down Chinese characters. It made it easier for us to communicate. But using non-English words in the classroom was cheating because it was an English class.

 

Why could we communicate in Chinese characters? About a thousand years ago, China was a prosperous country. The countries around China sent students to China. They were influenced by China.

 

I said: “I can’t predict what country will be prosperous in a thousand years. I don’t know what country future students will go to when they want to study. But I am sure they will cheat in English.”

 

All of my classmates and even my American teacher laughed.

 

In the 1990s, it might have been a nice joke. I am not sure it would work now.

Picture by mariakray