Being Bilingual in Japanese Isn’t Perfect

Today is February 29th, which is possible because 2012 is a Leap Year. In Japanese, Leap Year is urudoshi, but don’t worry if you didn’t know that word — I didn’t either, and I had to look it up in a dictionary just now. After studying Japanese for four years in university and living in Japan for 20, I am as “bilingual” in the language as I need to be, which means that I’m competent in the core areas of my life including social interaction with people, navigating business relationships with Japanese companies and making contracts. But there are plenty of areas where my Japanese is quite pathetic, a fact I’m reminded of whenever I visit the local history museum, since the Japanese language used even just 60 years ago can be quite archaic and difficult for me. I also have no awareness of the language of mathematics in Japanese, as I learned they other day when my son was helping my daughter with her math homework. Listening to their conversation, I didn’t have the slightest idea if they were doing geometry, algebra or calculus.

Japanese has changed so much since WWII, reading newspapers from the wartime era is quite a challenge.