I’ve heard a lot of people recommend getting a Japanese boyfriend / girlfriend as the best way to learn the language.
Since I’ve been married the most common comment I get is
Your wife is Japanese? You must be really fluent.
But I’m not.
My wife is actually a Japanese teacher so it might seem obvious to take advantage of her skills to get lots of free lessons. But as soon as we started going out she said she wouldn’t teach me. I thought she was being a bit mean but asking a few other mixed couples, they’ve all agreed that it’s not a good idea – most of them from experience.
If you want to take classes from your spouse I think you’d have to take it really seriously. Not doing your homework in a regular class might get a raised eyebrow but not doing something for your wife quickly goes from
You need to learn this in order to make progress.
to
Why don’t you love me? I’m going to stay with my mother!*
*Learning the grammar required to say this will actually be what you were supposed to do for homework.
The other problem with learning Japanese from a spouse is something that I really hate and that’s getting corrected in public.
In great detail.
For 15 minutes.
In front of her friends.
This isn’t to make you feel bad, it’s just that it’s difficult to switch from teacher mode to wife mode and that means when I try to sprinkle some Japanese into the conversation she’ll point out that I should have used the -te form instead of the -ta form and if I use that particle to end a sentence I sound a bit gay. Which honestly, is helpful advice, I shouldn’t complain.
I know that if couples have only a little of each other’s native language that they’ll end up learning a lot from each other just out of necessity.
My wife has really fluent English and so I can be quite lazy when it comes to making myself understood. There’s not really any situation that she can’t explain in English, so I get away with never having to speak Japanese.
But having a Japanese wife means meeting quite a few Japanese people and of course her family every now and then. So I’m still eager to improve in the language.
Have any of you had lessons every week and not driven each other crazy? What’s it like if your language skills are a bit better than your partner’s?
What has been your experience if you’re part of a couple?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Cool post.
Our case is kind of unique I think. My wife is Japanese and did all four years of her undergraduate studies in the United States, so her English is great. Before we met, I had already studied Japanese for 6 years, one of which was in Japan, so I already had a good command of Japanese. Before we started dating I was already living and working in Japan. So, as you can see, we never had to teach each other language.
Of course now that I work translation (she does too) we ask each other about things that stump us, but we never actively -teach- each other our languages.
I already knew enough too so that I can speak with her family without trouble, and likewise her English is good enough so that she can speak with my family without trouble.
When we were living in Japan I encouraged her to speak English at home because any other social setting we were in was in Japanese. But, now that we’re in the states… we still speak English at home the vast majority of the time. I wish we would flip over to Japanese more often but it just doesn’t happen. I speak Japanese more with my exchange student friends in grad school than I do with my wife at home. I guess that’s weird? Dunno!
Having similar language skills sounds ideal to me, good for you both.
I’m looking forward to getting to the stage where I can ask most of my questions about Japanese *in Japanese*
Long way to go yet though.
thanks for the comment(s) Harvey.