The feeling of language

My conversation partner talked to me about how he has to get the "feeling" of words. He was specifically referencing the English verb, "to get." After he brought it up, I realized how many oodles of different meanings that word has. So he said he has to get a feeling for each one.

This has started a conversation in my head. I've learned French and Spanish before, but it was always very academically, by rote, and with an "A+B=C" mentality. Maybe it's just because Japanese works so differently from English, or maybe I just have a new approach to learning foreign languages now, but he is totally right. It is so much easier to associate a feeling with a word than the actual definition.

What this has translated to for me (no pun intended) is learning by feeling. I may never have learned this had I not confronted a culture so different from my own. In Spanish, for instance, it's pretty easy to say "stupid" and "estupido" are the same thing. But if you think about it, nothing ever directly translates. Yeah, the two words are nearly identical, but they don't use it the same way we do. I doubt that, in Mexico, they're calling Miley Cyrus or failing a test "estupida" like we would in America. Japanese, to me, is a very artistic language. They speak in concepts and short forms, and I think they leave a lot of room for concepts and artistic interpretation. We can't speak Japanese like we speak English. And some things you just can't translate. "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu" is usually translated as "please take care of me" or "nice to meet you," but the meaning goes further beyond that is a phrase you just have to absorb the feeling of after hearing it numerous times.

If you allow yourself to learn in this way, even if you can't directly translate everything in your head into English, you still know what the meaning is. And anyway, the goal shouldn't be to translate everything into English--the goal should be to understand. For instance, there's a line in a Kana Nishino song I like that goes 「遠い君を見えない君を想い続けて」, which I've roughly translated to mean "You're so distant I can't see you. You can't see my love carrying on." I see 「続けて」pretty often, and, although I don't usually remember the meaning of it, I remember that line and have some idea about persevering, about pushing through, and that feeling is what helps me to understand new material.

I hope this inspires you to let go a little and to learn Japanese how you learned English: from trying to understand, not from definitions.