ポッドキャストの紹介
Hello, ないちゃん!
Hello, アサミ!
Long time no see, right?
Long time no see, really.
I'm sure you all noticed but
today we don't have Len.
We have a special guest,
ないちゃん, from 35歳右左【35歳右左】.
Yay!
Thank you for having me today.
Thank you for coming!
No, no, no. Actually, our podcast channel
has the English title
and it says
Age 35, which way to go.
Oh wait, that sounds actually quite catchy.
Oh, isn't it?
Which way to go.
Yeah, wow, okay.
Well, I think you should advertise that more.
Oh, yeah, actually.
Yeah, like 写真?
Ah, アートワーク?
そうそう。アートワークか。
アートワーク also has the English title on it
but no one knows it.
No one notices.
I certainly never paid attention to it.
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
Well, do you wanna maybe
share a word or two
about your podcast, who you are, etc.?
Okay.
So, hello, everyone.
英語でサイエンスのリスナーさん。
I am ないちゃん from
35歳右に行くか左に行くか。
Age 35,
which way to go.
And then,
I am a political scientist
but our podcast channel doesn't relate to my major at all.
But we are like, you know,
casually enjoy our conversation
with Ai and Maki.
And if anyone
are interested in what
the middle-aged
female talks about
the daily life, please come
to listen my podcast.
Thank you.
It is really entertaining
and they have known each other since
college, right?
Oh yeah, undergrad.
That's something special.
You guys have been friends for like
almost two decades.
Don't say that, please.
What are you talking about, ないちゃん?
You are only 35.
Yes, the life is very, you know,
long, you know, nowadays.
Anyway, yeah, go listen if you haven't.
英語学習の経験
I highly recommend it.
Anyway,
she doesn't really
share that much in her own podcast.
But she is actually,
as you can hear, quite fluent in English.
No, I should say at first.
Okay.
Because, you know,
when I welcome me to your
podcast channel, I just naturally
imagine, okay, I should talk something in English.
But at first,
I had so much confidence.
Okay, I can do it.
Gradually, I noticed it.
Okay, how long has
already passed since I left the US?
And I calculated,
and it's already 10 years.
So my English should be so much
サビテマス。
I will be alright.
でもなんか、
you sound comfortable, you know,
you don't sound nervous at all.
I am, so I need alcohol today.
So that's how
you get over the nervousness
of speaking English in front of people.
Yes.
The correct way.
Definitely.
Well, I mean, in this podcast,
you know, because I
speak with Len most of the time,
and I have only known Len
in our mostly English conversation,
it ends up being English.
But if you recall,
our first host,
first co-host was Masako-san.
And the whole point of this podcast
was that I can mix
Japanese and English.
Like bilingual.
But actually, Len also can understand
Japanese quite well.
Yes, so this is also
a new information for me
because he has been hiding
how fluent he is
in Japanese because we
don't speak to each other
in Japanese.
You don't have to because
you have a common language.
Exactly, we don't have to.
But I forgot
that he actually had been
studying Japanese
ever since he arrived to Japan.
I think his listening ability
has improved significantly
since he arrived.
A lot better.
And now,
when I go hang out
with him and get food and stuff,
he orders it in Japanese.
Really?
It's a slow,
steady improvement that's happening
there.
Maybe
the day will come
when he can hear Japanese.
Yes.
So,
how did you
start speaking English?
You mentioned in your podcast
that you studied abroad
for a while.
Can you tell us about that?
Well,
at the first,
I should say
I was born in London.
That's a very important point, isn't it?
That's right.
Before I turned
to be a year old, I came back.
So, I literally do not
have any memories at that time.
Right, yeah.
But because I was born there,
on the official document,
I always need to write that my birthplace
is London, even though
my appearance is totally Japanese
ロンドンへの夢
and my identity is Japanese,
and I do not have any memories,
but I need to write
on the official document.
Interesting. I never even thought about it.
Yeah, so for me, I feel
a little bit negative
emotion on that because I do
not know what London
is, but I need to write
London. And then
several friends
suspected like
can you speak English or
why your birthplace is London,
but I don't
have any response to them.
So, gradually I feel like
I want to go there
to fit to my career
record.
Like, you want to
actually have something to do with London.
Yes, yes. I see, I see.
And then about
like 15 year old or 14
year old, second grade or junior high,
I gradually thinking
I want to go to London
in the real way. And then
at that time, one of my friends
told me like she
had a plan to go to the
US as an exchange student when she
turned to
be a high school student.
And then I, since
then, I didn't know
what, you know, way to go to
abroad when I was
14 or 13
because it's still very child, isn't it?
So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then when I heard that, I
realized, okay, is there
any way to go to the overseas?
And then she told me how to
you know, find a way.
And then I told
my mom, and then my mom
was very supportive.
And then she just said
if you want to go, just go.
Oh, just like that?
Yeah, just like that. Wow.
Yeah, and I think she also
hope, she also want me to
be a kind of bilingual, I guess.
Because I was born
in there. So she
also thought, okay, it would be
a good chance for Nai-chan
to go abroad and to study
more about English.
So was this friend of
yours, was
she in your school? Like your friend
that shared that she's going to go to
to the States, was
she in the same school as you?
What sort of friend?
So like, how common was
that in your school?
It was like, you know, 25
years ago, so it's
not that much common, but
gradually, like
like, because in my
junior high and high school, it's
kind of 新学校 in Japan.
So several
are getting interested in going abroad.
So in my
age, there are
three or four
decided to go.
結構な割合でいる感じ?
結構な割合でいる、うん。
Okay, so you decide you want to
go to London around
that time, like 高校生ぐらい?
そうそうそうそう。First grade of
high school.
But at that time, it only has, you know,
I
only went to England
just for an year as an exchange student.
So only an academic year.
異文化体験
So it's not the full
one year, it's more like less.
It's like nine months, right? Nine months or ten months
around that.
I think I
got a sense of language there
because, you know, in my city
there is no Japanese,
no Asian in my high school.
But Indian, several.
Indian, several, but not like
東北アジア地域かな?
East Asian.
And then my host family is
full British.
And then their English
is
has so strong dialect.
Oh!
That's an interesting thing about
learning English in
UK, isn't it?
Depending on which city, which area
of the island you're
studying in,
you can sound like a completely different
person. You can sound like a South London
girl, you can sound like a Scouser,
you can sound like completely something
else.
Yeah, that's true. Because at first,
I didn't understand what they were saying.
But I thought it is because
of my language skill is very low.
But, like,
two weeks or three weeks later,
I noticed several words
their pronunciation
is pretty odd.
It's like, oh, it's not me,
it's them.
It should be the dialect, I guess,
or something like that.
Because in the morning,
my host sister said,
where is my bergong?
So, she wanted
to say, where has my butter
gone? So, where is my butter?
She wanted to say.
But, butter,
that pronunciation is so
tricky for me, like a b.
And water, it's not water,
or water, it's like w.
No T.
And then,
every sentence, it doesn't have any T.
Intonation is also, like,
has kind of low.
Yeah, yeah.
英語学習の苦労
Northern England,
has a different intonation.
So, it's like
the Tohoku dialect of Japan.
As an image.
Without opening mouth,
or without that
much strong emotion,
very pain.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
So, you, like, figured it out
that this is, like,
this is not your, you know,
English CD that you've been
listening to in your school.
This is a completely different
kind of English.
But, you kind of adjust your ears,
you get used to it.
Yeah, like, after Christmas,
I think I could get
the sense of English.
Like, three months.
Because at that time, we don't have email,
we don't have
smartphone, we don't have
anything. It's not like you're calling
your parents every weekend.
No, no, no, no, no.
I always buy, like, international
telephone card once in
a month. It costs, like,
30 pounds or something.
And we only can make a phone
call, like,
an hour, or an hour
and a half. Wow, wow, yeah.
Only in a month. Yeah, that's short.
Yes.
That is only the timing for me to speak
Japanese.
So that's natural, like,
only the three months.
But I could get the sense of the
English, because it's like,
always I got a shower of English,
and then I
didn't have any,
you know, device to
carry, you know,
device to call out the Japanese. That's true, this is pre-internet era,
so you have, like, nothing else to
distract you. Yes, yes,
definitely.
I think that affected me a lot.
Yeah, but I think,
you might sort of, you know,
stay too modest
about this, but I think
it's still pretty incredible, three months,
like, you must have had, like, a little bit of
natural talent
knack for it,
to, like, be comfortable,
but I think knowing you a little
bit, I feel like the biggest
sort of
things that worked for you is
the timing that you went, right?
You went in high school, where
you're not fully,
completely formed
as a human, right? But you still
have a strong sense of
who you are, like, you're starting
to develop that, and you have
things you want to talk about, you
have, like,
you know, you have, like, this
is not what I mean, like, that sense
is clear, right? Like, you know when there's a
gap between what you want to
say and how you sound,
and you want to close that gap,
like, I think
that, to me, is, like, the biggest
driver to get, like, to improve
on your language, and
because you're a very
chatty person, it must have
been really frustrating, right?
Having to be the one
who, like, I want to join the
conversation, I have so many things
I want to talk about this, it sounds fun,
but, like, you know, you're, like,
two milliseconds
behind on all of the conversation
because you're, like, processing in your
brain what's going on, and
you end up losing the opportunity to, like,
insert yourself in a conversation,
and,
but, like, I think that worked in
your favor because now you're
frustrated, and now you want to, like, improve
even more.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true, that's true. But, you know, because,
you know, when I was in
the country, like, in the
UK or in the States, gradually
I get used to speak
in their language,
but after I
left there and spent
more time in Japan,
my mouth or my
brain getting used to
use Japanese.
So,
when I
go back to States or England
again, I think
it will take two weeks or a month
to get used to it.
But still, I'm
in Japan, Tokyo, so
right now, I feel a little
bit less confident,
a little bit, but, yeah,
it will be alright.
Yeah, but you know where to go back to,
I guess, like, you know where you're, like,
you know that it's a little bit rusty,
but you can always go back to, like, a certain
level, you, like, know
that it's never going to, like, you're not gonna one
day forget it.
言語と自信
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, you know, bicycle muscle,
we say it
in Japan, like, 自転車に乗る筋力。
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a bit of muscle memory, isn't it?
I have that experience
when I come back to Japan,
I need, like, a week
or something, adjustment period
to say
すいません instead of, like,
oh, sorry, you know, or excuse me, right?
It's like 反射神経的なやつだから。
Like, and then I
scare people even more by saying, like, oops, I'm
sorry.
So,
it's like that, I think. You just need, like, a little bit
of muscle training
going back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's really fun.
So, you'd spent, like, a year in
high school, that's, like, where you got
most of your English out,
and then you went back
to the States again, like, several
years later, right? This was in grad school?
Yes.
In the PhD,
when I was in the PhD doctoral
course, I went back to the
States for, well,
around two years.
Before that,
I also went to another country
to train another language.
Right, you started introducing another
language. That's crazy.
So, my brain is kind of mixed together, yeah.
Which is crazy.
Wow.
I wish I was.
Yeah, because, you know, after I came back to Japan,
from the
UK, I spent a whole time
in Japan, but
and then I went to the
university in Japan,
and then I started to
study
studying another language
as my third
time, and then
the first
first grade or master degree, I went
to that country
to train language first.
So, then I came back,
and because that language, I
am using it for my research,
so
I think
I trained
a lot
when I was undergrad and
master's, more than
English. So, at that time,
I think in my brain, that
Asian language is much, much stronger
than English. Right, that was
your priority at the time. Yeah, yeah.
Prioritise, yeah. I prioritised the
language at that time in my brain.
Yeah.
But, you know, when I
become a PhD student,
I had a chance to
go to the States, and then
I went to the States.
You had to remember English.
Yeah, remember the muscle again.
And then, during
the two years, my language
prioritised also changed again.
So, Japanese is
all the time
the strongest
language in my brain. Of course, of course.
But second or third is always switching,
depending on the place,
depending on the time. Yeah, so right now
is, you know, when I
speak to someone who is
the English native speaker, I always say,
oh, my English is my third.
And to the Asian
people, I always say, oh,
my Asian language is my third.
To say, you know,
バイリンガルの考察
my foreign language is not that much good.
How convenient.
Yes.
Well, I can't speak for
the experience
of being multilingual because I only
really had time to do
English and also try
not to forget Japanese because I
got introduced to English in middle
school, which
at that point, I wasn't going to
forget Japanese.
But there was a chance that I'm going to
sound like a kid
in Japanese, even into
old age. And I'm
just very lucky that
the school that I went to
in Singapore, we
always had just enough
number of minimum students
of Japanese, enough to hold
a class as a thing.
So, I always
was able to take Japanese class
throughout high school.
And so,
that's why I can
for a lot of people, it's kind of surprising.
It's like, oh, you only lived in Japan for
eight years of your entire life and your
Japanese is not too shabby.
And that's probably
because of that. And I
like reading books.
But in your brain, which language is
stronger, like Japanese
and English?
It's
interesting that you ask, because
I was talking to another bilingual
person recently, and
she's also Japanese
English bilingual, but she's been in Japan
for the past ten years.
So, like, Japanese has
become kind of predominant language for
her. But she was
noticing that I
don't have a ton
of personality changes between
the two languages.
Like, the way I speak
or the way I sound.
I kind of look and
sound the same in both languages.
Which is not
always the case for
a bilingual person.
Sometimes, you have a very
言語の影響
extroverted personality if you're
talking to one language, or shy
personality to the other.
I don't really have that. And she said
that's probably because you were
a fully developed human
when English got introduced
to you for the first time, which
is, like, 13, 14 years
old. But
you were still, like, not
you know, my middle school
self is not the same as my adult Asami,
right? So, like,
that effect is just kind of
never really, like,
won over the other personality.
It just kind of meshed.
And maybe that's why I don't
really have a ton of difference between
my, like, English-speaking self and Japanese-
speaking self. And
where was I going with this?
I can't remember, but
it was something along the line
of how
it's interesting that
some people have a very distinct
difference between different languages.
And they feel limited.
Like, they have a strong sense that one
language is better than the other.
Unless I'm speaking about
my job, right? Which is, like,
very technical
and very specific.
Which I don't
have a lot of training of that in Japanese.
Unless that
is happening, I actually
don't really have a preference for which
one it goes.
I want to be like that.
Because
I have kind of that ambitious.
So that's why I feel less
confident all the time, I feel.
So then I need alcohol.
To have confidence.
But you know what?
My ESL teacher
in the school where I was
first learning English, right?
In Singapore. My ESL teacher,
English as a second language teacher,
told me, and my mom,
you guys need to
really keep up your native language
because
your English is only going to be as
good as your native language. If
your English starts getting better,
then you're over.
Then both of it is going to go down.
Because you're never going to be
better than your native language in some way, shape,
or form. And so if it
starts becoming at a similar level,
now you need to work on your native
language.
You read more books, newspapers,
do something to really strengthen.
And so in a way, I think
he was saying that you should have a
hierarchy of which
language to prioritize in
some shape or form.
So maybe I'm doomed.
I don't know.
I also heard from the linguistics
when we get
old, we will lose the second
or third language because our brain
is less work.
And then, for example,
the Chinese lady,
immigrant to the US, and she is very
fluent at speaking English.
But when she gets old,
she loses English.
And she starts to
speak something in Chinese.
So the
care doesn't
understand what she says.
Because she always speaks
in Chinese.
So I'm very curious when Asami gets old,
which language will be the...
Or maybe
I will start
learning some other language
now to make sure
I have messed up priorities.
I would love to, I think,
not to sound cocky
or anything, but I think being
bilingual, there are many
people who are bilinguals, I think.
Two is fairly common, especially if you go to Europe.
They're like casually
two or three languages because
they sound similar enough.
Or like something
like that, right?
I think trilingual,
being really good at three, I think
that's still quite rare.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, I'm jealous.
Because
I really appreciate
sort of like
the kaizodo of the world
I get to have by having
access to two languages.
And two very different ones, too.
I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference
if I know Italian
and Portuguese, right?
Because Japanese and English is so
different, I get
to access very different
information sources.
Oh, right, that's true.
And that, I think,
gives me a little bit of edge.
But three, you know,
add one more to that, that sounds
pretty incredible.
Yeah.
But I don't check the three
languages all the time.
When I see the news, I don't check the three languages
because it's troublesome.
I'm not going to read
言語学習の価値
the same book in two different
languages.
But the world definitely expanded.
Right, because there's so much
of untranslated information
in Japanese
that the world doesn't know yet
because most of the world doesn't speak Japanese.
And then there's
quicker, and there's just
more English information publicly
available that is not
translated fully into Japanese
that Japanese people might have harder
time accessing.
Maybe it was pretty hard
learning both languages,
but I do feel like it was worth
it just for the sake of the
access point of view.
Oh, right.
Oh, that's interesting.
I'm really dying
to add the third one, and I don't
know what I should go.
Because if I'm going for the
number and the amount of information,
I should definitely go for Chinese.
I should definitely go for Mandarin
because there are so many
new information that's
available in Chinese
new and old. They have a
fucking thousand years of records
of history
written in Chinese.
But
in terms of what I
want to
speak,
if it was up to me, I would love
to speak Portuguese.
That sounds so cool.
Just in terms of
coolness factor-wise.
Right.
Yeah, I understand that. But for me,
I'm kind of very respect.
I'm very
proud of me because
my third trilingual
skills is very
authentic.
Right.
I also met several
people who can use
three languages very fluently,
but they have the background.
Right, they were born into it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Their mom is American, their dad is German,
but they live in
Spain or something like that.
They have the background.
But in my case,
my parents are both Japanese,
and I
did so much
effort to learn English
after 12.
And I did also
so much effort to learn the Asian
language after 18.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm very proud of me.
Yes, you should be.
You should be.
And also
your Japanese too, you know,
your job is like reading and writing
in Japanese, so
I think you do far
more writing than average
Japanese person, right?
So your Japanese,
I'm nobody to judge
your quality of Japanese, I've never read it,
but I'm sure your
writing is impeccable compared
to an average Japanese person out there.
But because
I always
say, okay, I'm always proud of myself,
so that saying
reminds the others to feel
like, oh, that's why Naichan
is not a typical Japanese.
Japanese just say, oh, no, no, no, no,
I'm not that much good.
But I
am proud of myself.
自己誇りの重要性
You should be
freaking proud of yourself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I think, yeah, that's true
because I feel very lucky.
I must have worked hard,
you know, my middle school asami
worked hard to learn
English, but
conveniently, because it was
middle school and a long time ago,
I don't remember
too much details about how
hard that was, you know.
I'm sure it was, but maybe
it was too hard that my brain just decided to
delete all that memory altogether.
I have very distinct
few memories of really embarrassing
mistakes, but other than
that, I'm like, yeah,
after a year or so, I was
fine talking in English.
Oh, that's good.
It's like, I don't remember
the super hard part,
but
yeah, it's kind of
a lucky combination
of being old enough
that I don't forget
Japanese, but being
young enough that learning
English was not too, too hard.
Also, nobody expects
middle school students to be really
good at their even
native language, you know.
You're going to sound like a middle school,
whereas if you were an adult
learning that new language,
it's going to be a little bit embarrassing
when you have to go through the phase
where you sound like an elementary school kid
even though you're like 40,
you know?
Yeah, that's true, because
my podcast partner,
Maki, now lives
in the States with her family,
and their daughters
are now like 9, 6
years old. They started
studying English
before they got
英語習得の重要性
the English course in Japan,
so everything is new to them.
So at the beginning, it
seems very hard for them to
catch up what the other friends
are saying, but you know,
Maki always reports me how improved
their English is.
I just traced whether it's
what kind of level they're in.
I'm always checking it, and then the funny
thing is, the younger
sister,
she speaks something in English
and Maki recorded
and sent it to me, and her
pronunciation is totally American.
Like,
that is a duck.
Like, a duck. This kind of
pronunciation is so much American.
So I think she
learned a lot from
the teachers saying, and friends saying,
so she just, you know,
memorized what
the pronunciation A
comes from. So she
just trained
herself,
and yeah, it's very funny.
It's very interesting to see
how improved their
English gradually. Right, yeah.
Like, didn't I say, I think
when I went to your podcast,
I told Maki-san that like, oh,
at that age, your kids are gonna
like, get
English right away,
and you're gonna have to work on
making sure that they don't forget Japanese.
And yeah,
I think that's already
becoming true.
It sounds like, you know,
the kids, especially
six-year-old, oh my god, yeah, that's
gonna be really fast.
It's a matter of time.
Yeah, she's like,
Mommy, your English doesn't make sense.
Oh!
Yeah.
That's a little bit, you know, sad
to hear that.
Well, Maki-san's
also pretty fluent in English too,
so there's an edge to that,
yeah. Yeah, she's also the
trilingual person. Yeah, yeah.
Like, I remember, I think my
sister and I
quickly caught up with my mom and
my dad, like, after like a year,
and we like, started speaking to each
other in English. It must have been very annoying
to be my parents.
Mmm.
Yeah. But I'm still, you know,
looking forward to seeing them. That's really interesting,
and I love
that you sort of like, you know,
feel
comfortable enough to like,
um,
say that you can speak English,
and like, you know, not just
like hide behind
all of the Kansan and everything,
you know, because
it's, it's,
it's,
I think like more people,
because I know that a lot of,
a lot more people are
capable of
speaking English to that level.
Definitely, yeah. Right?
And I think they, they just
like, don't expose themselves because
they're like, really worried about
sounding stupid, or making
mistakes, but seriously,
I, I, like,
I feel like sometimes, like, I get
called to do some tsuyaku, and I was like,
wait, I, I didn't need to be here,
you know? Like, you, you guys can
completely be fine. Like, why
am I here?
So,
so, I really do wish that
it doesn't become like such a big deal
to be able to speak English.
You know, and
yeah, I think it's like
great that you, you are like advertising
you're confident about speaking English
and like, to your colleagues.
Yeah, to the listeners,
let's have confidence
on your language. Yes, yes!
Yes, yes!
Yeah, alright, well,
so, well, this
would be a good place to end this one,
and then let's get started with
our actual kakukip.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Let's lift up our kakukip.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening, and find us on
X at Eigo de Science,
that is E-I-G-O-D-E
S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time!
