Elucidating Questions

Why do people think Japanese is hard to speak?

This language that poured itself into me and made itself home

I’ve heard people say I’m appropriating Japanese culture by learning and speaking Japanese but

I didn’t choose this language

It chose me

From some distant piano teacher who I cannot remember the face of having us say

サヨナラ

At the end of the day

To the friend’s big sister years later teaching me only swear words and how to say

ウルサイ!

バカ

It just came to me

And then I couldn’t help but learn it

It just came to me

A crow caws fate

Yes like it

The language

Itself is alive and chose me for it

Maybe languages are alive

After all is Latin not, at least mostly, dead?

It always spoke to my soul

As I learned the words

Their true meanings in the language

Ask me to translate anything and I’m lost

But I know what I’m saying in Japanese

And I know what they’re saying too

I studied French

Quebecois

And in it came and out it went

Japanese stays with me

I don’t know what that means

I worked hard, but in the end it was hardly work

It’s fun to work hard when there’s a reward for it

My reward was a world opening up

That now I’ll hear a song from years ago that I used to sing, but didn’t know what I was saying

And now I understand it

What a thing

To know what things say, to understand people

In something other than your mother tongue

To come to know parts of it better than you own

English feels like it’s mine and I can do whatever I want with it

But I feel like a vessel carrying something important

Something worth working hard at

Maybe other people have languages that choose them

Maybe someone feels the same way about English

Like it’s a precious thing they’re carrying