This blog post, a bit like the one I wrote about ideas for teaching, is another on the unexpected results of going on research leave. As well as time for rethinking my pedagogy, I also now have time to do some more language learning, and have decided to try and learn a bit of Japanese. The title of this post is an accurate representation of my current competency after almost two months of Duolingo: it means ‘I speak English’.

Why Japanese? Apart from the odd videogame, I had little exposure to Japanese culture growing up, and instead learnt most about manga, sushi and all such Europeanized things while living in France, a country which has always seemed to me to have a peculiar elective affinity for Japan. Maybe it’s the fact that both places have rich traditions of craftmanship and fine service – pâtisserie and maki – or maybe that’s just a lazy stereotype, for France certainly lacks the environmental precarity and population density of places like Kyoto and Osaka.

As well as the second-hand introduction I received in France, other things have led me to Japanese. Chief among them is the fact that it is a very different language to all those I have tried learning so far, and a basic competency would add another dimension to my thinking about human expression alongside my existing knowledge of living, dead and machine tongues. Even if I have scarcely scratched the surface, I already treasure a few insights: the use of particles in Japanese intrigues me, as does its mix of hiragana, katakana and kanji, and the structures of politeness visible even in a beginner’s vocabulary. The phrase よろしくお願いします, used to say ‘Nice to meet you’, roughly translates, for instance, to ‘please treat me well’.

One last thing about Japanese, and a tenuous effort to connect it to my research leave. I supervised an undergraduate project on Japanese and English actors of the 1700s last year, and, while offering my expertise on exactly 50% of the topic, simply enjoyed learning from my student and his co-supervisor. Indeed, I enjoyed myself so much that perhaps, if ever I get beyond saying things like ‘hello’, ‘I speak English’ and ‘I eat sushi’, there might be more to do here for my own research in the future.

Yet even if I do not (and Duolingo, practical as it is, is hardly designed for such purposes), the very act of learning this language that is so foreign to me helps train my brain to think along different paths, and so, like new exercises for the body, grants a kind of residual strength and flexibility. And that is more than enough.