5 June 2003 (5 Sivan 5763)
I have been visiting Jerusalem every August since I returned to Japan in 1993. A number of my colleagues in Japan who major in modern foreign languages, especially "exotic" ones, visit the places where they are used every year for carrying out fieldwork. So I may not be so exceptional in this respect. As far as I am concerned, however, the purpose of visiting Jerusalem is not so much doing fieldwork as keeping in touch with my friends, colleagues and ex-teachers and taking a rest from stressful Japanese society and language.
This year, however, I seem to be unable to visit Jerusalem in August. This is partly because there will be some memorial gathering for my late grandmother in mid-August, and I would like to attend it, and partly because I am visiting Jerusalem next week; with the salary I receive as a part-time lecturer I cannot afford to make two flights to Israel in two months.
The truth is that I am invited to give a talk in an international workshop on Jewish languages as translation languages that will be held from Monday through Thursday next week at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 35 linguists, mainly from Israel, the US and France, are invited to present their papers dealing with aspects of various Jewish languages as used in translating Hebrew classical sources. My paper is entitled "'False Friends' in the Hebrew Bible and the Yiddish Translation by Yehoash" (to be presented in Hebrew). A valuable byproduct created in the preparation is that I had the chance to read the whole Bible in Yiddish for the first time.
From my past experiences I can say that workshops where all the participants present their papers are the most fruitful of all the scholarly gatherings, so I am full of expectations, especially because I have been finding less and less meaning in participating in academic conferences in Japan as there are few other specialists in my areas of interest, but there are not many conferences on Hebrew and Jewish languages even in Israel and the US. I find it a great privilege that I am invited to such a workshop together with the other 34 linguists, all of whom are well-known in their respective field of Jewish linguistics. I am only sorry that I cannot stay even for one week because we are still in the middle of an academic year in Japan.
13 June 2003 (13 Sivan 5763)
Having spent four days from Monday through Thursday this week in an international workshop that was held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I came back to Kobe soon afterwards. 35 linguists (29 from Israel, three from France, two from the US and one from Japan, i.e., myself) were invited to the City of David to exchange ideas on aspects of Jewish languages, including Jewish Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Provençal, Judeo-Italian and Yiddish, as translation languages, mainly from classical Hebrew sources.
From my past experiences I already know that statistically big conferences that encompass all the aspects of one academic discipline are less fruitful in that quite a few leading researchers refrain from participating in them to avoid the crowd, and you can neither hear all the lectures nor meet all the researchers you are interested in for the sheer size of the conferences. On the other hand, you have more chances to hear and meet people more intimately and intensively in workshops dedicated to specific topics in some academic discipline where all the participants read their papers. This workshop was no exception to this rule. It will probably be recorded as one of the most important events in the history of the study of Jewish languages and will definitely remain in my memory as one of the most fruitful academic meetings I have ever attended.
I have felt more strongly that the fruitfulness and success of an academic conference lie not only in what is said in the conference hall per se but mainly in what is said in the "corridors". Researchers are after all human beings with emotions. In this workshop I could not only meet people I already knew from other conferences in Israel and elsewhere but also get acquainted with those whom I knew from books and articles and had never met before, which was probably the most important thing in this workshop. I was also inspired by their lectures and talks with them, and some of them were really eye-opening.
When you are engaged in a certain subject for a long time, it often becomes stale for you. This workshop has reminded me again how fascinating the phenomenon called Jewish languages is not only linguistically but also socially and culturally. I am happy that not only have I chosen this subject as one of my majors but also can I belong to the international scholarly community of linguists working on this fascinating phenomenon.
20 June 2003 (20 Sivan 5763)
Social conventions must be formed out of consensus of people living in a certain society to make their life easier. A number of conventions one finds in Japanese society, however, seem to be based on lack of logic and even masochism. They may have been logical when they were made, and in the course of time they have become fossilized and seem illogical now, or they may have been illogical and masochistic from the very beginning.
I feel that I am now witnessing the formation of such an illogical social convention in Japanese society right before my eyes. The prohibition of using cellular phones in means of public transportation is a case in point. Every five or ten minutes you hear from a loudspeaker a noisy announcement that asks you to refrain from using cellular phones inside the train or bus and/or to turn them off.
Although I myself do not use a cellular phone nor do I have any plan to do so at the moment, I have never found conversations by cellular phones in trains annoying. What has been annoying me - I have even complained directly a number of times - are the very announcements that come from loudspeakers in full volume. If the noise is the reason for the prohibition, they themselves should first prohibit these announcements, which are mostly repetitive, meddlesome and childish. If we should suppose that phone conversations are discouraged in trains because of their noise, regular conversations between passengers must also be prohibited because at least twice as many people are involved in the latter as in the former.
I fail to find any logic in this kind of prohibition. I have never heard any convincing reason reason why phone conversations in means of public transportation constitute noise, while regular conversations do not, from anyone who claims this, including railroad companies. It surprises me even further that many people seem to follow this instruction without questioning it twice. Since I do not have a cellular phone, I do not care that I am asked not to use it in trains and buses. It does bother me, however, that something illogical is being forced as a social convention with no argument and reasoning.
27 June 2003 (27 Sivan 5763)
This week I spent most of my free time to prepare material on the structure (i.e., grammar and lexicon) of the so-called international planned languages (also known as "artificial languages") in general and Esperanto in particular for two courses I am teaching now and am going to teach soon. I was fascinated again by the very idea of an international planned language as a unique experiment in the history of mankind.
Having compared a number of major planned languages that have proved at least a certain degree of social use, including Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Occidental (Interlingue) and Interlingua, I felt that not only the ideological and social but also structural factors might have played a role in the more prevalent social use of Esperanto than any other planned language. If I am to choose one of them as the best proposal in terms of its grammar and lexicon, I will definitely choose Esperanto because of the regularity of its grammar and the economy of its lexicon.
Although structural factors may have been important in the success of Esperanto among all the planned languages, I have also realized so strongly again that they are rather insignificant in people's choice of a lingua franca as a means of communication among speakers of different languages. Its usability for this purpose is almost none compared to that of English, for example.
It is true that Esperanto is more regular and more neutral than any ethnic language, including English, but this is mostly irrelevant for the majority of the people in the world. Frankly speaking, I am rather fed up with the apologetic excuse naive Esperantists repeat about the regularity and neutrality of Esperanto. They often give me an impression as if they were making a propaganda of some fishy new religion. Although they are absolutely true in what they say and the thought of Zamenhof is really noble, there must be far more important factors, both non-structural and non-ideological.
As far as I am concerned, in spite of all the sympathy with the noble idea of Zamenhof and the structural perfection of Esperanto, I cannot be so enthusiastic about this language except as an object of mostly theoretical linguistic (and sociolinguistic) investigations. I am also bothered by the naive leftist world view of so many Esperantists.