Learning languages December 1987

Trevor Leggett was head of the Japanese Department of the BBC.

This is one of his broadcasts to Japan

Zubari for December 1987

Hello listeners – Bonsoir, Guten Abend – that was Konbanwa in French and German.  In English we should say; “Good evening.”

The words seem simple in all the languages, but French and German have the difficulty that all nouns have a gender.  For instance, in French ‘evening’ is masculine, but ‘night’ is feminine. There is no reason for this at all.  In German, there is a rule that all small things are ‘neuter’; so, a little girl, ‘madchen’, is neuter!  This makes English schoolboys (and, I suppose, Japanese schoolboys who have to learn French or German) very impatient.

Apart from that, French is an easy language at the beginning.  The vocabulary is small.  For example, there is no French word for ‘to drop’.  They use two simple words.  By skilfully using a small number of words, the French can express ideas very precisely.

In contrast, German is a difficult language at the beginning.  There are many words, and many grammatical peculiarities.  But as one learns more and more words, German becomes easier.  So, experienced language teachers say that French is easy to begin, but requires great skill at the end, when one wants to express difficult ideas.  German is difficult at the beginning, but easy at the end.

And Japanese? What about Japanese? What do the professional United Nations interpreters say about Japanese? It is this: “Difficult at the beginning, difficult in the middle, and difficult at the end.”

So, all you listeners, who have learnt Japanese thoroughly, must be very clever people.  We foreigners salute you!

© Trevor Leggett