Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Survival English

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Survival English

agedoufu_big.gifA grandpa who lived in Fresno spoke awesome “survival” English. To be precise, he was a younger brother of my grandmother, but he was like a grandpa for me.

His life was like a drama of a very eventful life of 93 years where he played a solo role. At the age of nineteen, he smuggled himself into the US, experienced many hardships, and was later put in an internment camp. He worked as a railroad worker for many years and finally succeeded in agriculture. He had few opportunities to receive education and learned English on his own by imitation. So, his English pronunciation was awful, but somehow, he could make himself understood much better than I.

When he was young, he tried to acquire English in a bold way. When asking, “What time is it now?” he would say a Japanese phrase, “Hotta imo, ijitta na (You touched the potato that I dug, didn’t you?).” Or, when getting off a bus, he would say, “Age dofu (fried tofu),” which meant “I get off.” Everyone has heard these expressions today, but Grandpa actually used them!

Meanwhile, his grandson, Jeffrey, tried to learn Japanese using the same “method.” He kept saying, “Don’t touch my mustache!” so as to say, “Do itashi mashite (you are welcome).”

“I don’t touch the potato you dug”