Language is more than just communication

By Lethbridge Herald on August 5, 2025.

Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui
For the Herald

Never look down on people who speak broken English.  They are learning.  Respect people who are learning a new language.  As they learn, they already know two languages albeit imperfectly.  Language learning is hard for adults.  Normally we learn to speak before we reach puberty.  It requires determination, energy, patience, and time after the teenage years. I know: I had to learn three languages for work as an adult.

As I was learning English, French, and Sesotho, my mother tongue Japanese became out of date because of infrequent use. So I can no longer claim full competence in any of them. Language is alive and evolves constantly.  My sister  tells me about my Japanese, “We don’t say that any more.” Now I am losing even the bare minimum of French and Sesotho which I managed for work because there is no opportunity to use them in Lethbridge. Memory loss due to age doesn’t help.

I once had an American visiting lecturer who tried bravely to teach a course in his newly acquired Japanese language without an interpreter. I didn’t appreciate his lectures much. He sounded like a child. I found later that he was a well known scholar for his expertise in the economics of J. Maynard Keynes.  He was an advisor for the TVA – President F.D. Roosevelt’s iconic “New Deal” project “Tennessee Valley Authority.” My immaturity stopped me from learning from his scholarship because of his acquired language.

Language also relates to political issues. Harry Nagatoishi was one of those called “Kika-nisei” among Japanese Canadians during the 1960s. The designation referred to those who were born in Canada and left but came back. Harry had been shipped to Japan with parents when he was an infant. When the second world war ended, the Canadian Government did not allow Japanese Canadians who had been in the internment camps to go back home to the B.C. coast. Instead they were given two options: move to the East of the Rockies and resettle at their own expense or to be “repatriated” to Japan paid for by the Canadians government. “Repatriate” was a wrong word because they were Canadian citizens and Japan was a foreign country. In fact, Japanese Canadians were enemies of Japan. Some of them fought against Japan as Canadian soldiers. They signed up from the internment camps to enlist and returned to the camps when war ended. It was an unlawful expulsion of Canadian citizens.  Why were German and Italian Canadians not treated in the same way?

Harry was one of those who came back to Canada 15 years later in the 1950s, when the Canadian government realized that the so-called “repatriation” was unjustifiable.  Harry got a job as a live-in house boy while learning English.  Japanese elementary schools do not teach English. When the employer’s pet dog was hit by a car, Harry meant to say how sorry he was with the only word he knew in such a situation. He was fired.  He had no idea the word was an expletive. He lost income and the place to sleep only because of one wrong word.

Many injustices and unfair treatments are meted out because of accent, inappropriate vocabulary, or wrong grammar. The worst incident I have heard of was the judge who threw a case out of court because the key witness had a strong African accent, not a southern drawl. Such latent racism let an alleged guilty person get away free.  Not only is language a matter of accent, grammar, and vocabulary but it  represents culture, customs, history, and traditions. It represents a whole person. That’s why prohibiting the use of native language was an effective way to destroy Indigenous nations.  It rejected their identity. It’s why the French language is passionately defended in Quebec.

My daughter finished the second year of middle school called “Cycle d’Orientation” in the French speaking part of Switzerland.  When we came back to Canada, she was a Francophone teenager struggling with English. But the Board of Education of Greater Toronto denied her scholarship application as a bilingual student. In Ontario, the bilingual scholarship program was designed to help the English speaking students to be functional in French. It was not to encourage French speaking students to learn English.

During the 1980s, I used to go to the Gaza Strip for work regularly to assist Palestinian social programs like Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. It was founded by the American Baptist Churches but later management was transferred to the network of the worldwide Anglican Church communities. When I went to Gaza City for the first time, I greeted children on the street saying “Shalom.” I was wearing a jacket from an Army/Navy surplus store. My driver/interpreter brusquely pushed me into the car.  And we drove away fast. He said I could have been a target of stone throwing Palestinian teenagers. Greeting in Hebrew wearing a green jacket was not a good idea in the Gaza Strip.

“Shalom” is the word for  greeting in Israel. It’s like “Hi!” Israelis don’t think of its deep theological significance every time they greet. But many Christians love to say “shalom” after reading books like “Secular Gospel” by Harvard University Professor Harvy Cox.  ut Israelis don’t think of its profound meaning every time they greet each other. Don’t imitate language which is not your own just because it sounds cool and makes you look  “learned.”  Trust me: I nearly got stoned.

Some people think Chinese and Japanese characters look “cool” and print them on T-shirts. I find some of them facetious or inappropriate, even offensive. Borrowing things foreign is fashionable nowadays. I am glad that the world is getting smaller and our knowledge of other cultures is expanding. However, if you must borrow what is not yours, do some homework and do it respectfully.