BGM: The Who - Magic Bus
I worked late today. This morning, at AEON I read a book by Haruo Erikawa, which has the title "English and the Japanese people [江利川春雄『英語と日本人』] ." Reading it, I have found that it is really a "funny" and thrilling one. It tells us how hard we the Japanese people have had a serious, and also funny struggle to learn English. Yes, the struggle has been going on for about 200 years.
We have spent such a long time to learn English, but it seems to be almost an impossible project to accomplish. Then, why do I STILL keep on learning English? Being fluent in using English is simply cool? Or I want to become a kind of "cosmopolitan"? I can't see, but anyway I use English without concerning any ideas as silly tactics.
This book tells me a good opinion/idea. It is that the ability of using English fluently won't determine/decide how valuable they are. About this point, I have to reflect on the thoughts I had during my childish past days. Certainly, once I had thought that fluent speakers must have been greater than "ordinary" people. Oh, what a silly idea. I had to understand the simple fact that everybody must be great as they are.
Looking back... and I remember this. Before this great internet era, I had thought that Japanese (mainly monolingual) people were not so great that we had to study English so hard to become as great people as various foreign people. But, now "the diversity age" has come. I want to think about how I can show this myself as a true size of Japanese honestly. Can I get out from any stubborn bias?
I remembered this - A friend of mine said to me this morning as my English level seems like "almost" C2 one. But tbh, I can't find how great that level can be... Of course, I'm really glad to hear that. And also, I can't believe that comment because once my English was really poor. Even now, my pronunciation contains really tough Japanese sound. Therefore, I need to practice English more with trying to keep on having a certain spirit, which once ancient Japanese people/learners must have had to learn English to become absolutely fluent (as the book I've read tells.)
