Words The simplest of tasks becomes challenging when you don't know the right words. It is one thing to struggle with communication when you are emotional and overwrought... when the words have so much meaning that you are afraid to use them. When the words have the potential to expose the open wound that is your soul. It is another thing altogether when you don't know the actual vocabulary... Today I learned the Japanese word for "money order". I scanned the dictionary, I found the word, and I tried to prepare myself for the inevitable onslaught of related words. It never works. He likes to tell people I have "an ear for languages"...that it comes easily to me and that my pronunciation regularly fools native speakers. I wonder who the hell he is talking about. It seems as though every time I learn a word, a phrase, a sentence... I find out there is another, better, way to say the same thing. I get frustrated, angry, and embarrassed when I don't understand. (Ridiculous, I tell myself, you are living here by choice!) I rarely listen to myself. I am quick to blush when I am embarrassed. I am quick to blush on a regular basis. When I joined him I had the most rudimentary of Japanese language skills. Essentially, I could greet my neighbors and say my farewells and read the majority of the characters for food. It didn't make for terribly scintillating conversation. He had studied the language for years in the states, and spent the first year working at a Japanese company, where he spoke it 9 to 5. That year, his skill created a very ugly dependent. Me. I disliked it, and me...and him...for what I had become. So in our second year of residence I went to school, and listened, and studied, and learned a great deal. I learned how to brace myself for the barrage of words that hits you in the solar plexus when you stumble on the correct pronunciation while asking a simple question. I learned how to listen for key verb endings as context indicators. I learned how to tell someone I am frustrated, angry, and embarrassed because I don't understand...but I rarely tell them. My face usually takes care of that for me as I have yet to learn how not to blush. My face was blushing today when the postal clerk explained there were three different types of money orders. D-d-different t-t-types? Panic sets in. When I was very young, I had a very Cindy Brady sort of a lisp, but the brain stuttering is new. I hear myself telling the clerk (in my ultra-polite Japanese) that I don't know, but I will research it and return tomorrow. Why? Will I have more of a clue then? Back to the dictionary. .

SMQ1996