Years ago when I was getting my BA in communication, I studied Japanese. I took two years of the language and now, if pressed, can have a limited conversation with a Japanese person, or I can eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation and get the gist of the topic at hand. I’m not much good for directions, but I can say, “Hi”.
Around that same time, I had a one week crash course in Japanese when I was teaching English in Japan for a summer. This was through Asian Access, an excellent mission organization to East Asia. I learned basic skills, key phrases and how to decipher the Japanese language. The goal was to be able to travel in the area and keep from embarrassing myself.
One of the things about crash courses is the emphasis on key phrases that will help get a person through a tight spot in communication. Japanese has several such phrases. Even now, I can rattle off many of them.
Sumi-masen (pronounced ‘sue me maa sen’) means “excuse me”. Right before starting to eat a meal, a person says a phrase that sounds like ‘eat your duck with moss’, ita-da-ki-masu meaning “I will receive”. There’s also a phrase for saying “Hi”, which is kon’nichi wa (pronounced ‘ko knee chee wa’) and means “Good Afternoon”. Japanese has a different phrase for greeting someone depending on the time of day.
Fast forward to today. I work as a scheduler for a medical clinic at an area hospital. I schedule appointments for children so I am frequently on the phone talking with their parents. Many parents who call in are not English speakers. At the hospital where I work, there is a translation center that is manned by people who provide translation assistance for any person that calls in. We don’t want language to be a barrier to providing a needed service to a family.
Spanish is one of the languages for which I get frequent calls. Just the other day, I got a call from a woman who said, ‘Spanish?’ when I answered. I knew I could not help her because of my limited Spanish speaking skills. I needed to get a Spanish interpreter from the translation service on the line with us, so I could find out what the Spanish speaking woman needed. Sometimes this process takes a few minutes, and as I did not want this woman to hang up on me during that hold time, I said to her, Chotto matte kudasai (pronounced cho toe ma tay coo dah sai) and put her on hold while I called the translation service.
One of my co-workers said to me, “What did you say? What language was that?”
And, suddenly I realized what I had done. I had to admit, instead of using the Spanish words for ‘please wait for a moment’, un momento por favor, I had searched my memory, and come up with Japanese! I had used absolutely the right phrase to let the caller know that getting the translator would take a few minutes. Unfortunately, I had used the incorrect language. Instead of embarrassing myself in Japan, I was embarrassing myself back home in America!
Language is a funny thing and so is memory. As it happens, the vowel sounds used in Spanish and Japanese are similar and maybe that’s part of the answer to its use that day. As a result, I now have by my work phone a prominently displayed message un momento, por favor for those frequent Spanish callers. And right on the tip of my tongue, I am ready with Japanese!