LL-L "Code switching" 2005.02.17 (02) [E]

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From:  Mike Morgan <Mike.Morgan at mb3.seikyou.ne.jp>
Subject: LL-L "Code switching" 2005.02.16 (09) [E]

Ron and fellow Lowlanders!

Thanks to Ron for posting the link to the Aynu (aka Ainu) Tuytah. Here I am
living in Japan (albeit far from Aynu mosir), and I have to have a
"foreigner" tell me about the wonderful things available right here at
"home".

For those of you without Japanese who are interested in what the link is
about, there IS also an English page, which is:
http://www3.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~mmine/kiki_gen/murasaki/asai01e.html
Unfortunately, the only things that are in English are the introductions to
what Tuytah is and to the narrator (a fascinating life, from the little
blurb.)

It's a busy week -- aren't they all! -- so I didn't have time to look at the
site in detail; I DID bookmark it and take a quick look at a random sample
of the tales therein. But I'll give you my two cents worth anyway:

Looking at the 3 stories I randomly selected, _I_ was surprised by the
amount of Japanese ... that is, I was surprised that it was SO LITTLE.
Besides the fact that the interviewer and interviewee in this case share a
common language (Japanese), there is also the question as to which language
is dominant. The interviewer, Murasaki Kyoko, is obviously and
understandably a Japanese dominant native speaker (albeit one born in Taiwan
during the occupation), whose fluency in Aynu I am not qualified to judge
(but whose resume would indicate at least reasonable fluency). The
interviewee/narrator is an Aynu born and bred for sure, BUT even assuming
that when she was younger Aynu was her dominant language (a reasonable
assumption, based on her life's story), at the time Murasaki began
collecting materials from her, she had been living in an Old Folks Home for
more than 10 years ... and had been living removed from where she grew up
(her dialect area, etc.) for much longer. I would guess that, aside from
Murasaki, during those 10 plus years she probably got little chance to speak
Aynu. Even fluent second-language speakers loose native-language fluency
after years of non-use (as I can personally attest, having left the States
almost half a life ago). This is even more the case where the "second"
language was probably a second NATIVE to start with. So her Japanese
"fillers" (equivalents to English "uhm" and "aah"), which seem to make up at
least 35% of the code-switching are to be expected. As are the code
switching connectors (conjunctions, etc.), which seem to make up another 35%
(the figures are just guess-timates). And finally there's the remaining
30% -- the "real" code switching (that is, use of Japanese "content" words
when the Aynu could have been used ... if only she could remember what it
was!). So while the code switching may, as Ron pointed out, be attempts "to
accommodate the interviewer, especially where the two share another
language", a lot of it is, I would guess, just mental "filler", used while
the narrator was grasping for the Aynu word (which she may not have used for
years!), or the right way to say things. And such "filler", like how we do
math calculations and counting, is not always taken from our first language,
but from the one that comes to mind RIGHT NOW and which are most automatic
(As in how I count on my hands ... which is just as likely -- maybe even
MORE likely -- to be the normal Japanese  way, or Japanese Sign Langauge
counting, as it is the  normal American way ... and sometimes it is even the
normal Nepali way, sicne that allows me to count easily to ten on one hand
while keeping track of decades on the other, thus keeping track of things up
to 100 without muss or fuss).

All this said, I DO agree with Ron that as researchers and data collectors,
WE need to avoid code-switching, etc LIKE THE PLAGUE. But need also to
accept it (generously?) as reality (albeit not always the reality we would
like) from our sources... ねぇ?!

Holger also adds from personal experience:

> I myself experienced situations in which it wasn't
> realized that I was talking EF-Low Saxon to somebody and was constantly
> answered in German. Obviously despite hearing and understanding his own
> language the person I was talking to couldn't imagine me to be able to
talk
> this because of my age and possibly non-East Frisian looking.

Happens to me all the time ... both here in Japan (for example, Japanese
Deaf people when they first meet me assume: 1) he's Deaf (I'm not) and 2) I
have to speak to him in "English Sign" (which they don't since: 1) there is
no such thing as "English Sign", that is a sign language shared by Deaf
people in countries where English is the language of the day, 2) I learned
to sign American Sign Langauge only AFTER I learned Japanese Sign Language
and have lived in Japan the whole time so naturally my JSL is far more
fluent than my ASL, and 3) most of the signs they THINK are "English Sign"
are actually International Sign Language, which is about as international as
... Esperanto!) and also abroad (my stories about travelling around
Catalunya last summer and speaking only Català but being answered by
Catalans consistently in Castellano until my 3rd insistence that no,
actually my Català was much better than my Castellano (not actually true,
but I went to Catalunya in part for the beautiiful language, if and when I
want Castellano I'l go to ... Madrid?) are similar to Helgar and Ron's
stories.)

And finally, in resonse to Ron's comment that

> Apparently that is hard to do in some cultures, as in Japanese, were the
> listener is required to give constant feedback, signs of "Yes, I'm still
> listening" (そうそう _Sou sou_,  はい _Hai_,  ええ、そうですね？ _Ee, sou
desu ne?_,
> わか  した _Wakarimashita_, etc.)

Or just nod their heads, which is particularly amusing in this day and age
of mobile phones, where you have people constantly nodding their heads to
someone who can't see them!

> Some visiting Japanese people I deal with
> here want to do this in English also,

And those of us English (and other lnaguage) speakers living Japan often do
the same thing .. injecting Japanese feedback when speaking English! (like
the  ... ねぇ?! attached at the end of a previous paragraph.) Some Japanese
LOVE it (or at least find it amusing) ... but for the most part (e.g. 95% of
my students) they don't even notice it. It's so natural.

> but they know those words are
> inappropriate and cannot be translated, so oftentimes they just make
> grunting sounds instead.

Which my wife (Japanese ONLY on the outside!) accuses me of doing anyway!
But to a Japanese speaker, those "grunts" ARE Japanese, since one of the
normal "aizuchi" (feedback) "words" is っん /'n/ ... or うん /un/, which is
frequent in the Aynu Tuytah recordings/transcriptions.

Mike Morgan
Kobe City University fo Foreign Studies

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