Fluency Made Easy, by Ikenna D. Obi

My greatest challenge in life is maintaining the secret that I’m awesome. Well, that and avoiding sugar. I’m apparently so good at my subterfuge that strangers and acquaintances suspect I’m only ordinary. The truth is I prefer it this way, since I can’t be bothered with the subsequent popularity such knowledge, were it made known, would inflict upon my personal life. Revealing my superpowers, such as my ability to hear in the dark or read without moving my lips, would most likely send the media to my door faster than you could say fiber optics.

Granted, the unfortunate souls who’ll never be graced with that precious gift the select few in a hushed whisper pronounce as my friendship, who’ll never know what they’re missing out on, certainly invoke my pity. However, part of my value rests in my exclusivity. My standards are high. Gaining access to my good graces is rare, a coveted commodity. Plus, my discerning, discriminating taste keeps the membership to my private club I dub High Brow Comradery low.

As an avid reader and writer (not to mention snob and sophisticate), I naturally require a good deal of alone time. Happily, solitude and isolation are my mantras. Which is fitting, since my privacy, autonomy, anonymity, and smugness are ideal for my immersion into my various passions. In short, I’m a soloist. I work alone.

Despite my infectious personality, my quick wit, rugged good looks and amazing talents, not to mention my commendable humility, I’ve managed to maintain this routine without attracting suspicion or rousing unwelcome interest.

Compound this dynamic with yet another quirk. Perhaps as recently as six years ago, I was terrible at juggling. By juggling I mean multitasking, pursuing multiple projects and extracurriculars. You know the sort. Those annoying socialites who take cooking classes, attend their weekly book club, do yoga, jet ski, volunteer at their local church, build canoes from scratch, and shuffle their children off to ballet and soccer practice, all the while texting their friends about their weekend plans for vacationing in Acapulco or Paris or Rio de Janeiro.

For one, I served in the Navy. I vacationed in enough states and foreign countries to last a lifetime – Singapore, Saipan, Hawaii (seven times), Alaska, Bahrain, Kuwait, Dubai, Japan, Australia, and Bali. Keep in mind I mention these places only to boast. And while I can look back fondly on those episodes in my life, those port visits and the subsequent binges, I prefer to look ahead.

Having said that, or rather written it, throughout most of my life, I’ve tended to put the blinders on and zero in on one thing at a time in the hopes of mastering it. I’d delve, you might say. With abandon. For example, when over thirty years ago I decided to learn guitar, I sold my drum set so that I wouldn’t be tempted to spend any of my free time playing the drums instead. 

Again, until recently, apart from my job to keep the lights on, I was reading books and writing and little else. Which was fine until I began to feel as if I were stuck in a rut. Aware of this proclivity for immersing myself in either one or two things at a time, I eventually decided to expand my horizons. 

If you follow my blog, you’ll know this led me to explore Catholicism, read both The Bible and The Catechism of the Catholic Church concurrently, pray the Rosery, attend mass, diet, exercise, etc. This new lifestyle resulted in lots of positive changes in my life, some of which I’ve chronicled on this blog.

Now, with my fascination for gentleman’s fashion (think GQ Magazine sans the youthful socialism), taking up the fine art of pipe smoking, pushing myself to complete my reading list of thirty books this year (nearly there), writing every day, semi-actively searching for a literary agent (don’t ask), and my plans to find a group or organization in town with whom to affiliate – Knights of Columbus? – my free time has become all the more precious.

Nevertheless, despite my already overly busy schedule, I developed a fascination for all things Japanese. This possibly began with my absolute lust for sushi several years ago, culminating into an appreciation for Japan’s colorful and exotic culture, its Samurais, dynasties, Geishas, calligraphy, and its spoken language with its rounded vowels and sultry sibilants, not to mention its perfection in everything from craftsmanship to cuisine.

These features eventually intimated themselves into my waking consciousness. (Historically, Japanese people have a reputation for elevating whatever they do to an art form. I can’t help but both admire and strive to emulate that.) I subsequently grew ever more intrigued as I explored those videos uploaded on YouTube showcasing Japan’s bizarre game shows, commercials, and extraordinary music.

Finally, despite having no intention of returning to Japan and knowing no one in town with whom to practice, I decided to teach myself its basic touristy questions and phrases, something I regrettably hadn’t done while stationed in Sasebo, a city in the Nagasaki Prefecture, in Japan, twenty years ago.

This effort began back in March of this year and within the first month I could speak enough Japanese to say, “Hello, my name is Mark. Yes. What’s your name? It’s nice to meet you. Excuse me. No. What’s that? Delicious! I’m sorry. May I have some water (or juice or coffee)? Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Awesome! Take care. See you later. See you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

Not exactly a conversational repertoire conducive to intellectual engagement about the geopolitical implications of an homogenous, egalitarian people (126 million of them) living on an island half the size of Texas, entrenched in tradition and convention, but a sincere start nonetheless. Besides, I knew I’d have to crawl before I sprinted, in this case speak like a Japanese toddler before engaging in an adult conversation.  

By April, no longer satisfied with basic words and phrases the tourist should know to function in Japan, I decided to get serious about learning not only the spoken language but the written language as well.

I printed out the hiragana and katakana syllabaries (two of the three Japanese alphabets). I explored lessons covering nouns, verb agglutinations, particles, and so on. (Thanks to the internet, one can learn anything and everything one is inclined to study. I certainly couldn’t have taken on this project twenty years ago as easily, conveniently, or affordably.)

To be clear, I don’t pretend to have advanced beyond the bare bones of it all. In fact, I’ve since learned that Japanese is not only perhaps the most difficult language for a Westerner to learn but that it’s the fastest spoken language in the world as well. Spanish is the second fastest language spoken. Study is never ending. We have 26 letters in the English alphabet, 52 if you consider both the upper and lower cases of each letter, 104 if you add cursive.

In addition to the two kana syllabaries, totaling 142 characters (or digraphs), there are also over 50,000 kanji, each of which represents both a concept and what’s known as readings (the sounds each kanji has depending on its context).

To be fair, Japanese people use no more than about 2,200 kanji in their day to day lives reading magazines, books, road signs, ads, warning labels, directions, menus, and the like. Still. I don’t doubt Japanese toddlers are more proficient than I am. But I’ve made significant progress. This progress is due, in large part, to my efforts to learn from a variety of sources.

The trick to learning any language is to immerse oneself in it – reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I initially explored instruction videos uploaded on YouTube by native speakers, Japanesepod101.com, language learning apps, and even writing out the Japanese names I’d learned for items on my grocery list. I also watched j-dramas on Netflix, all with the Japanese subtitles turned on so I could follow along.

This immersion continued. I listened to Japanese music at work. My favorite hard rock band of all time is now Band Maid, although Babymetal is a close second. Give their song メギツネ (megitsune) a listen. I watched videos that broke kanji into their individual radicals, listened to Japanese audio books with ear buds while I slept. Yes, I was on a mission. And, as I say, I drew from multiple sources, since most instructive websites, apps, and YouTube videos isolate and highlight some aspects of the language while failing to address others.

This immersion improved my comprehension, strengthened my pronunciation, and would eventually give me confidence for employing the basics of a second language with potential Japanese speakers. So far, however, I just annoy my English-speaking clients, injecting random Japanese declarations and interrogatives into the conversation when they least expect it. Although at this point they probably expect it at any given moment. After all, I must practice on somebody.

I further explored how language learning works. According to these lecturers, absorption versus memorization is the most effective process. This makes sense. After all, think back to elementary school. First we learned the English alphabet, how to speak and write out the English letters. We then advanced to words and their meanings. Later sentence construction.

And yet, in addition to all this study in the classroom, we enjoyed the added bonuses that no Learn-a-Second-Language program can hope to provide, namely being inundated with that same language outside the classroom, even prior to beginning kindergarten. Family, friends, media – all of this helped shape our comprehension, application, and understanding growing up.

Here’s the thing. Most Learn-a-Second-Language methods rely on your primary language to get the secondary language across. In English, you’re told, both audibly and often with English subtitles, how to speak and or write language X. Despite my initial gratitude for this learning tool, this lacks immediacy.  

I eventually decided, short of having a friend in town who speaks Japanese, I needed something more effective. I’m not suggesting that I’d advanced to a point at which these free resources were rendered redundant or anything. But I’d discovered both problems and errors. Hence I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the one company hailed as allegedly offering the most effective method for learning new languages: Rosetta Stone.

Three months in, my impressions were mixed. The approach is relatively simple and probably appeals more to the visual learners. The app presents photos of either individuals or groups engaged in an activity (jogging, swimming, eating, driving) while employing inanimate objects – foods, pools, cars, etc. Throughout, native Japanese speakers indicate these images and activities by speaking exclusively in Japanese. Your task is to pair the audible and written Japanese (kanji, hiragana, and katakana) with these visuals.

On the plus side, Rosetta Stone addresses issues I’d had with other methods leading up to that point in my studies, that is, you’re taught a few nouns and other devices before those nouns are inserted into sentences you’re required to learn. Which I’m convinced is better than introducing the student to all these elements at the same time.

A welcome feature is Rosetta Stone’s pronunciation recognition program. Periodically an audible bell prompts you to speak Japanese into your microphone, initially single words, later full sentences. You’re graded based on your pronunciation and your clicking choices.

Perhaps most important, Rosetta Stone’s teaching technique simulates one’s experience learning one’s native language. As such, you’re required to absorb rather than to memorize. This certainly isn’t the worst approach to language learning, but it shouldn’t be the only approach either.

I’m reminded of another immersion method. Suppose you’re a beginner guitar player and you employ the services of a guitar instructor to teach you how to play, only the instructor doesn’t teach you chords or scales or intervals of even songs. Instead, he introduces you to a group of seasoned musicians already in a jam session and tells you to jump right in.

While you might learn a few things about improvisation and tempo and whether you have an ear, even after several sessions, hell, even after a tour, if anyone were to put a chord chart or sheet music in front of you or ask you to play a simple shuffle or ask you how many sharps there are in the key of G major, your brows would knit a shawl. After all, jamming with the best of them confers only a certain amount of practical know-how. It won’t confer academic knowledge or music theory, for example. 

In Rosetta Stone’s defense, this is a decent facsimile to interacting with live Japanese people in a real-life environment. Unfortunately, because everything is written, read, and spoken in Japanese, you learn little as to what qualifies as a verb or a noun or which words make your speech more or less polite or formal or, perhaps most importantly, how to actually break down the grammar of a sentence so that you might ultimately craft your own sentences to fit your particular circumstances.

As a result, you don’t learn how to say things beyond what Rosetta Stone teaches you to say. Sure, if you’re traveling abroad and come across a bicycle and remember the word in Japanese, 自転車 (or jitensha in romaji), you can point and impress your traveling companion. But that serves little practical value in a country that commutes nearly exclusively by train.

In May I discovered Memrise.com, an app that serves as the nearest thing to flash cards. You select the level of difficulty. Then you’re provided with either a word or a phrase, both written and spoken in Japanese (or whichever language you elect to study).  

This is beneficial for learning new kanji, new vocabulary, and some select phrases. It’s not particularly helpful if you want to learn how to formulate your own sentences, which you’ll eventually want to do. Plus, there’s no real structure to the app. I went the paid route, which was only thirty-five bucks for an entire year. However, lesson plans and exercises are created by the Memrise community. Some of these contributors are professional instructors. Others aren’t. Regardless, language difficulty doesn’t increase as you advance. Instead, depending on the submissions provided, the material varies, fluctuates, and, perhaps worst of all, fails to build upon what came before.

Late September, seven months in, I discovered my favorite language learning app of all so far: Duolingo. Duolingo has structure. It’s game-like. The smoothest and most convenient language app on my phone. In fact, it makes learning more fun than necessary.

Lessons are built upon what was taught in a prior lesson until, several units in, you realize you’re learning applicable material relevant to everyday conversation. Which reminds me. I was watching an unrelated video on YouTube recently when an ad for better internet interrupted my viewing. The person in the ad asked in English, “Is your wifi too slow?” I practically gasped as I instantly remembered the translation for “The internet here is too slow” a month before and instinctively said out loud, “Koko no waifuai wa ososugimasu.” Just like that. And I thought, “It’s clicking. I’m getting it.” Which, by the way, is true. The internet here is too slow. Or ここの WiFi 遅すぎる.

Duolingo excels at teaching sentence construction and grammar by way of repetition, variation, and word substitution. These elements are the building blocks to true communication. I remember the elation I felt once I’d completed all three sections of the Japanese unit Time. Now I can read, write, and speak that time in Japanese (hiragana and kanji), regardless what time, day or night, it happens to be. Learn how to tell someone that you love salmon or that you don’t like hip hop, and you’ll likewise intuit, by way of substitution and arrangement, how to craft your own sentences to cater to your own circumstances and interests, likes and dislikes.

To come full circle, this is equivalent to learning scales backward and forward, chord voicings and positions, rather than being taught a couple of three-chord songs and a few riffs. In other words, you’ll learn the building blocks to communication rather than memorizing a few isolated expressions.

So why the fuss about structure anyway? For two reasons. One, communicating in Japanese is all about context. For example, imagine I told you that responses like “me!” and “guilty!” and “I did!” pack more overtones than those isolated words initially might suggest. This would make sense only within the context of, say, someone walking into a room of people sitting round an empty bowl formerly filled with candy and asking, “Who the hell ate all the M&Ms?”

The Japanese language will forgo this redundancy to such a degree as to omit pronouns or other words denoting the subject after its initial introduction into the conversation. For example, if Miku wants to tell you she likes sushi, she might say, “Sushi ga suki desu,” which in English we’re told means “I like sushi,” but literally translated means “Sushi like.” (By the way, the letter u in both the romaji suki and desu is silent and therefore these words are pronounced ski and des, respectively.) The particle ga is used to identify the object. Desu is the copula, the verb form of to be, such as is, am, or was.

On the other hand, Miku might wish to know whether you like sushi, in which case all she’ll do is add the particle ka, which changes her declarative into an interrogative. “Sushi ga suki desu ka?” Which, again, we’re told translates into English as “Do you like sushi?” but literally translated means, “Sushi like?”

Or Miku might’ve already discussed favorite foods with you before and forgotten what you’d said. In which case, she might ask, not rhetorically but more to confirm, “Sushi ga suki desu ne?” which, in English, means, “You like sushi, right?” or “Didn’t you tell me you like sushi?” but literally translated means, “Sushi like, right?” Again, pronouns are implied based on context. Once the subject of you or Reginald or Scrimshaw is introduced, you guys aren’t likely to be directly identified again within the conversation.

The second reason I’m fussing about structure is because unlike English and other Western languages such as Spanish which follow the SVO pattern (subject, verb, and object) as in the sentences “I bought Twinkies,” or “Archibald drove home,” Japanese sentences are structured using SOV, meaning verbs go last.

As you’ve probably already noticed, providing a literal translation of Japanese sentences into English sounds awkward. In fact, it sounds, crudely put, the way Yoda speaks. “Twinkies, bought,” and “Archibald, home, drove,” with the commas replaced by particles such as wa, ga, te, to, no, ni, and wo to indicate the subject, the object, possession, and so on.

But back to my review. I came across Ikenna’s YouTube channel back in September and decided to get his book based on his sales pitch. Fluency Made Easy, otherwise known as the FME Method, is essentially a booklet in pdf form. The pitch, admittedly, was vague, promising to teach the secrets to language learning. It wasn’t until after buying the book that I discovered the secrets weren’t so secret.

I don’t want to condemn Ikenna’s writing. After all, he speaks (and probably reads and writes) half a dozen languages. Who cares whether the average junior high school student can compose better prose? I believe the polyglot means well. Sharing his method with others for a mere fifteen bucks doesn’t strike me as a scam. However, it does seem especially frivolous. Still. I’d prefer to compliment his choice of tie rather than to lament the fact that he can’t button his suitcoat to hide the stain on his shirt.

But this reminds me of yet another music metaphor. When I first began learning how to play the guitar, I didn’t do what I would later discover many beginner guitar players do. I didn’t employ an instructor, show up for a lesson, go over a few chords with my teacher, and then go home with a page or two of homework to practice for an hour.

Instead, I instinctively taught myself by playing along to music CDs. I bought and poured over music books covering chords, scales, modes, arpeggios, theory, and so on. I didn’t do this for half an hour a day. I did it for a minimum of four hours a day, sometimes fourteen hours a day, nearly every day, for years.

I’ve always taken my self-motivated approach for granted. Some people require a sensei, someone to shake them by the shoulders, point to a thing and say, “Lock yourself away and master this!” Whereas if I’m passionate about something, I require no prodding. Instead, I’m going to don the blinders and dash, find a plateau and dive into the deep end at the expense of all else. This somewhat excessive approach has both its benefits and its drawbacks.

As a result, Ikenna had little to teach me. His tricks of the trade, his so-called secrets, were a list of things I’d already instinctively been doing since I began learning a new language seven months before I’d discovered his YouTube channel or his book. For example, he insists you learn from multiple sources. He cautions using not one but multiple language learning apps. Advises watching Netflix shows and listening to music in that target language. Recommends several brief learning sessions a day rather than cramming a few hours on the weekends. 

As you might’ve surmised from the chronicling of my journey above, none of this was new to me. Granted, he suggested a couple of apps I hadn’t heard about, but it was only a matter of time before I would. I got more out of a 2017 polyglot conference a month later that someone uploaded on YouTube for free than what Ikenna provided for fifteen bucks.        

Nevertheless, if nothing else, Ikenna’s pdf booklet confirmed I’m on the right track, that I’m using my study time effectively, that I’m optimizing my opportunities to absorb. Ordinarily, I’d say one can’t put a price on either confirmation or validation, but in my case I can. It’s precisely fifteen bucks. 

I admit this new endeavor (learning to speak, write, and read Japanese) cuts into my other projects. But I’m thoroughly enjoying the process. Besides, none of my extracurricular activities is particularly practical. I mean, I read for my own pleasure and to learn, not to attend a book club. I write because I can’t help myself. I also have outlandish hopes of one day publishing, but let’s face it. Publishing, should I win that literary jackpot, hardly guarantees financial success.

Going to the gym, studying to become a Catholic, reading and writing, biking to work, learning a new language – these are things I enjoy, things that, for me, make life worthwhile.

Life is short. The older I get the more conscious I become of that fact. I see no reason to curb my drive for learning as much as I can about the things that inspire and intrigue me. In some sense, I’m like a guy who studies carpentry if only to one day build a dinner table for his kitchen or a dresser for his bedroom. Dismiss his endeavors if you must, but it’s still a meaningful, albeit limited, contribution to improving himself, his quality of life, and his sense of purpose. Not to mention continuing to grow and to change while remaining fabulous.

真久