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akujunkanEnglish, guys. Or more specifically, teaching English. It's a wonderful language for description, but the almost limitless ability of English to create shades of meaning and connotation is a bona fide nightmare when you're teaching it, as I learned at my eikaiwa yesterday.
We're currently working with NHK's 'New English Basics' textbook. Basically, this is a textbook whose contents correspond to the daily English learner's broadcasts, and as far as such things go, it's cheap and better written than the government approved texts I teach from at school, for instance. (And woe is me that I can't get radio reception in my room, because they have Korean learner's broadcasts as well, and the textbook for those is sweet. So much sexy grammar. But I digress...)
Anyway, this month's topic readings are on Greek myths. Here is the reading we did last night, in its entirety:
Can you see where this is headed? Endo-san, who is the resident know-it-all of the class (so much so that he explains to ME, at great length, how both the English language and American culture work for at least 20-30 minutes a lesson), bursts out with, "Narcissus was a homo!" and smiles gleefully in that 'don't you think homosexuality is disgusting?' way I truly hate.
In his defense, he was a young child growing up during the American occupation, so of course his mentality is going to be completely different from my own, but I still went stiff. I hate that whole attitude, which can best be described as 'lets mock the faggots.' So someone's gay. So what? But Endo-san was obviously expecting me to mock right along with him, which I didn't do. Takaoka-san, the sweet forty year old woman I also teach, was also very discomfited by this, although she kept insisting that he wasn't gay; he was just so beautiful he thought his reflection was a woman.
So what was I to do? Obviously, this is a Greek story, so the chances are that there was a sexual aspect to Narcissus' love as the story was originally told, and that the Greeks saw nothing untoward about that. But I didn't want to get into the whole 'different cultural norms' deal with someone as stubborn and argumentative as Endo-san; nor did I want to waste energy explaining, over and over, why I don't think there's anything wrong with homosexuality either.
So I took the, 'Look, this is a story told for English learners; it's going to be simplistically written and I don't think the author intended 'love' to mean sexual love' tack. Only lord knows End-san was having none of that, and here's why teaching English is a bitch.
First, the word 'embrace,' meaning 'to hold' or 'to hug.' Simple right? Except that if one looks up 'embrace' in most Japanese dictionaries, one is going to find a word that technically means to hold or hug, but whose actual usage means 'to have sex with.' So Endo-san has looked up this unfamiliar word and learned that Narcissus is in love with his reflection and wants to fuck it - himself: another man. No amount of explanation will dispel this misapprehension. 'If the author had meant 'to hug' he wouldn't have said [the equivalent English word for the Japanese word 'to have sex with']' Endo-san informs me and the rest of the class.
And now for the part that gets so absurd it's humorous. Because this is a beginner's level text, there is a lot of simplification going on. So instead of having the narcissus flowers 'bloom' or 'blossom,' the author has them 'come out.' Of course, Endo-san has also looked this unfamiliar phrase up in his dictionary, and he has learned that 'to come out' means to acknowledge that one is gay. Again, no amount of explaining that this is a simple phrase chosen for beginners and meant to refer to the flowers blooming will disabuse him of this notion - there's just too much evidence to the contrary.
At which point I had to laugh, because really, what else can you do?
That will be all.
We're currently working with NHK's 'New English Basics' textbook. Basically, this is a textbook whose contents correspond to the daily English learner's broadcasts, and as far as such things go, it's cheap and better written than the government approved texts I teach from at school, for instance. (And woe is me that I can't get radio reception in my room, because they have Korean learner's broadcasts as well, and the textbook for those is sweet. So much sexy grammar. But I digress...)
Anyway, this month's topic readings are on Greek myths. Here is the reading we did last night, in its entirety:
1) One day Narcissus came to a pond. When he bent down to drink water, he saw a handsome young man in the water. At once, he fell in love with him.
2) He wanted to embrace him. But whenever he put his arms into the water, the face disappeared in ripples. He said, "I wish I could touch you at least."
3) Suffering from this one-sided love, he died.
4) At the place where Narcissus died, flowers came out. The flower is called narcissus, and it still bends down to look at its own reflection in the water.
Can you see where this is headed? Endo-san, who is the resident know-it-all of the class (so much so that he explains to ME, at great length, how both the English language and American culture work for at least 20-30 minutes a lesson), bursts out with, "Narcissus was a homo!" and smiles gleefully in that 'don't you think homosexuality is disgusting?' way I truly hate.
In his defense, he was a young child growing up during the American occupation, so of course his mentality is going to be completely different from my own, but I still went stiff. I hate that whole attitude, which can best be described as 'lets mock the faggots.' So someone's gay. So what? But Endo-san was obviously expecting me to mock right along with him, which I didn't do. Takaoka-san, the sweet forty year old woman I also teach, was also very discomfited by this, although she kept insisting that he wasn't gay; he was just so beautiful he thought his reflection was a woman.
So what was I to do? Obviously, this is a Greek story, so the chances are that there was a sexual aspect to Narcissus' love as the story was originally told, and that the Greeks saw nothing untoward about that. But I didn't want to get into the whole 'different cultural norms' deal with someone as stubborn and argumentative as Endo-san; nor did I want to waste energy explaining, over and over, why I don't think there's anything wrong with homosexuality either.
So I took the, 'Look, this is a story told for English learners; it's going to be simplistically written and I don't think the author intended 'love' to mean sexual love' tack. Only lord knows End-san was having none of that, and here's why teaching English is a bitch.
First, the word 'embrace,' meaning 'to hold' or 'to hug.' Simple right? Except that if one looks up 'embrace' in most Japanese dictionaries, one is going to find a word that technically means to hold or hug, but whose actual usage means 'to have sex with.' So Endo-san has looked up this unfamiliar word and learned that Narcissus is in love with his reflection and wants to fuck it - himself: another man. No amount of explanation will dispel this misapprehension. 'If the author had meant 'to hug' he wouldn't have said [the equivalent English word for the Japanese word 'to have sex with']' Endo-san informs me and the rest of the class.
And now for the part that gets so absurd it's humorous. Because this is a beginner's level text, there is a lot of simplification going on. So instead of having the narcissus flowers 'bloom' or 'blossom,' the author has them 'come out.' Of course, Endo-san has also looked this unfamiliar phrase up in his dictionary, and he has learned that 'to come out' means to acknowledge that one is gay. Again, no amount of explaining that this is a simple phrase chosen for beginners and meant to refer to the flowers blooming will disabuse him of this notion - there's just too much evidence to the contrary.
At which point I had to laugh, because really, what else can you do?
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2005-02-10 05:41 pm (UTC)DIES LAUGHING
I am so going to have to remember that the next time I take students through translating Ovid's Narcissus passage.
I fear that "embrace" = "fxxx" is probably quite appropriate to the various original versions of the story (would have to go look at Latin again to be sure). But the "coming out" part... DIES LAUGHING AGAIN
I think you would have been better off just explaining that Greek norms were different (and that the problem with Narcissus is not that he falls in love with another man, which would have been fine, but that he's so self-absorbed and simultaneously un-selfaware that he rejects everyone else and falls in love with himself), but as you say, you have to deal with the student attitudes you've got in the best way that will get you on to the next discussion topic.
Ugh, I so need to get to work.
no subject
on 2005-02-13 01:33 pm (UTC)The thing is, if I had explained that Greek norms were different, Endo-san would still have wanted confirmation from me that being a 'homo' is somehow bad, and that wouldn't have been coming. I didn't want to get into a huge argument about this, because I've found it's something people on either side of the debate aren't likely to change their minds about;)
Can't wait to see what this week's reading throws at me!
no subject
on 2005-02-13 11:25 pm (UTC)Would that be the same verb (抱く) that's used in the infamous Silver Diamond 11 poll discussion? ^_~
no subject
on 2005-02-15 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-02-11 07:53 am (UTC)... it's one of those hopeless cases that makes anyone want to bang his head on the wall and say 'I give up'
no subject
on 2005-02-13 01:33 pm (UTC)