what language do you speak as a base?

Yesterday, I joined a study session which is regularly held at a university in a suburb area of Tokyo. The professor in charge invited me to the group when I attended the conferene at the beginning of summer. It was the first meeting this term and of course it was the first time for me to join the group.

Before the meeting, I had a mixed feeling: I was a bit nervous but of course I was excited. Just after I passed the gate of the university, I came across a senior friend there. I did not know but she said that she is teaching at the university as a part-time teacher. We both were so surprised and the great coincidence relieved my tensed feeling.

The group consists of only 5 or 6 students and a professor. I prefer a smaller group than a large class when I study because it is easier for me to speak out. What we do in the meeting is we all are assigned to read a newly-published article before the meeting and one student presents what is written. After the presentation, we discuss the topic, contents, problem of the article and so forth.

The meeting was so interesting and exciting to me because the article we read this week was written by a researcher who I am so familir with. It does not mean that I have met the researcher, but I have read some articles of his before.

However, I had a problem with the meeting. The handout distributed was typed in English but the presentation and discussion was done using Japanese. This kind of mixture made me confused.

I am a Japanese and of course my mother tongue is Japanese. Basically, it is easier and faster to understand Japanese than English even after I stayed in the US for two years. Now I do not have a crucial problem with listening English, but before going to the US, the process of understanding Englihs is like this: listen to the words -> translate them into Japanese in mind -> get the meaning.

But speaking of Linguistics, I only learned it using English in the US. I was not used to discuss it in Japanese. The biggest problem is terminology. I do not know many special terms of the field in Japanese. But another big problem is the mixture of the languages. The presenter used Japanese to explain the handout which was written in English. But she used many English terms in Japanese sentences without translating.

My problem was that I failed to code-switch. She used Japanese but her Japanese sounded like English sentences to me (it means that her sentences were like direct-translation) and also it included a lot of English words. None the less, it was Japanese!

At the beginning of the meeting, I really needed to concentrate to understand what the presenter said. As one native speaker suggested, it might be better to make the handout written in Japanese. But strange to say, it did not take me so long to get used to the situation. Within one hour and a half, I thought the problem was not so big as I had thought before. The reason may be that I am a Japanese and the target language was Japanese. If the case was vice versa, the situation might be tougher to me.

I am sorry that I wrote so long this time. I thought I experienced a funny one yesterday, so I could not help writing this in my blog. Thank you for reading this long text!