Self Introduction じこしょうかい 自己紹介

 

I have to say that the hardest part of this assignment was working out how to create a YouTube channel (despite having used YouTube for years, I only saw the YouTube studio for the first time two weeks ago at MomoCon, and that was being run by someone else in an already existing channel…), and then to make my new channel private.  Then realising that I was that awful person who had shared a vertical video, instead of landscape & deciding to leave it… Hopefully, the technology will be the easiest part next time.

The main reason that the technology was the hardest part was because I started learning Japanese in late January, both by apps like Duolingo, some useful YouTube channels, books, and later, a conversational Japanese course through JCCC.  Chief amongst these for this topic was also a really interesting (to me) video on YouTube by ジョオジさん of Japan From Zero, where he talked about the various ways to introduce yourself and how most non-native Japanese speakers tend to get taught to introduce themselves like a five year old (also known as Duolingo - my side note and snark, not his.  He is always very polite about other learning systems).  He recounted a story where all the others in his class Japanese class in Japan introduced themselves at the local school they were visiting with the “my name is phrase” & he had been helping out the teacher and had learned more natural japanese from that, and introduced himself with the phrase 「ジョオジともうします」and how relieved and pleased everyone was by contrast.  Presumably with the exception of his fellow students, who had just been shown up, and possibly even his teacher.

He said that there are several ways to introduce yourself but the simplest to start with is <name> です。It avoids sounding like a five year old and gets away from the unnatural-sounding overuse of personal pronouns in 「私のなめえは＜○○＞です」。He went on to give two other examples of how you could introduce your name, one of which we used in class this past week to ask what something is called in Japanese - ＜○○＞といいます - this is approximately “Nowling called”, or in better English, “I am called Nowling”. 

A brief side note on ＜○○＞ - earlier I used <name> and it is equivalent in this context to the Japanese form I later gave - ＜○○＞ would be said as まるまるand would be used wherever we would say “blank” or “blah blah blah” or “DOB here” or, in this context, “your name here” in English (like the classic skit “Repeat after me ‘I, state your name’ …’ and the person just says ‘I, state your name’ instead of their actual name…).  まる is a circle - it wouldn’t normally be used for zero when using maths numbers, but can be used here for these blank circles, or perhaps if reading a phone number out, a bit like the way we can say six-five-zero-zero-zero, or sixty five thousand or even six-five- oh-oh-oh for Pennsylvania 65000 in English. In ‘oh’, you are substituting a letter shape/name for a number, albeit of a similar shape.  You can do that with まる in Japanese, so long as it isn’t a maths number.  Anyway, slightly long cultural sidetrack over. [If you think this was long, wait till you see my notes on institutional sexism in languages, comparing English, french, a small foray into Thai*, and japanese, both in the words, the context of who might say a word and when, and the very forms of the kanji themselves… the notes just keep getting longer.  It will have to be a multipart blog post when I post it, or no one will ever wade through it.

The third form of giving your name is the one that I listed already and chose to use in my video -  ともうします, the non-past, polite form of the verb もうす - to be called.  I also chose the more formal version for よろしく - よろしくお願いします - once I realised that it was going on YouTube, it felt like it needed to be more formal than the どうぞwe had used in class. Although with the private links, I wasn’t introducing myself to the whole world, as it isn’t being shared with the whole world (at least until I hit publish on here and it gets indexed by a search engine ;))

My main issue with remembering my properly formal and respectful Japanese script was forgetting my name in the middle of it… but at least I did not switch to Thai and say “dishonshu Fiona-ka”**.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IvS6id9gJmo

The script I used:

Hiragana in greenish-blue, katakana in reddish-purple for clarity.
ひらがなは、あおです、とカタカナはあかです。

Regarding giving introductions to yourself, they tend to mostly be informal if you are introducing yourself in both England and the US.  If someone else is introducing you, then things become more formal, and I know that there is meant to be a social hierarchy based on age/rank in society, etc, of who is introduced to whole first, but I do not move in the sort of circles where that is significant, nor watch enough period dramas to pick it up by osmosis. 

When I was about ten, a wonderful friend of ours introduced me to her father, who was visiting her, which was a rare occasion.  On being introduced to Sir Robert, I, of course, replied, being ten and being me, “I’ve never met a knight before” rather than “How do you do?”, or any of the polite, formal and meaningless things that you are supposed to say.

“How do you do?” always seemed like a meaningless phrase to me - no one was interested in that answer, and if it was meant to signify that it was nice to meet someone, why not just say “nice to meet you”, as we do so many other times?  The Japanese ritual greeting phrases make so much more sense to me than that does.

First you acknowledge that it is the first time that you are meeting each other - はじめまして- and then you introduce yourself, family name first, than personal name, and then you basically say “let’s be nice to each other/let’s treat us other well” - よろしくお願いします.  Some people translate that bit as “let’s be friends” but that seems like a poor translation, as it is way too soon an acquaintanceship level jump for Japanese society.  In addition to which, this phrase can be used in other situations, such as business, after you make a business proposal, you might say よろしくお願いします & here you are asking them to think kindly of your business proposal rather than be buddies.  Of course, like すみません, context could change the meaning, but from what I have gleaned***, this meaning is staying the same, and it is just that it translates poorly into English, because the cultural concept isn’t quite there, which is a shame.  It would be nice to be open enough when you meet someone to say “let’s treat each other well” (or at least fairly) and have it happen.  It would be refreshing.  

I think the most embarrassing introductions I had to make were when I was a new kid in a class of people that had all been at that school the previous year/years, as it was only me that had to do it, and at university when we had to do a 15 minute presentation each on a topic related to our major, randomly picked from a hat. It was meant to teach us confidence in public speaking, but it did nothing of the sort.  Any time I have been engaged in public speaking, it has either been a topic that I am an expert on, and have the confidence that comes with that, or one that I feel very strongly about, which again overrides nerves and makes you speak more powerfully.  One university 15 minute presentation is not going to mimic that in the slightest, nor give people enough feedback to improve.

I also like the idea of friendship ceremonies that acknowledge when your friendship has become closer.  It would remove a lot of ambiguity that exists in British & American culture, although there would still be the question os whether it was too soon to ask to make that jump.  I had known someone at a crafting group four about 1 - 2 years and in late 2019, early 2020, we had just started to discuss having puppy play dates because they had got a new puppy and it would help socialize it, so we were about to make a friendship jump from “part of the large group who talk to each other more than to some of the group” to “actual friends who go to each other’s houses & hang out outside of the crafting group” and then covid hit…

Another difference in cultures is that it would be really rude in England to ask someone their age when you meet them, but in Japan, due to the culture of respect and respecting one’s elders, it is very normal, so that you can know when you should be adding ございますto the end of your good morning and other cultural proprieties.

* as a tourist in Thailand, you might find yourself being called sir a lot, regardless of your gender or presentation.  This is because Thai is an inherently gendered language, and there isn’t a female form of the term for respect, so it gets translated as sir…

** ka tells people that you and your name are female.  A male would have said “kopkoonka <name>” and the kop tells people they are male - but you should google that, not take my word for it. I went to Thailand the same year that Pokémon Go came out, so it has definitely been a while since I tried to learn it, and I found the names of the Pokémon far easier to remember than the Thai I was actually trying to learn.  The Pokémon just absorbed into my brain with no effort.  The Thai, not so much.  Fortunately, it turned out that Pokémon was an international language…

*** not intense labour in the fields, I watched a few YouTube videos and I may have googled a bit too ;).