Scattered All Over the Earth

by Yōko Tawada

“No, I’m not a Buddhist. I’m a linguist.” “Is that a religion?” “Not really, but languages can make people happy, and show them what’s beyond death.”

Yes, the idea of getting an extra identity just by learning a new language was exciting. To tell the truth, “identity” is another one of those big words I learned from George. I wasn’t ashamed of being an Eskimo, but a whole life with just one identity seemed kind of dull.

Once when I asked Cho who had taught him all this stuff, like how to press rice into little oblongs for sushi, or what to boil to make dashi for miso-shiru, or how to make perfect agedashi tofu, he told me he’d learned it all from a French chef at a hotel where he’d worked in Paris. I was shocked. “When the original no longer exists,” he said, “there’s nothing you can do except look for the best copy,” which sounded to me like some sort of riddle — such a scary one that I couldn’t bring myself to ask him what it meant.

So that was it — our country had vanished, and he had never lived in any prefecture long enough to call it home. I used to envy people like that when I was a child. Kids who changed schools a lot because their parents were bankers, or beekeepers, or judges, or traveling actors, so rhythms and accents from all over were mixed together into a special blend echoing in their speech.

As soon as they heard the word “translate” the fire went out of their fight. Nothing makes a fight seem sillier than having to translate something in the middle of it.

I wanted to go to a place where adjectives have a past tense, and prepositions come at the end of the phrase.

But most native speakers are too busy to think much about language, and tend to use the same words and phrases all the time, whereas non-natives, who move back and forth between two languages, are always looking for new words and expressions — so who’s more likely to have a bigger vocabulary?

I once read about a strange theory that says there are very few words you actually meet for the first time, that most of the new words you learn you’ve actually come across somewhere before, and they’ve left tiny nicks in your brain. When you see a word again the nick is activated. So when you learn a language you shouldn’t see it as something entirely new. You should tell yourself you’re remembering a language you used to speak a long time ago.

German, a language I hadn’t heard for a long time, pounded on the door of my heart. I didn’t know how to open it. Lost in my own house, I couldn’t get to the door.

This word natsukashii seemed to be made of mist, a mist I was wandering through with unsteady steps. In Panska, I might have said something like “memories of the past are so delicious I want to eat them” instead.

Imagine tens of thousands of people who never talk, living on an island. They have enough to eat and clothes to wear. They have games and porn, too. But without language, they decay and die.”

“But the expression yon-mo-ji-juku-go (四文字熟語)has five characters.” “You’re right — it means ‘four character expression’ but isn’t one itself.”

Her disdain for deviant language was at war with her protective feelings toward foreigners, leaving her badly shaken.