Controlled change will allow you to have your cake and eat it, too.

(This is Part 2 of the two-part blog installment that began yesterday with "Part 1".)

Dear Fellow Earthlings, Once Japanese people gain a firm base in the production of English gestures, they will,

I believe, lose much of the anxiety that prompts them to substitute perfectly adequate

Japanese lexical items with English ones. As I mentioned in Installment 283, the excessive

replacement of Japanese words by English loan words could conceivably become

uncontrollable, metastasizing to the point that Japanese words would be replaced almost

entirely by English words. Such unraveling of the fabric of the Japanese phonome could result in a system that would

be a mere shadow of its former self. The tightly integrated sound system could become merely

an empty imitation of English. To coin a Japanese expression on the spot, the pronunciation

of Japanese could become a "karanise" or an "empty imitation". Compare this with "karate",

which means "empty hand" and "karaoke", meaning "empty orchestra"... Sports training includes the cultivation of proper motor skills. Thus it is indeed ironic (and sad)

to see how sports terms are providing an invasion vector for the supplantation of native Japanese

words by such words as tama (ball), undoo (sports), tobikomu (jump), and even kunren (training). English is a great language to learn, but if you replace your native language with it, then a thing

of beauty will be lost forever! Just ask the Irish, the Yagan, the Seneca people, among others. Of

course, some will answer by saying, "Old ways must change." But with modern technology and Jingles methodology, the old and the new can coexist and can

support each other. In addition, the simultaneous employment of technology and Jingles can open

up new avenues for growth among people, prompting us to think twice about any notion that

"change for the sake of change" is always the best way to go. Adachi Kan’ichi (English name: Steve Walker) Earthsaver and “Charin Charin”** composer ** “Charin Charin” are Japanese language "Jingles", developed to help people who wish to have

their pronunciation of Japanese sound more nativelike.

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.