Being Bilingual in a Writing Profession

I never did follow up with the Sound of Music Matsuri from Saturday – in short, it was awesome. It poured rain all day, but the bands that played certainly didn’t disappoint!! 

I was having a conversation with some people in my dojo about the new generations of kids that have no grammar or spelling skills because of the internet, cell phones, what have you. It posed an interesting point from Anja, “English isn’t even my first language, and I have more skill than them!” I thought about the reasons why bilingual people would have better grammar skills, and I thought the reason was pretty obvious – when learning a new language, especially one with a different sentence structure, grammar is the first thing you learn. 

So how does this relate to TETHERED ROMANCE? Never mind the fact that I’m bilingual, writing in English only. I use the fact as a grammar-power-trip, so to speak, saying that because my grammar skills are second to none, I have the liberty to play with sentence structure to create different meanings and emulate the way a Japanese person would speak if directly translated into English. Such is not really the case, but I like to think that it is, and only because I have a lot of fun when doing it!

Take Seishin. He is a man in a woman’s profession. He is best at what he does, because he didn’t have natural tools that a female dancer would have such as hips, a chest, natural grace and poise – instead, Seishin had to learn all of that. But think of it this way; it’s like learning to fly. Unless you’re aerodynamically sound, even if you have wings (like me!), it can’t be done. There are certain rules and limitations depending upon your body structure. The same goes with Seishin being a man, he has limitations that he had to defy his nature to overcome. As he said, “I had to die and remake myself”.

I thought that was very interesting….

~ by bjevanael on June 23, 2009.