The Man from Japan

There hasn’t been a time in my life where I have entered into a different discourse community than my own, at least different enough that it is worth mentioning. While I may have not gone somewhere where the people speak extremely different, I have had a different discourse community brought to me. Spring quarter 2009, my roommate studied abroad in Austria, and since there was an open space in my room while he was gone, an exchange student got put in the empty space, in place of my old roommate.

My new roommates name was Mark; he was an exchange student from Japan who was studying at Ohio University for spring and summer quarters. Although his name was Mark, I called him “Mach,” or at least I did for our first few days as roommates. I later realized that “Mach” was just his pronunciation for Mark, and I quickly made the appropriate adjustments in our conversation. While Mark was my only official roommate, his friends, also from Japan, might as well have lived in my room too, and probably spend more time in my room than I did.

Some of the exchange students spoke English better than others, but I definitely had to give my full attention to them when we spoke, I could not understand them otherwise. Mark spoke in very broken and literal English. His sentences were often short and scattered, and sometimes incomprehensible. I had to balance the task of simplifying my language enough so that Mark could understand me, without seeming condescending. Learning how to tailor my speech to Mark and his friends was a key part in us being able to understand each other. As Marks English improved, so did our communication. As the year went on, we both made changes in our own way of speaking, which allowed for us to communicate effectively.