My Friend: The Japanese Code

The Japanese code, or as many like to say, language has been my friend for a couple of years already. And I came to know, like or at least respect many of its characteristics, though still having much to study in the years to come.

This friend of mine is full of history as any code not artificially created and boiling of creativity, as you can tell from many new words, expressions and whatever fun puns the new generation carved into it.

Different from German and other languages I found the taught Japanese too different from real casualタメ口 speech (basically 98% of the used Japanese for young people). To give you an idea, in casual speech the structure is different (loose rules), the words are different, the endings of words change in many ways to reflect the feeling and style of the speaker, etc. 

I underlined style and feeling above, because this is really something unusual for myself. It is like the Japanese code has "colours" and every person paint its speech in a giving colour according to its style (though not necessarily its nature).

This is just a tip of the iceberg. There are also dialects, to be expected in countries where isolation or strong internal cultural trends were present. In Japan both things happened. However, the code diversity is not necessarily respected. I find a shame that people that study language sometimes fail to see the marvellous code they have in hand. 

Each society has its own ways of showing admiration though. The Japanese do this in silence which causes much more explosions than it seems. One Piece is a manga who is beating record after record of sales, much more than books ever dream of selling. Different from books, this manga fully explores many aspects of language mentioned above. It is without a doubt the language alive. And it is recognized for it all. It is a work that is impossible to translate without losing what makes it so brilliant, the language code.

For those that think that manga is not how Japanese really talk. I do not know which manga you are referring to, but many of them are pretty realistic to how they talk in real life. You just have to get a person that wants to talk. Or do as Japanese do and share a cup of 日本酒 which make any person want to talk.