Pronunciation ”R”

When I was 13, my family went to live for some time in Australia. My father was heading the branch office of a trading company in Sydney. My parents decided to leave me here in Japan to let me live with my grandparents since they were afraid that the education in Australia was far behind Japan and 3 years of poor education could be detrimental to my chance of passing a prestigious university in Japan, which was considered extremely important for boys. It was a kind of nightmare for me to imagine an embarrassment when my witch looking grandma (my friend always teased me for that. She was half-French) coming to my class instead of my mother and watching me among young mothers on a parents' class-visiting day, which now I appreciate because it might have been HER embarrassment.

Anyway they came back to Japan 3 years later. What surprised me most was that younger one of my two younger sisters spoke English rather better than Japanese. Her English pronunciation sounded very English to me. She is a talkative person. It is not hard to imagine she wanted to talk even when she was put suddenly in the world of complete strangers. I guess she learned English quite naturally by using it.

The older one was a quiet girl and when she went there she was 12, starting age of sensitive and delicate adolescence. It is natural for a girl of that age to distant herself from other students in school if she cannot speak English. I have little idea about what her English level was at the time when she came back, but I assume she was definitely more comfortable with her Japanese than English. During her stay, maybe she quietly listened to whatever her teacher, classmates, or newscaster on TV said and pick up words or phrases to know how and when to use them, one by one guessing the meanings to let the knowledge quietly accumulate in her brain. It is certainly another way of learning English.

My mother was in her late thirties then, not too old to learn more of English. She did not have to go to school of course and her community was made exclusively of Japanese families. Living in Australia, her environment was quite an adversity for learning spoken English. The problem with her was that she had to attend parties frequently hosted by her husband's company and others, where many Australians were invited. Although she was told that only "thank you" with a mysterious Asian smile would be fine when she was spoken to in English, and actually it proved to work beautifully, she may not have been satisfied. I guess she tried hard to learn English because she took lessons from a private tutor named Mrs. Bates. However, her progress did not look good as she expected. She was always complaining "I'm not linguistically talented."

Mrs. Bates regularly pointed out her imperfect pronunciation of "R". When a word starts with r you should say weak "w" first, followed by immediate "r" something like, say, "wrabbit" for "rabbit". She was too conscious about it, which made her very nervous before she said any words starting with "R", which made her "R" pronunciation all the more funny.

When she went out and dared to take a taxi, she wanted to tell the driver her destination. It was called Rushcutter Bay.
She told him politely "Rushcutter Bay please."
"Where to Ma'am?" The driver said.
She got upset and reminded her tutor’s advice. She said "ウラシュカタ　ベイ".
"Sorry, what bay?"
"ウーラシュカタベイ"
"Pardon?"
"ウーーーラシュカタベイ" Becoming like a dog when another dog is stealing her bone.
I do not remember the ending of this story and I apologize if the episode itself may be a bit of a departure from the fact. But it is not hard to imagine this sort of event remains as a trauma. She carelessly believed that she does not have talent just because she failed to get her "R" across to the driver.

Hiroko said in her comment that small things encourage people. But small things also discourage and thwart people.