Linguistics

After an epic 40+ hours in transit, I found myself on a limousine bus to Beijing's city center. Peering out the window as we drove past the neon signs and advertisements of the city outskirts, I wondered just how deep the resemblances of the last giant Red State would run with my home for two years, Japan.

For me, the characters were the first noticeable similarity. The Japanese language utilizes thousands of kanji (Chinese characters), which were imported from mainland Asia hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Though the characters utilized contemporarily both in Japan and China have diverged from their original forms and nuances, many have retained the same basic meanings. The practical end result of this thousand year long linguistic evolution from my standpoint has been a sense of comfort amongst the passing signs and maps and restaurant menus. Of course I don't understand most of it, but it's just familiar enough to feel at ease.

The spoken languages, however, couldn't be more different. A Japanese couple occupied the seats behind me on the airport bus and every other seat was filled by Chinese people. The Japanese couple talked very calmly in their nice, polite, rhythmic patterns in a soothing fashion that could put a baby to sleep. A Chinese girl to my left, chatting on her cell phone, was belting out tone-filled, razor-sharp syllables that could cause an eardrum to implode in an instant. If Japanese were the classical music of languages, then Chinese would certainly be the punk rock.