Hello Cimmik et all!

While I’ve only recently joined TextFugu, I’ve actually known about the study in reference that lead Koichi to suggest that we keep Japanese a secret. The idea is that our minds are incredibly good at fantasizing- so good that we no longer feel the urge to fulfill our fantasies.

That being said, I have told a few people about my plans to learn Japanese. The trick is not to keep it a secret, but to keep it constructive. When I talk about Japanese with my mom, I like to talk about all of its grammatical nuances. She majored in English and French in college and loves to hear about it. Talking about it helps me remember what I’ve learned and apply it in the future. (Saying something as little as “you wouldn’t believe it, but in Japanese they have a verb stem xxx which means yyyy! I wish we had that in English!” really locks in the knowledge). Just recently, I told my girlfriend that I was studying Japanese on my own, and she said she just didn’t understand why I would ever do that. Different people have different passions, but sometimes we forget that.

As for why your mom laughed- one of the fundamental mechanics of humor is the idea of shock and delight. When your mind expects one thing to happen, but something else happens, it is momentarily shocked. Then, when it realizes that this new thing is in some way better than the old thing, it makes you want to laugh. Your mom laughed because you kept your Japanese studies secret really well and then totally caught her off guard when you told her. I don’t think she meant any offense or thought that learning Japanese was foolish.

Also, while some people might think “learning a language is a waste of time, I would never learn a language,” almost everyone thinks that knowing multiple languages is really really REALLY cool. So even if people aren’t interested in you learning Japanese, I think they will all be really impressed once you’ve learned it. Even your parents!

I’m sorry, my posts tend to be wordy, but I hope this helps! c: