Hubbard on the Japanese
Anthony Roberts
Upon publishing an article (as hbla...@uconncm.uconn.edu) entitled
'Hubbard the Racist', I received a request to type up and send a copy of a
lecture given by Hubbard in 1950 about his opinion of how the Japanese
language affects the minds of the Japanese. I have finally gotten around
to typing up what are three things, actually, on this matter. As matter
of honesty I have to provide at least a little commentary on Hubbard's
opinions.
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'Actually, psychoanalysis is as easy to understand, certainly, as
Japanese. Japanese is a baby talk - very, very hard to read, very, very
easy to talk. If you can imagine a language which tells you which is the
subject, which is the verb, which is the object, every time it speaks, you
can imagine this baby-talk kind of a language. On that doesn't have
various classes or conjugations of verbs. A very faint kind of a
language. Nevertheless, it merely consists, in order to communicate with
a Japanese, of knowing the meaning of certain words, and if you know the
meaning of those words precisely, then when a Japanese comes up to you and
says, "Do you want a cup of tea?" you don't immediately get up because you
thought he said "Wet paint."'
A New Slant On Life, 'The Vocabularies of Science' [from a lecture?]
Here Hubbard was referring to the fact that it is relatively easy to
distinguish one part of speech from another simply by its form in
Japanese, and the fact that Japanese usually (but not always) adds
particles to nouns to indicate case. But these of course are _not_
singular to Japanese at all.
It is interesting to note that the two most common charges made
against Japanese is that (a) it is very easy and (b) it is very
difficult. Hubbard did the first above and the second in the below
quotes.
The offensive and derisive tone toward the Japanese language in the
above quote needs not be pointed out.
'A very bad offender is Japanese. Japanese is very homonymic. Two
Japanese talking to each other on the street would probably have a very
rough time of it unless they could watch each other's mannerisms and
gestures. As long as they can see these things they are perfectly
confident of what the other is saying. Because they leave off their
articles and pronouns and are generally undifferentiative, the language
can be thoroughly misinterpreted.
'When talking Japanese, you have to make yourself very clear on the
subject of your mannerisms and your gestures. Worse than that, their
written language is Chinese! It has been borrowed over, renamed, and then
in order to explain how to pronounce it in Japanese they have little
symbols up in the corner. On of the reasons they have bad eyesight is
probably these microscopic characters which have many lines and strokes to
them.
'In order to differentiate, they have thousands and thousands of
characters which they use because their own language won't differentiate.
We wonder why they went mad and bombed Pearl Harbor when they knew they
couldn't win. That would be a reason. Language has been unsafe in this
world for an enormous amount of people who are now pushing up daisies in
the various forgotten battlefields on this planet.'
'The Part Played by the Analytical Mind', Wednesday, 19 July 1950
(a) It's hard to 'leave off articles' when the language doesn't have any.
(b) Their written language is not Chinese. They use a great many Chinese
characters, but the written language is still Japanese.
(c) The 'microscopic characters' next to Chinese characters (in Japanese,
kanji) are called 'furigana'. The Japanese use two syllabaries,
collectively known as 'kana', to indicate grammatical constructions and
words for which a Chinese character is not used. Sometimes, for obscure
Chinese characters, small kana are placed next to the kanji to indicate
their pronunciation. However, except for books and manga for young adults
and children, furigana are not next to every character, since the Japanese
learn the pronunciation of most characters in use and don't need the
furigana.
'This [English] is a gunshot type of language organization second
only to the aberrative characteristics in the Japanese language. Japanese
knocks the pronouns out, it defines so poorly and it has so many homonyms
that when two Japanese meet and start discussing some subject, they very
often have to take a pencil out of their pocket and make a notation on a
little slip of paper and show it to the other one to get across the
meaning! It has to do with the inflectionin the speech. It has to do
with the raise of the eyebrow or whether or not one is frowning at the
moment. It has to do with all of these things, and that's part of the
communication.
'An engram doesn't define in tones. Somebody can say in a ridiculous
tone of voice, "Oh, that feels so bad," meaning it feels wonderful, but in
the engram it says flatly, "That feels so bad." Engrams are tone deaf...
'Now, if we have in existence in our language and in our culture
mechanisms which are superunselective, such as _I_, _you_, _him_, _her_,
we are just asking for it. We can get a country so country tha it will
commit suicide. Japan tried. Japan didn't really have any idea she was
going to be able to whip the United States. All of her attacks were on a
we-know-we're-going-to-fail basis. There was no follow-up on Pearl
Harbor, simply a "We're just going to fight to the death. We know we're
going to lose anyhow." There was terrific verve in the process of
committing hara-kiri, characteristic of that war...
'The Japanese are very nice people. I have a lot of respect for
them. I spoke Japanese when I was a kid so I know what I'm talking
about. But when it comes to aberrative language, I look at that language
and I look at other languages, and I find that English is not the most
aberrative by a long way, but it is a long way from the bottom of the list
as far as being the least aberrative is concerned.'
'Language Adjustment', Thursday, 7 September 1950
Little needs to be added here, except to note that Hubbard's claim
that engrams do not differentiate tones is in direct contrast to his
earlier claim in DMSMH. Also, if engrams didn't differentiate tones, then
the Chinese, whose languages are tonal languages, would all be stark
staring bonkers. This is obviously not the case.
Anthony-