jthnbradley

I’ve been really heartened by many Christians’ responses to the Torture Report’s cataloguing of evil done in our name and behind our backs. The Catholic Bishops need to do much more, but this was a start:

The Catholic Church firmly believes that torture is an ‘intrinsic evil’ that cannot be justified under any circumstance. The acts of torture described in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report violated the God-given human dignity inherent in all people and were unequivocally wrong … We have placed ourselves through our history as a beacon of hope, a beacon of reason, of freedom: and so, this recent chapter in our history has tarnished that.” He went on to say, “It is not something that can be easily regained, but I think that the publishing of this report begins the cleaning up of that tarnishing of our reputation as a nation that is on sound moral footing.

Today, we also noted one Christian now refusing to say the Pledge Of Allegiance, with sentiments, to my mind, completely appropriate to this moment:

From reading the report, it should now be crystal clear to anyone who has read the teachings of Jesus as found in scripture that one cannot swear their allegiance to America while simultaneously giving our allegiance to the alternate way of Jesus. Absolutely, positively, impossible. The contents of the report reveal what the US has done, and what has been done is anti-Christ – pure, absolute evil.

The crucifixion of those with already broken limbs should surely have a resonance, even among white evangelicals.

I also sense a slight opening for a way forward. There is no question in my mind that these grotesque human rights violations will require justice – if only compensation for torture victims. I agree with Harold Koh that not prosecuting open war crimes is equally intolerable in a democratic society – and sends a terrible message to all dictators and thugs across the planet that they can now torture at will. But there’s also an obvious next step: give Michael Hayden what he wants.

The Intelligence Committee should insist on interviewing all the torture suspects who are busy complaining they didn’t get to give their take (even though interviews with them from the CIA’s internal review is in the report, as are the CIA’s full, considered response). For good measure, the Obama administration should provide to the committee all the documents it has on the torture program. In other words: let’s update the report with as much data as we can possibly find. I sincerely doubt that it will turn up anything less incriminating than the CIA’s own records, but this is so grave and foundational a matter, we should make every effort to have the equivalent of a Truth Commission. The SSCI report is a great start.

Some relief from the weekend: Niebuhr on the temptations of mixing religion and politics; Wieseltier on the social peace among argumentative Jews; the grand tradition of drunk professors; the last wondrous video stores; and lesbian graffiti in ancient Pompeii.

The most popular post of the weekend was Watching Cheney: He’s Got Nothing. Runner-up: this Mental Health Break celebrating New York City.

21 more readers became subscribers this weekend. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here (you purchase one today and have it auto-delivered on Christmas Day). Dish t-shirts are for sale here and coffee mugs here. A final email for the week:

I want to thank you for the writing you’ve done about the way we treat animals in the factory farm system. Before reading your blog, I was vaguely aware that there was controversy, but I will admit that I was not as thoughtful about where my food came from as I ought to have been. It was your blog that introduced me to these horrifying maternity pens, which sent me looking for more information, and pretty soon after that I decided that I couldn’t be part of a system that included such cruelty. I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with raising animals for meat; I just think that before they are humanely slaughtered, there ought to be some recognition that these are living creatures who can feel pain, both physical and emotional.

Anyway, I stopped buying pork from the grocery store, found two local farms that raise and slaughter their animals in humane conditions, and then stopped buying meat from the grocery store all together (because what the farming system does to chickens and cows might not be as bad as what it does to those poor sows, but it’s not much better). It’s undeniably more expensive, so we eat quite a bit less meat, which in the long run is probably a big win for my family’s overall health and small win for the environment. So, even if there’s nothing you and your staff can do to convince Christie to buck political forces and do what’s right for these animals, you’ve inspired at least one of your readers to do what little she can by taking her dollars elsewhere. Thanks, and keep up the great work!

I’m taking next week off blogging to deal with other pressing Dish business. Michelle Dean and Will Wilkinson will be guest-blogging, alongside our regular Dish team. I may post on torture and a few other topics, so I won’t be off-grid. Just trying to keep the Dish alive and well.

The rest of us will see you in the morning.

(Photo: The shadow of a protester in a hoodie is seen in the glow of police lights on the wall of a church during a ‘Millions March’ demonstration protesting the killing of unarmed black men by police on December 13, 2014 in Oakland, California. The march was one of many held nationwide. By Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images.)

Editor’s Note: Since yesterday you learned about the history of JSL, as well as some of the movements going on around it, I thought today it would be appropriate to take a look at a guest post by Rochelle, which goes over shuwa (Japanese sign language) and how it can be used to learn spoken Japanese at the same time.

Chances are, you’ve probably met a few non-native English speakers in some of your classes who were learning Japanese or Spanish or Swahili alongside you. You probably thought, “Rad. I don’t think I could learn Spanish or Swahili if the teacher was instructing in Japanese.” I’m here to tell you that you definitely could do such a thing, that it will help your Japanese abilities if you try, and then I’ll outline an easy way for you to get started.

This post will be helpful for intermediate and advanced learners, but beginners who are reading this should still find useful information here. This also might be one of the strangest Tofugu posts yet because I’m talking about how to learn a language that isn’t Japanese: Japanese Sign Language (JSL / shuwa 手話). While there are generally awesome things to be gained from learning a language through another language, shuwa makes the task easier because of 1) an abundance of learning materials with subtitles and 2) grammatical similarities to spoken Japanese.

Agar Mode: Learning A Language Through Another Language

In microbiology, agar is the jelly-like algae medium used to hold bacteria in petri dishes so they can be observed (without destroying the world). It’s also used in Japanese confections, like yōkan. So, as a way to shorten the phrase “Learning a language through another language”, let’s just call that “Agar Mode.” While there isn’t a lot of research on the added benefits of this mode of learning, there is research that suggests foreign language learning is easier the second time around.

Why is that? How does that even work when you’ve been stuffing the jōyō-kanji plus hundreds (thousands?) of vocabulary words and shadowing dramas and news programs for pronunciation? How can you learn a third language more easily, with a still-in-progress Nihongo squeezing up against whatever English knowledge, physics equations, quilt patterns, and “that one story that makes everyone I’m drinking with do a spit-take”?

It comes down to practice… kind of. Second language learning is one area of research that has a lot of conflicting evidence. Some of the surer things are “We don’t know what kind of motivation works best for everyone, but we know there has to be some of it somewhere for people to get anywhere in language learning.” Similarly, it’s been concluded that people who do okay at picking up one foreign language do okay a little more easily at the second because they’ve already learned and practiced successful study habits. The reason it goes smoother the second time around is because you already know that you need: vocabulary lists, listening practice, writing practice, websites and apps to feed you new challenges, and maybe small increments work best, etc. Believe it or not, the specifics of these study habits, and which ones work best for you, are the non-language things you’re learning while learning Japanese.

Okay. So you can get started with another language easily. Now you might be thinking, “Why should I?”

There are some people out there (again, the research is hard to find, but this guy backs me up) who find that the Agar Mode makes you practice Japanese in a new and impressive way. While immersive experiences are great (e.g., taking photography in Japanese, or taking Japanese in Japanese), the immersive language-learning experience specifically draws on vocabulary and expressions you’re already familiar with in Japanese: verbs, adjectives, modifying phrases, て-form, formality, etc. In the end, your head isn’t translating Japanese > English, English > Japanese, it’s translating Japanese > Language-X, Language-X > Japanese. Other posts on Tofugu mention passive learning, translating all the time, and thinking in Japanese. Sounds similar. Sounds like an integrated way to get better at Nihongo.

Exhibit A: Japanese Sign Language

Obviously, any language would work as the specimen in the Nihongo agar. But I’m going to outline resources for use with Japanese Sign Language in this article. In addition to working well with Agar Mode (so many subtitled materials!), Shuwa is as much a part of Japan as Shinto shrines and Kansai-ben. The people who use it daily read and often speak Japanese regardless of whether they can hear or not. Some Shuwa users went to schools for the deaf, but many such schools have been closed down over the years (see Karen Nakamura’s Deaf in Japan for more background on this), and now many have gone to the same schools as any other Japanese person you might meet.

For those interested in going to or living in Kyoto or Tokyo, you’ll run into a few more people using shuwa; the first Japanese school for the deaf was established in Kyoto, while Tokyo boasts the headquarters of the Japan Federation for the Deaf, as well as a number of active college circles and even academic programs (Tsukuba University, for example) for shuwa users. Furthermore, you’ll see shuwa lessons on Japanese TV and on the railways, not to mention in the popular 2004 drama Orange Days.

Again, the best part about trying this Agar Mode out with Japanese Sign Language is what kind of materials you’ll have available. Also, the grammar is going to be similar.

It should be noted that at the beginner level, most of what you’ll run into is a pidgin between shuwa and spoken Japanese called Nihongo Taiou Shuwa (日本語対応手話), which is more like Signed Japanese than Japanese Sign Language. But for getting started and practicing Japanese, this will do just fine.

Getting Started

Just like you start Japanese by learning hiragana and basic vocabulary, most people start learning shuwa with yubi-moji (‘finger-spelling’, 指文字) and vocabulary in categories like colors, food, places, relationships, etc. Here’s a chart for the yubi-moji; illustrations depict someone facing you directly with these hand shapes. Right or left-handedness doesn’t matter.

When you’ve learned all the hand shapes for the hiragana and have properly associated them, try spelling out some words that you know. By hand-spelling out たべます, for example, you’re not only cementing the hand shapes into your mind, but the concept and idea of たべます as well. When you do this, たべます isn’t “to eat” in English, it’s the idea of “to eat” without the “to eat.” You’re helping your brain to really know the word and idea, rather than telling it to recall the information based off some other information that’s in your brain. It’s Agar Mode in action.

This can help you to learn words you are having trouble memorizing too. For example, when I was having trouble remembering 都/みやこ, I found that when I started signing the word I could suddenly memorize it. So, this concept can have benefits even when used in small doses as well.

Continuing Your JSL Education

There isn’t going to be one single way to learn JSL along with your Japanese, especially if you’re looking to supplement it in this Agar Mode way. It really depends on how you’re learning Japanese. Luckily, Agar Mode is flexible and can mold (ha ha!) to just about any Japanese learning method that you do.

If you’re looking to move beyond the yubi-moji hand shapes, there are a number of resources I’ve found to help you out:

Youtube:

• Shuwa songs: Search for these with 「手話ソング」 or 「手話歌」. My favorite so far is this.
• HeartfulPowerHideo channel: This couple is funny, adorable, and effective at teaching Shuwa through subbed skits.
• Clark Chiba: You won’t be alone in the crowd of foreigners seeking to learn JSL. This person, American, has done some lessons, in Japanese, for people wanting to learn, along with some Shuwa Songs.
• jslvideodayo: this Japanese woman knows Shuwa and learned ASL after coming to the U.S. Her videos feature translations between each (JSL/ASL) with English subs

Drama:

Orange Days: In the words of most Japanese people I talk to about this show, it’s filled with all the great and also difficult things about college life in Japan, especially when facing the dreaded job hunting, but adds in the dilemma a semi-pro musician faces now that she’s deaf.

Shuwa Jiten

Like any other language, there are dialects and regional differences, and the list of words isn’t exhaustive, but this is helpful for looking up illustrations and videos of Shuwa words you want to learn. Try learning the JSL version of a word as you learn the Japanese version of a word at the same time. Or, as you make sentences in Japanese, throw in JSL words as you’re speaking it out loud. Even one or two per sentence will surely help! [Shuwa Jiten]

Academics:

• How about the Wikipedia page on Shuwa?
• Ichida Yasuhiro is a sign linguistics researcher who lectures at places like Todai and Osaka University. His website features a glossary of terms relating to sign language and the linguistics of it. Try out your reading comprehension! For advanced Japanese learners / linguistics students, check out his reference section.

Your Experiment

JSL would help you learn more about Japanese culture while practicing Nihongo, but at the end of the day, it’s your experiment. If you aren’t interested in JSL, have you ever wanted to learn French? Korean? Chinese? Consider using the Agar Mode as a way to start thinking in Japanese more. Crawl the internet with Japanese search terms, and you’ll be taking a dynamic new approach to your studies as you pick through the results.

Or maybe you’re reading this and are yawning because you’ve been here, done this. If so, tell us about your ‘learning a language through Japanese medium’ experiences in the comments!
We want to know: Was this approach effective? What kind of challenges did you face, and how did you navigate them?

Bonus JSL Hiragana Chart!

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