A Bad Feeling

After a certain point when living abroad, most people have a moment when they realize they are thinking in a foreign language.  I'm not sure if the period of time is different for different languages (a friend's dad told me he was dreaming in Spanish after living in a home stay for two weeks), but on average after about three or four months it kicks in.  Your brain re-sets.  Unfortunately it's not a complete process.  You still make lots of mistakes in the language your learning, though you're getting better.  The biggest thing you'll notice is that now you can communicate in English about as well as you can communicate in your second language.  Your English become broken, grammar is forgotten or morphed to fit the second language.  Every day words will escape you.  And the damage is permanent - you will never get back to the same comfort you had with English before you had the brilliant idea of acquiring a second language.

The only people you will be able to have a full conversation with at this point will be your fellow language students.  If they can also think half in English and half in your other language, you'll be set!  Over time, more and more words will be part of your second language.  By the time you go home, words like, 'See you!' or 'Wait a second' will feel strange and awkward in your mouth for a few weeks.

Ever since I got home from Japan, I was very curious to find out what Japanese phrases were going to stick to me the longest.  What would be the hardest to get used to saying in English.  Your native language is your native language.  It doesn't take too long to acquire it back and begin thinking full time in English.  But I have a winner - a word that doesn't have a good direct translation in English.

きもい　kimoi (to have a bad feeling)

きもい (kimoi) is really a contraction of two words that form a very common phrase, 気持ち悪い (kimochi warui).  Literally, is means 'feeling bad' or 'to have the feeling that is bad'.  But this is the simple explanation.  There are all sorts of phrases in English that we use instead the capture a portion,  but not the essence of 気持ち悪い (kimochi warui).  When you see a bug on the sidewalk, and say, 'that's gross!' in Japanese, you say, '気持ち悪い (kimochi warui).'  When you see a dark alley way, and say, 'that looks creepy,' in Japanese, you say, '気持ち悪い (kimochi warui).'  If you're watching a horror movie and the monster is about to brutally murder someone, and say, 'no!  I can't watch this anymore!' in Japanese, you say, '気持ち悪い (kimochi warui).'  To really get the proper sense of 気持ち悪い (kimochi warui), I want you to imagine a black, slimy bug with long tentacles that slithers along the ground.  Now imagine that it is crawling around inside of you.  You now have the true sense of 気持ち悪い (kimochi warui).  But 気持ち悪い (kimochi warui) takes too long to say.  That bug could crawl out of you before you finish speaking.  That is きもい (kimoi).

I have yet to find a phrase in English that has that same flavor of internal disgust.  It is being grossed out not by what you see or observe, but by something that manages to touch your soul.  Of all the many things I absorbed from Japanese, the apologizing, the round about questions, all of these things I have been able to easily turn into English mannerisms.  But nothing in the English verbal imagination can take the place of  きもい (kimoi).