Speech contest

As Caruso pointed out in his blog, people who are Japanese descendents or study Japanese become familiar with speech contests at some point. In part because Japanese seem to like speech contests as a way to show language proficiency.

Following his indications too, I decided to check a National Portuguese speech contest for Japanese university students at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. After joining some Japanese speech contests in Brazil, I wondered how it would feel to hear speeches from people who are actually making efforts to learn a language I'm well familiar with.

And also to see some Japanese who chose to study Portuguese. It is not a common choice. Most Japanese, when they choose a foreign language, opt for English. If not, Chinese, French, German, Spanish... Even Korean and Italian seems to be more popular. As an example, Kyoto University offers all those language courses at basic level at least, but there's no Portuguese.

Interestingly enough, disconsidering the Japanese accent there was a mixture of Portugal Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, but the latter was predominant. Also, the students I've talked to decided to study Portuguese mainly because of something related to Brazil.

The big prizes were scholarships to Portugal, though...

With stakes as high as these, just the speech wasn't enough. There was even a small interview (with a jury that included the embassadors of Portugal and Brazil) after the speeches to determine the winners.

Still, some speeches were great. The one that won the contest had as background the movie "Se Eu Fosse Voce" (If I Were You). It was clever how the plot of the movie (a couple who end up changing bodies by accident) was linked to how we should try to understand other people thinking how would it be if we were on their shoes. And from there to different cultures.

Another speech I liked a lot and with a similar message had pollen allergy as the trigger. The same way the body rejects strange bodies through reactions such as allergy, people do towards what is "different". This one I liked most because of the energy of the speaker, although the final message was also nice.

Anyway, this could go on for some time. I'll stop here.

It was an interesting experience. Now I might have an idea on how Japanese people feel when they listen to speeches from foreign students in Japanese.

And that came in handy for a speech contest in Japanese I participated.

No, not anything as big as that Portuguese speech contest. It was a speech contest organized by the Kyoto Association of Host Families (KAHF). Also, as expected, I wasn't one of the top three, although everyone who did a speech got a prize.

Nevertheless, it was a good experience giving a speech in Japanese in Japan. Probably still the language among the three I can say I am able to speak that I feel most unconfortable using.

Among speeches mentioning Japanese culture, social challenges and life with their host family, the three winners had in common the naturality while speaking. In a relaxed way, their speech was delivered smoothly with words that the jury knew (there were some with a bit of technical language).

The winner spoke about her life with her host family, remembering through a recently arrived student how most of us are when arriving, and mentioning the warmth their family had always given to their "foster children".

One that I found most interesting, including for academic reasons, was about how Japan is noisy. There is always some sound wherever you go in urban environments. And many announcements. Escalators tell you to watch your step, trucks warn people about left or right turns. The speaker himself was once tricked by an ambulance with its siren on and telling it was turning to the left, thinking it was a disaster annoucement (one car in the middle of the night with siren on and yelling something... comprehensible mistake).

There are actually some lines of research about sound directivity to prevent an annoucement to spread to undesired directions. It still has a long way to go, though.