Spam
On of my jobs around the office is to handle any miscellaneous English tasks that come up through the day. If an English letter comes in, I am usually the first to read it and summarize it. If a letter has to be written, that’s my job too. Basically any English task, which can be so time-consuming and frustrating for the JTE’s, even though they are pretty good at English, comes to my desk first. I am a native speaker and I fully understand that those sorts of things are significantly easier for me to deal with. Actually, it makes me feel good knowing that I have a role around the school that no one else does. It makes me feel like I am contributing in a positive way.
Just the other day my old supervisor (I have a new one now and that is another story for another day when I feel like I can let loose and rant) came over and told me that she had two English emails in her inbox. She asked me if I would mind reading them, they were pretty long, and telling her whether or not they were important.
At first I thought her request was a little strange, I mean seriously, why don’t you just read them yourself? But I went over to her computer anyways to help her out. Lord knows she has helped me out more times than I can even mention because I am a stupid illiterate fool living in this strange land.
I took one quick look at both of the emails and told her that no, they were not important.
She was sort of surprised that I was able to make this determination so quickly. She knows I have mad English skills, but she still thought it would take me a bit of time. So she asked me what they were about, how could I know so quickly that they weren’t important.
I really didn’t want to talk about it, especially in the office surrounded by so many other people. I explained to her that we call these types of email “spam” and she should just delete them.
But she pressed on, desperately wanting to know what they were about before she deleted them forever. So I told her.
The first one is about penis enlargement.
The second one is to order viagra.
This explanation satisfied her and she very quickly moved them to the trash. I am still a little horrified that I actually said penis enlargement to my supervisor, a dear woman that is older than my mother.
And now, I truly wonder what sort of spam we will get in the comments as a result of this post. Let’s just wait and see!
I had a similar experience with the principle at one of my kindergartens. She asked me to look at a few English emails for her. However, the ones she had me look at were emails from some mail program that said something like “Hi, I’m the mail program from (domain name). I’ve been trying very hard to deliver the message you sent to (address). Unfortunately I can’t, it doesn’t seem like this address exists. I’m giving up. Have a nice day!”
She can read/write some English, and I think she suspected that they were ‘could not deliver your email’ messages, but she was probably a bit confused by the chatty nature of the mail program.
I often find that the informal, chatty language can be the most difficult to understand. I do okay in japanese when everyone talks “formally” but the minute they start throwing in some informal, casual language I am usually lost. The same is true for the super-formal and polite language, I don’t really understand that either!