Syntax without Semantics

 Well, friends and neighbors, today was the Welcome Ceremony.  The gifts were a success, and I was given some very nice ones as well.  Here are what I presented to the Chairperson, President, and Vice President.

Each person seemed to like what he got.  And the fact that they are 3d printed was appreciated.  The Vice President was given the blue tensegrity table.  At first there was confusion until I set it upright.  Then there was amazement at it "floating" there.  Just what I hoped would happen.  There was some discussion of how these were made and designed.  I worried quite a lot, but it all worked out well.

I was presented with a good deal of Shikoku University swag.  A nice pencil case, a shopping bag (extremely important here), a travel pouch, and an insulated thermos.  I am very appreciative of them because each will be very useful here and at home.

The other thing was a speech ("greeting from Exchange Professor" is how Yuko wrote it on the schedule for me).  I did something Susan said she hadn't seen another exchange professor do.  I gave the last paragraph of the speech in Japanese.  To sort it out I wrote it in English, then used Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and DeepL to take it to Japanese.  Then, to make sure, I took each of the Japanese translations and ran them back to English in a different translator.  I made tweaks until all three converged on nearly identical translations.  Then I practiced about 30 times.  Jen knew I was doing this and Yuko knew.  That was it.  I kept it a secret because everyone here is doing so much to make sure I am comfortable and taken care of.  I thought the least I could do was try to speak the language.

I avoided saying anything obscene by accident.  That was a major worry.  So many words in English can be mispronounced as profanities.  I don't know if this is true of Japanese.  To ease my nerves about this Yuko told me the Chinese word for "light" as in the opposite of "heavy" is a profanity in Japanese.  But everyone knows it does not mean this in Chinese, so they interpret it as "not heavy."  Even though she would not tell me what it means in Japanese.

An important lesson I was reminded of is a person can say words without really knowing what they are saying.  This was odd in a way because I know what I said.  I can even identify the parts of speech used in the different places.  I practiced until I was comfortable, though far from fluent.  Still, at times I was making sounds without understanding what the sounds meant.  I would have failed the Chinese Room test for consciousness.  But I know (or at least I believe) I am fully conscious.  Rather appropriately, this was on my mind as I rehearsed and while I was speaking.

Enough of that.  Back to grading some papers, then I'll take my daily bike ride.