On Emily Stewart's ability of and attitude toward her languages (and happy birthday Emily!)

Introduction

I am going to write about Emily Stewart, one of the idols of the 765-Pro theater of the "Million-Live!" in the "IDOLM@STER" series. I am writing this article in English, just because I love Emily and I just feel like writing about her in English, her mother tongue. I will write about her ability of and attitude toward Japanese and English, which I think I must once consider because I am her "producer" (or "shikakenin-sama" as she calls). I have been her producer only for a year, though I have known Million-Live! for three years. So I have not talked about her in detail, but I am going to write what I have thought about her in this article.

And today is Emily's birthday! I devote this article to her. Happy birthday. I am so happy to know you.

Now I will start talking about the main topic. As you know, Emily is so fond of Japan and Japanese language that she avoids using English. Instead, she "translates" any words imported from other (European) languages into Japanese. For example, she translates "hamburger" into 「挽き肉焼きの小麦蒸し餅重ね」(lit: a pile of steamed flour buns with roasted minced meat). She uses such complex periphrastic expressions when she mentions what you cannot refer to without using borrowed words from English or other European languages.

Although it seems that she does not distinguish words originated from Japanese (和語) between ones from Chinese (漢語) and sometimes she uses an English interjection, she speaks Japanese thoroughly without words and phrases from European languages. 

cf. https://twitter.com/imasml_theater/status/1290218852656140289

In this article I am going to write down my (delusional) ideas of what Emily thinks of English and her future from that point of view. Another topic may be added.

Why does she speak Japanese so well?

She is a British girl, whose native language is English, but then why is her Japanese so good? That is probably because she has been familiar with Japanese for a long time perhaps since she has been born or a little after then. She may well have acquired Japanese as her another mother tongue.

By the way, her Japanese is very polite. We can infer that she has brought up in an environment where such a polite and formal Japanese is spoken. It has definitely something to do with the fact that she has learned Japanese traditional dance (日本舞踊) and tea ceremony (茶道).

A thought about her English and her background

We cannot hear her English since she does not want to speak it in the presence of us and thus we can do nothing but imagine. But we have sufficient grounds to guess she speaks relatively noble and polite English.

First of all, her Japanese is very polite and noble, even if compared to other Japanese idols in the theater. This is thought to be due not only to her respect and love to the Japanese tradition and language, but also to her personality. We can easily see her politeness and tenderness in daily life. Therefore she must be polite no matter what language she is speaking.

The another reason is that she is from a so-called upper-class family. We know that her father is a diplomat and her family lives in a splendid Japanese-type house. We have also a card, in which Emily participates in a kind of party. From the information above, we can infer that she has been raised decently and has learned to have proper courtesy also that she speaks elegant English. We conclude that she speaks graceful English as well as polite Japanese. Her way of speaking Japanese is definitely ascribed to her own personality, especially her own courtesy.

And thus it must be reflected English she speaks. As is well known, British English is different from American. We can see Americans make fun of British accent or British people avoid using the expression "soccer". Put these things aside, I finish this section by mentioning an accent of British English which is regarded as the standard and most prestigious: Received Pronunciation (henceforth RP). You can easily notice the difference from American accent. Some also call the accent "The Queen's English". There is another famous accent mainly spoken in London, that is, the Cockney accent. This is spoken particularly by working-class and middle-class Londoners. I will not speak about sociolinguistic status, or social classes. All I would like to talk about is about Emily.

Then, what do we suppose her English is like? I think she speaks RP, or more or less, something near that. It suits her. I wish I could hear her elegant British English someday… yes, it might be more difficult than get an idol to speak or get voices in Cinderella Girls. But I believe her voice becomes a little lower when speaking English because English speakers open their throat broader and let out their voice from a deeper area than Japanese speakers. Therefore her voice sounds more mature when she speaks English, although her voice is definitely still pretty much cute.

I should mention two British girls from "Kin-iro Mosaic": Alice Cartelet and Karen Kujo. Particularly, Alice's English may be similar to Emily's and thus Alice's can be referred to in order to depict Emily's English. I hope they meet and talk with each other someday.

By the way, I give two points of British accent which I like. The first is the pronunciation of diphthongs. The other one is that they do not drop the dental plosive /t/, which is pronounced as a flap in the American accent.

What makes her avoid using English so rigidly?

We have understood that she loves Japanese, but why does she not use English? She says that English has no class. This is the reason she avoids speaking English and even expressions originated from English.

Then, what has brought her to think so? I think that it can be explained in terms of her age. She is 13 years old, so young that she may well be willing to use her mother tongue and use only her favorite language. But, her linguistic purism (?) may be abandoned by expanding her world. Her respect and interest towards anything related to Japan is great and I think that if they are also turned to English and her homeland's culture, then she can notice the value of them. English is also her element. She will definitely come to think of English positively someday in the future.

Emily in the future from the linguistic and cultural point of view

This section wholly consists of my imagination and hope.

As I have written in the previous section, I am very glad that she loves Japan, but I also hope that she gets to know how fascinating European languages, especially her own mother tongue, English, because I like them very much. This can probably be realized by acquiring sufficient knowledge about them. I hope also that she knows there are those who loves English, as much as she loves Japanese.

After she graduates from high school, she probably enters university. She will definitely choose to go to a university in Japan. Then she begins to study Japanese literature, language or culture, probably something related to Japan. I love and respect her diligence, by the way. It must contribute to her study.

Then she makes friends there and meets those who like English and/or England (UK) so much as Emily likes Japan and Japanese. Not until then does she realize that there are people who like her hometown and mother tongue, which she had intentionally kept avoiding. After that she begins also studying about English and UK from the scratch and comes to feel a little proud of her own country and language. Her skill of translating something alien into Japanese is of course not abandoned, but she does not avoid using English as much as before.

I think this may well happen in the future because she has respect to anything. If she knows more about English, she will also respect it. I understand some does not think that she stops avoiding English, but this is my opinion.

To sum up, I want her to get her world expanded by talking to someone who has different values and come to like her own identity. Her modesty is very good, but I want her to like herself more and I believe it is achieved if she comes to like her own identity, namely English. (In the Christmas Commu, she mentioned her hometown, and thus I guess she also cherishes UK she has born in.) I devote a song "Step & Skip" by the way, because One Steps cheers those who cannot love themselves through this song.

Conclusion

I have focused on Emily and English. I like both Emily and English, and that is why I want her to know how attractive English is. Of course I love her zeal for Japanese, but she can be a cultural translator between Japan and UK on the basis of her knowledge and experience. I hope so.

Happy birthday to Emily again, and I swear that I never take my eyes off her. I wish her the best of luck.

tejas