"Being and Becoming a Speaker of Japanese," by Andrea Simon-Maeda

My colleague in Japan, Andrea Simon-Maeda, has written a very interesting book about her process of learning the Japanese language over the 35 years she has lived and worked there. She married a Japanese man and has a grown son, so her personal as well as her professional life (as a university professor) have facilitated and intertwined with her language learning. The book’s title, “Being and Becoming a Speaker of Japanese: An Autoethnographic Account” (Multilingual Matters, 2011), indicates its academic roots, but it is definitely accessible, informative, and enjoyable for the general reader as well. Fellow academics will find this book valuable; general readers who prefer to skip some of the language theory can do some judicious skimming and still benefit from and enjoy the book. I recommend it to anyone interested in languages, in language learning, in Japan, in expatriate life, in mixed marriages, or any combination of these topics. Simon-Maeda has an engaging style, and she is good at providing the kinds of specific examples that make her points clear and vivid.