Morley Robertson is a late-night radio talk show host in Tokyo, Japan. Although Morley, who is half Japanese and half American, realizes that much of his audience has a limited understanding of the English language, he conducts many English-only telephon e interviews with friends in the United States and elsewhere. These interviews can last for as long as 15 to 20 minutes with nary a word of Japanese. Morley trusts those of his listeners who don't understand English to continue listening throughout the in terview. Afterward, he provides an off-the-top-of-his-head summary in Japanese for listeners. This trust that Morley shows his non-English-speaking listeners not to change the station (keep in mind this is a commercial radio show) and the open-minded loya lty these listeners pay in return is incredible, especially compared to the lowest-common-denominator radio so common in the United States. Given our own intractable lingual isolationism, it is impossible to imagine such a talk show on mainstream American radio. Morley's show is merely one exhibit of how much more culturally curious many non-Americans are than Americans.
But not all Americans come off as willfully monolingual. One telephone guest, a young woman from Los Angeles, was so friendly and interesting that Morley though that many of his listeners might want to correspond with her.
"But would you be able to read letters sent to you in Japanese," he asked.
"Sure," the woman replied, "I have many friends here that can translate for me. The neighborhood I live in is half Japanese."
(Jeff Robins, with research assistant Atsumi Hara)
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