I do not write my novels in Japanese. Hey, I can pretty much hold together a conversation in that language, and my reading is fairly proficient [for a first grader], but I don't find myself writing sections of Hourglass Nihongo de. Why?
- My grammar stinks.
- I have to look up the characters for everything; or I have no idea how to spell it in hiragana.
Here's what an introductory paragraph would look like:
Sono wa Iruwangu-san. Kare no kaminoke wa kuroi desu, to kare no me wa aoi desu. Iruwangu-san o kashiru kara ano warui otoko no hito wa Iruwangu-san ga arimasen.
Whew, that was easier than I thought it would be! My thoughts are down on paper, and I didn't have to look anything up- it must be great, right?
Translated: That is Mr. Irwing. His hair is black, and his eyes are blue. Mr. Irwing is running because those bad men do not have him.
Eww. Maybe not?
Here's the thing: since I'm not fully comfortable with the ins-and-outs of Japanese grammar, I don't know what's okay to fool around with, and what I can experiment with. And since I can't spell, I'm afraid to use vocabulary greater than three syllables.
It makes for a pretty cookie cutter story that'd work very well for a Kindergartener's reading anthology, but not for a work of art that's supposed to demonstrate the best of the best in that language.
The moral? Practice your language, or your writing may just sound like the above paragraph. It's a frightening possibility, but it could happen.
Doesn't matter if it's English- it still needs some TLC.
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