It

As passionate as I am about the English language, I never thought I'd get into a scrap over personal pronouns.

I was wrong. Today, I had a forty minute fight - verbal, emotional, extremely loud and verging on the physical - about the use of subject markers in the teaching of English to Japanese children. Harai was on one side of the argument, I was on the other, and the head of English was perched awkwardly in the middle trying to get on with some marking.

"They're too hard," Harai shouted at me.
"What are you talking about?" I shouted back. "You just used one! They're not too bloody hard. I. You. We. He. She. They. On what planet are personal pronouns too hard?"
"They won't understand!"
"They're eleven years old! Why won't they goddamn understand? There's a direct equivalent in Japanese! Anyway, it's my job to make them understand! That is why I'm here!"
Harai pressed his lips together, which is his sign for: I am angry but far too repressed to tell you that.
"Don't press your lips together at me," I told him fiercely, because I'm not repressed in the slightest. "It's my job to teach them the English language whether it's hard or not. If you want to tell me it's boring, that's fine. It is boring. But don't tell me it's too hard."
"Your job," he said in a hiss, "is to make English fun."
"Oh. Oh. Now my job is to make English fun, is it? Because a few weeks ago I was making English too fun, you said. They were enjoying themselves too much, you said."
"Well your job is to make it just fun enough."
"No. I know exactly what my job description is, Harai. I'm trained approximately a billion times a term in a neverending round of ridiculous meetings that I could run myself while unconscious. I am here to assist as a native speaker with Junior High school, to serve as an introduction to English for the kindergarteners, and to prepare the ground from which the beautiful flower of English will bloom for the Elementary school children. And I mean that exactly, because at one stage I remember seeing yet another goddamn Powerpoint presentation with soil and a little watering can and some dude spreading imaginary Powerpoint fertiliser."
"I don't understand you," Harai admitted after a pause. "You speak too fast."
"I know that." I paused and sat down in defeat. "Oh, I don't care," I muttered. "Teach them what you want. I just don't care." Then I furrowed by brow and shot back up again, even though Harai had done nothing other than tighten his lips again. "Actually, Harai, I do fricking care. My job is to make these children love English by getting them used to it and fond of it before they hit Junior High school. And what the hell is the point in making them love English by only teaching them useless bollocks just so they can go to Masa's class in three months, get confused, and spend the rest of their lives hating English and looking back on my class as the only time in their short lives when they didn't hate English because all we did was play card games? Well? What the hell is the point in that? Maybe if I incorporate things worth learning into my fun lessons, they won't find the next grade so hard and they won't be confused and they won't end up hating English, like the rest of the adults in Japan. And maybe if they don't hate bloody English then they won't be scared to ever leave Japan like 80% of the population, and they might actually get out into the world and see that there is still one out there. And their lives will be fuller and better and more rich because of it. Because they don't hate English. That's my goddamn job, Harai, and it starts with personal pronouns."
And I sat down again, feeling very much the way Bill Pullman must have felt after he made that rousing speech in Independence Day right in front of Will Smith.
Harai jutted his chin out.
"Personal pronouns are hard and unecessary."
"Really? You want to try and construct a sentence about anything interesting without one? I can make them easy, and I can make them fun. It's no problem. You just have to let me do it. They can all learn together."
The head of English butted in.
"She is making sense, you know, Harai."
"Just subject pronouns," I wheedled. "No objects. Just subjects."
Harai scowled.
"You can have one," he finally muttered. "One pronoun."
"What can I do with one fricking pronoun?"
"Okay, two. You can have two pronouns. But no more."
"Six. I need at least six. I need I, you, he, she, it, they, we."
"No. It's way too hard. Way too hard. Not fun. Three."
"So which ones am I going to leave out? She, perhaps? Just let them think that everything in the world is male? Four. I need four."
"Four. Okay, four. But no more than that. Or English won't be fun anymore."
"Fine." I stood up and dusted my trousers off. "Four."
Harai glared at me.
"It had better be fun," he said.
"It's going to be so fun," I told him. "It's going to be too fun."
"Not too fun," he corrected. "Just enough fun."
"Yes."
"English sucks," he told me.
"And you're the English teacher," I sighed. "And we wonder why the government employ me too."

Four pronouns. A forty minute fight and all I got was four pronouns. I've chosen I, you, he and she. And when Harai's not looking, I'm going to sneak in it, too. When it's too late for him to do anything about it. And too late for him to do anything about it.

I never thought I would have to fight, kicking and screaming, for the personal pronoun: but I do. And if anyone needs to know why: that was three in one sentence. A sentence that would have made no sense otherwise. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let Japanese children hate my language because I haven't had the balls to fight for the tools they need not to.

There appears to be quite enough people who hate English teaching them it as it is.