What is the Language of your Class?

[Harkon72]

What Language is used to communicate in your Class?

Do you follow the language of the country of origin of your Art?

Is Karate taught in Japanese? Tae Kwon Do only in Korean? Wing Chun in Cantonese? Caporea in Creole?

Ed Parker had Kenpo taught in the language of the students.

I'm sure that a lot of sport Martial Arts are taught in the students Native Tongue also.

In our class, lower grades are taught in Welsh, then the commands change to Japanese as the students become more experienced. I know of a Karate school where the tradition is very Japanese.

How does your Martial Art sound?

[JusticeZero]

....capoeira isn't creole...? The songs and technique names are in Portuguese, but i'm enough of an anthropologist to know how goofy it is to spend too much time pandering to Euro-American Xenophilic prejudices that demand an "Authentic" "Cultural Experience" to an even greater extent than they would see in a traditional school.

[Lupin1]

Judo we call most of the moves by the Japanese names, but the vast majority of the class in English.

My Isshinryu class is all English. From stories I've heard, Shimabuku didn't teach many Japanese/Okinawan terms for things. Most of how he referred to moves was something along the lines of "put foot here".

[mal103]

Majority is in Japanese for our Shotokan Karate, although it is all in English for beginners and white belts, even the next few Kyu grades if they haven't got it yet.

I keep saying to students that we teach Karate and not a language school, even later on if they are confused or forget then we are happy to remind them.

Even when I teach I will sometimes just say it in English if i've forgot a non regular technique or want to keep the lesson going and can't instantly recall the whole combination.

[Tempest]

Names of techniques and procedures are in Japanese, but the lessons are mostly articulated in English.

[blacknebula]

We're pretty much the same as others have mentioned. The actual instruction is in English, and at the lower kyu grades the instructor will typically use English to refer to the techniques, followed immediately by the Japanese terminology. By the time you get to brown belt you are pretty much expected to do a combination that is given in Japanese only, unless it's something obscure that we don't do very often.

[Rateh]

The school where I train and teach is run by a Korean gentleman, but we use almost only English. There are a handful of Korean words, and we use them virtually every class so all of the students know them at white belt. I was never good at learning languages (tried both German and Italian in school), so I'm glad that's all we use. I always feel like I'm butchering the words as it is.

[Wastelander]

The names of techniques, forms, counting, and some etiquette, are all in Japanese. We make sure that the students also know the English translations, though, and the rest of the class is in English since it is our natural language. Someday, I think it would be interesting to transition to using Uchinaguchi (the Okinawan language) instead of Japanese, but it's really just a cultural exploration.

[xo-karate]

Our BJJ classes are in Finnish. I have not heard Portuguese - not even in submission names like "mata leon" - some English like RNC.

[Tzu-Logic]

We do it all in english. All the techniques have english names.

Honestly it doesn't bother me one bit. I'm ok without learning the philipino words for drills and what not.