One disappearing speech pattern worth mourning is the language of mothers. I don't want to sound like a sap, but the mothers of 25 years ago said things their children remembered and thereby generated a lot more authority. You couldn't argue with them, these women whose childhoods were wrecked by war and its aftermath, who worked hard to make something of themselves and then had to give it all up for marriage and motherhood. Among them were the first postwar political activists, university graduates, feminists. In short, they exuded no-nonsense from every pore.

As a child, the difference between American and Japanese moms always floored me. Lavish terms of endearment just poured from the lips of American parents, and they were forever uttering sentences that began with "Of course honeybunch" and ended with a kiss. My own home was a different continent. We breathed a totally different air and if I were to ask for something (like $1.25 for baseball cards, for example) my mother would give me a long look and say ominously: "Hotoke no kao mo sandomade (Even Buddha can take it only three times)." Theoretically this meant I could ask her three times before she and Buddha got really ticked off but I never bothered to find out. When she came out with this line it meant there was nothing to be done except kick the table leg when she wasn't looking.

Other Japanese moms spoke in similar ways, and one lady had a partiality for Chinese proverbs which she would trot out at the slightest provocation, doubling up admonishment with educational purposes. Once she caught us rummaging through the cupboards and rightly came to the conclusion that we were up to no good. She cut right through our feeble pleas of innocence with: "Rika ni kanmuri o tadasazu, kaden ni ashi o fumiirezu (He who attempts to adjust his crown under a pear tree or happens to step into a melon patch will have no excuse if he is accused of stealing)." Case dismissed.