Later he entered a public school, where he first encountered Japanese, and there experienced his first loss of language. After the Nationalist government took over Taiwan, creative writing in Japanese was halted. Yeh had to resort to reading the Kangxi Dictionary and meticulously studying a side-by-side Chinese-and-Japanese edition of Dream of the Red Chamber, filling it with notes from cover to cover.
另外，若疊在歷史的演變裡觀察，葉石濤的語言使用充滿了殖民主義的遺痕，從小使用台灣話，進入「公學校」時對日語茫然無知，面臨第一次失語；光復後，日文創作停止，只好閱讀《康熙字典》，將《紅樓夢》對照日文譯本仔細研讀，從頭到尾抄一遍。