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I have been presented with a rare opportunity. I have been asked to do a 5 minute spot on the local Sapporo TV network… they asked me to talk about number of things for which I need some suggestions!
I know you all can help me!
The focus is on differences or any interesting things you have discovered or learned about the Japanese language and how it compares to English.
Somethings they mentioned/suggested…
– sometimes Japanese and English word order is opposite (not sentence structure, but rather ie. 白黒 but in English (black and white) or 飲み物食べ物 (food and drinks) etc…
– how Japanese proverbs compare to English (or any English proverbs that don’t have an equivalent in Japanese. (I have no ideas here…)
– how Japanese has phrases like いただきます and おつかれさま but English has no equivalent…They were also interested in how Japanese comedy is different.
For example, recently the phrase ワイルドだろう！ and ワイルドだぜ！ have become really popular as a ‘gag’… I’ve been out of North America for nearly 3 years so I need some help here to know what ‘gags’ or movie quotes or w/e is popular these days.Also, anything else you think might be interesting to share about Japanese, English and culture.
You cold mention how there’s less sound combinations in Japanese then there are in English, which in a way makes it easier to learn. You could also say how about written Japanese looks better than written English. Although that’s a personal opinion, Kanji is beautiful to look at and makes sentences more interesting to read.
Good luck with it. Let us know how it goes. I’ll watch it too if it gets uploaded to YouTube.
敬語
Casual/polite – not only the way you change sentence endings, but also how you switch from なお → また よう → みたい のみ → だけ and all that
Gendered speech
Some words like 家内. I know it made sense when the word was made, and then kanji were picked, but when I first saw it, I thought it was a bit discriminating ^^
Different emoticons
The use of words that describe a sound is a lot more common.(this might only be idols though^^;)
I can probably think of some more, but this is all I have for now ^^
Those are some good ideas that i’ll definitely keep in mind.
@Mark – We talked a bit about how keikog is different/similar to can/could/may etc… We also played with the idea of onomatopoeia and the likes…
@kanjiman8 – I’ll try to get it recorded so I can upload it.
Keep the ideas comin’!
姦しい
Kanji with 3 women in it, word meaning noisy. I found this hilarious.
In Japanese, there are like 5 ways to say one word in English
せめて、少なくとも → at least
できるだけ、なるべく → as much as possible
よう、らしい、みたい、→ like
some differences I can think of:
English vowels all have several different pronunciations (and vary greatly depending on where you live. a- ah, aw, ay etc.)where-as Japanese vowels all have one pronunciation (though may vary in different regions, I don’t know?)
English use pronouns where Japanese do not. Also English will have no problem stating the obvious (standing there holding some bread, ‘Would you like some bread?’) where in Japanese you just need to say ‘taberu?’
English use direct questions where Japanese use indirect and negative tense
English uses a lot of idioms
English accent uses stress on syllables where Japanese accent uses pitch
Anyway, these are all interesting things to someone who is trying to learn the Japanese language.
Is the Sapporo TV network interested in a focus more from foreigners perspective of learning the Japanese language, or are they just interested in the English language compared to their own?Perhaps due to the smaller number of sounds and the fact that sentences end in verbs, rhyming is very easy in Japanese and happens so often that it doesn’t carry the same weight as in English. I’ve asked a few people about assonance and alliteration as well and they don’t seem to know what I’m talking about.
@missing – I don’t know that what you said is necessarily true. There are many ways to say things in English as well. (no less than~, ~or more) Which reminds me that it always bothers me when I here things like “at least 3-5″…
@ Yggbert – that’s hilarious! Fantastic
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This reply was modified 12 years, 6 months ago by
vanandrew.
Yggbert:
姦しいKanji with 3 women in it, word meaning noisy. I found this hilarious.
There’s more here on this page http://www.tofugu.com/2012/06/05/misogynistic-kanji/
I agree with andrew. That is pretty funny. Sorry ladies :D
You could mention that Japanese is one of the fast spoken languages – there was a study about the relation of the amount of information packed into a single syllable and the reading speed of a language. Tofugu covered that story not long ago too ;)
I hate how we only have () in English(and Danish) while in Japanese we have 「『』」 which makes it much easier to make parentheses within parentheses ^^
I just came to think of this while writing English…マーク・ウェーバー:
checking the new quote function… Much easier to quote now. will multiquote also become a feature?:Dsorry for double post
Loving the new quote button too.
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yeah it is nice, but usually that spot is occupied by a user modified signature, which we really need.
Can’t we just get IPboard already? We need embedding, multiquote, post count, signatures, bold, italics, lists, link naming, text color, font sizes and a lot more functions that we will never get by keeping this plug-in.
At least it is a step in the right direction… -
This reply was modified 12 years, 6 months ago by
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