Life In 19x19

Repeatedly clicking the 'show' icon is making me depressed.

Kirby, thanks. To each language its quirky rules.

Joaz Banbeck wrote:Why are you guys putting comments in hide tags?

Repeatedly clicking the 'show' icon is making me depressed.

Have some koohii zeri and think of your hasto rabu.

Hi Bill, what's a coffee jelly ? Coffee flavored jelly ?

EdLee wrote:Hi Bill, what's a coffee jelly ? Coffee flavored jelly ?

As far as I can tell, they make it with agar-agar. The consistency is more like jello than jelly. I saw it up close, but never had any. It looks like dark coffee. The cafe served it with whipped cream.

Edit: Here is a link. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Coffee-Jelly

The Japanese palate can be quite varied. I have never tried mayonnaise topping on my pizza, either.

Hi Kirby,

...it's all about the spelling. And the spelling here is clear: sa-pi-en-s

Interestng theory. And exceptions noted. However:
lightsaber ライトシーサー (google translate).

Because different (Latin-based) languages may have slightly different pronunciations given the same spelling, I'm not convinced it's "all about the spelling". Need linguistic research here...

croissant クロワッサン (google translate) note the silent 't', per French.
jeans ジーンズ (google translate)
Jean Valjean ジャン・バルジャン (google translate)
Sean Young ショーン・ヤング (Wikipedia)
Sean Connery ショーン・コネリー (Wikipedia)
Dean Martin ディーン・マーティン (Wikipedia)

Star Wars スターウォーズ (google translate)
Station Eleven ステーション・イレブン

major league メジャーリーグ
master マスター

Darth Vader ダース・ベイダー

Björn Borg ビョルン・ボルグ
Björk ビョーク

Siobhan シオバン

Seems all the above examples are based on the pronunciation of the original language, and not the spelling, no ?

My guess is サピエンス is based on the Latin pronunciation, not the spelling.

Coffee jelly: elixir of contentment?

Kirby wrote:Btw, this thread is taking a different direction than I expected. My concern with contentment wasn't so much about missing out on an adventure.

I fear more about missing out on self-improvement - or opportunities to learn and become new things. Since I'm somewhat satisfied, I fear improvements will stop. On the other hand, being unsatisfied may lead to less happiness.

Maybe there's a balance to be found between satisfaction for present contentment and dissatisfaction for the future to become better.

FWIW, three hopefully encouraging thoughts:

1. Given all you and your family have been through recently, just having gotten to a point where you are sufficiently satisfied with life that you are concerned about being complacent seems like quite an achievement.

2. You seem to be using the words "satisfied", "content", and "complacent" synonymously. I'd argue that the first two are a bit different than the third. The third connotes a will-full unawareness to a threat or opportunity. I think one can be satisfied without blinding oneself to either. Complacency is not just satisfaction, but satisfaction as an indulgence. That hardly seems to describe your state of mind.

3. A friend who is a therapist once told me that he laughs (inwardly of course) when clients come in concerned that they may be narcissists. As he put it, a true narcissist would never worry about being narcissistic. I think similarly, someone worried about being complacent is not likely to be complacent. Complacent people would never do that.

In Japanese, they typically produce katakana independently of the native language pronunciation - it's all about the spelling. And the spelling here is clear: sa-pi-en-s

No, the spelling is never the criterion, unless the word is never heard pronounced by Japanese. The varying ways of transliterating what is the same sound to us are usually due to which language the Japanese have borrowed the word from. Historically British English was the main source, and even today is often preferred even when a word is popular in America, because the British vowels are closer to Japanese. But there were also very many borrowings from Dutch and German (especially in science, medicine, academics) and very many other languages have been mined, too. I had a kasutera cake the other day - the word came from Portuguese castella in the 16th or early 17th century.

If pronunciation were ever a concern, マクドナルド would never be a word

This is almost exactly how MacDonald is properly pronounced, with or without a kilt - as in "Donald, where's your troosers" (try this title and Andy Stewart on youtube to hear it by a native).

As was obvious from another thread, Americans (but not Canadians IMX) need to learn the world is much bigger than the USA. I still blink with amazement at my first experience with US Immigration. I was on my way to Uruguay via Miami. Asked where I was going to I said, "Uruguay" to which the uniformed lady said, "Which Uruguay?" Five wasted minutes later I found she had meant basically, "Which US state, as several have Uruguays?" And the Americans think we are the quaint ones?|

Sapiens. The a is short in Latin. That's not much problem for Europeans but the American a in many dialects has elongated out of all proportion so that their pronunciation of Japanese dan now sounds to us like darn, and rarely sounds like anything familiar to a Japanese (just as a western pronunciation of go never suggests the game of go to an ordinary Japanese - you are more likely to end up with golf).

People like me in Britain had to learn Latin in school so we would naturally pronounce homo sapiens with a short a (and in two syllables as the i is short, too - in Japanese it has five syllables/moras). The Japanese would copy that (either from British English, German or Latin direct). However, the derived words such as sapient are pronounced over here with Ed's 'sei' sound, i.e. long.

Of course, Japanese sometimes has to make choices because it lacks certain sounds. Homo sapiens is easy for them, but homo erectus has to be altered slightly to ho-mo-e-re-ku-to-su (which also shows spelling is not the criterion).

Quite a few PhD theses have been written on Japanese transliterations of western words and it's easy to overlook how long they have been a major part of the modern language (though not all Japanese understand the words, by any means). It's no modern fad. Not even the creativity of the genre is new. My own favourite, from my student days, was bakkushaan. See Joaz's favourite button if you don't know it.

John Fairbairn wrote:

In Japanese, they typically produce katakana independently of the native language pronunciation - it's all about the spelling. And the spelling here is clear: sa-pi-en-s

No, the spelling is never the criterion, unless the word is never heard pronounced by Japanese.

When I was living in Japan, the only pronunciation of the English name, Tom, that I heard was based on the spelling: tomu, which sounds like a long o to our ears. But when I was there years later I heard tamu, which sounds (almost) right.

As was obvious from another thread, Americans (but not Canadians IMX) need to learn the world is much bigger than the USA. I still blink with amazement at my first experience with US Immigration. I was on my way to Uruguay via Miami. Asked where I was going to I said, "Uruguay" to which the uniformed lady said, "Which Uruguay?" Five wasted minutes later I found she had meant basically, "Which US state, as several have Uruguays?" And the Americans think we are the quaint ones?|

Back in the days when flight attendants asked you your destination, one man who was going to Oakland, California, said he was going to Oakland and later fell asleep on the plane. When he woke up he was over the Pacific Ocean headed for Aukland, New Zealand.

When the internet was still an infant, I think every single '.' in www.yahoo.co.jp wasn't ドット but ピーリオド ?

bakkushaan

Schattenparker
Warmduscher

John Fairbairn wrote: Quite a few PhD theses have been written on Japanese transliterations of western words and it's easy to overlook how long they have been a major part of the modern language (though not all Japanese understand the words, by any means).

Jeez, what do I know? I haven't studied Japanese for like 10 years, so I guess I shouldn't be giving any tips. My thoughts about transliteration were based on personal feeling, and not a hard-and-fast rule - certainly not a PhD thesis.

According to Wikipedia:

As far as possible, sounds in the source language are matched to the nearest sounds in the Japanese language, and the result is transcribed using standard katakana characters, each of which represents one syllable (strictly mora).

That being said, maybe the reason I felt so strongly about the pronunciation is that I have a hard time believing a serious attempt was made to match literal pronunciation for many words. Then again, maybe it's my American perspective - I can't speak for how things sound to a native British English speaker. It appeared much more feasible that there was some automatic rule based on spelling. Maybe in the early days they just figured out how to translate the "Japanese sound" for a particular foreign word and went with it (maybe from latin or british english, or some other variant of English that sounds unnatural to me).

Regardless, in my opinion, native pronunciation is a better way to go, and I'm happy when words are made that way. English itself is a mess, with various pronunciations around the globe.

I maintain, however, that the translation of McDonald's sounds nothing like the original "American version" of the word - it's a mouthful (maybe British people think differently). Virus, is even worse - to me the japanese pronunciation sounds like "we-roo-su" - can you seriously get "virus" from that if you never heard the word in Japanese before?!? Most "English" words written in Katakana are very hard to understand, at least for an American, if you haven't studied Japanese.

Maybe my interpretation is too American, I'll admit. But I experienced the same end of frustration that Bill did when I was living in Sendai, even with easier words. When I first came to Japan, knowing nothing of the language, I had a hard time understanding what someone was saying even for the simple word, "volunteer" - I thought he was saying "brunch" or something, and he was getting frustrated since it was in English. Admittedly, in Japan, it's my problem to be able to understand the Japanese way to pronounce English words. But that pronunciation is, nonetheless, quite different from what I'm used to. I don't blame anyone for it - it's just a different way of pronouncing things.

BlindGroup wrote: FWIW, three hopefully encouraging thoughts:

Thank you, BlindGroup, for your encouraging words.

BlindGroup wrote: 1. Given all you and your family have been through recently, just having gotten to a point where you are sufficiently satisfied with life that you are concerned about being complacent seems like quite an achievement.

I agree. The fact that I can complain on L19 about something this trivial must mean that I've been given a lot of blessings, lately.

BlindGroup wrote: 2. You seem to be using the words "satisfied", "content", and "complacent" synonymously. I'd argue that the first two are a bit different than the third. The third connotes a will-full unawareness to a threat or opportunity. I think one can be satisfied without blinding oneself to either. Complacency is not just satisfaction, but satisfaction as an indulgence. That hardly seems to describe your state of mind.

That's a good point. This feeling might have arisen since I feel somehow that I should pursue some sort of goal. I don't have a real goal right now, so I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. I have some routines (I do study somewhat consistently, and I've been exercising), but I don't have a particular direction I'm aiming for.

Given how wrong I've been about katakana, maybe I should make it a goal to brush up on Japanese, again :-p

BlindGroup wrote: 3. A friend who is a therapist once told me that he laughs (inwardly of course) when clients come in concerned that they may be narcissists. As he put it, a true narcissist would never worry about being narcissistic. I think similarly, someone worried about being complacent is not likely to be complacent. Complacent people would never do that.

I mostly agree with your friend. I have to wonder if there are varying degrees to narcissism, though, even in that case, having concern about your level of narcissism is in itself not very narcissistic

Virus, is even worse - to me the japanese pronunciation sounds like "we-roo-su" - can you seriously get "virus" from that if you never heard the word in Japanese before?!?

You are still in the America-is-the-world mindset. The Japanese word came from Latin (dictionaries like Kojien tell you this), where weeroos is how it's pronounced (cf. wenny weedie, wicky).

Bring back Latin to schools, I say! I had an impression that Latin was making a big comeback in the USA. That impression comes from the number of very large (and good) Latin primers by American scholars on sale in bookshops here. But maybe they are being used here and not in the USA?

English speakers murder Japanese words, too, don't forget. How about hari-kari, karioki (which is half English to start with), ickybahna, Kigh-oto Protocol, wasAHbi, etc.

The japanese pronunciation of Mc Donald's sounds "closer" to the UK pronunciation than to the US one.

https://www.angmohdan.com/how-do-you-say-mcdonalds/

When Tamu first met Kyasurin, he thought she was a bakkushaan but after they had a koohii zeri at the makudonarudo he changed his mind and she became his hasto rabu.

John Fairbairn wrote:

Virus, is even worse - to me the japanese pronunciation sounds like "we-roo-su" - can you seriously get "virus" from that if you never heard the word in Japanese before?!?

You are still in the America-is-the-world mindset. The Japanese word came from Latin (dictionaries like Kojien tell you this), where weeroos is how it's pronounced (cf. wenny weedie, wicky).

Bring back Latin to schools, I say! I had an impression that Latin was making a big comeback in the USA. That impression comes from the number of very large (and good) Latin primers by American scholars on sale in bookshops here. But maybe they are being used here and not in the USA?

English speakers murder Japanese words, too, don't forget. How about hari-kari, karioki (which is half English to start with), ickybahna, Kigh-oto Protocol, wasAHbi, etc.

Hmm, saying "virus" in English doesn't sound anything like the Japanese equivalent isn't necessarily American mindset, IMO. I'm not complaining about ズボン, for example. Nobody is expressing frustration with me in Japan that I don't know ズボン, because there's no expectation that it comes from English.

My point is that in the supposed English words, I've had people expect that I understand the word since it's clearly an "English word".

Latin != English

As I alluded to earlier, it's a Japanese word, and they can get it from wherever they want - there's no reason that any word should attempt to resemble English. But ウイルス doesn't sound like an English word, even if it came from Latin.

To be perfectly clear, I have no expectation that any Japanese word *should* sound like an English word or a Latin word or anything else.

But it should, then, be known that many of these words do not sound like English, American or otherwise, lest you have folks that get frustrated with Bill and me when we don't understand what coffee jelly is.

To be sure, it's the foreigner's task to learn the words of the language where they are living. But the so-called "English" Japanese words aren't necessarily any easier (and in fact are often harder) to learn than, say, some kanji-based word native to Japanese.

I'll put it simply: I've met people in Japan that assume I'll understand a word because it's "English", when in fact, the word sounds nothing like what I'm familiar with. It's not a problem with the word - it's a problem with assumptions.