The small joys of the Japanese Langauge
Sometimes it’s the funny little things that do it.
The diffence between the Japanese and for instance, English/Dutch. Well, one of the differences at least. Is that it works in logographics whereas we use well . . . letters.
In everyday life this means that you can tell the meaning of a word by sight. Much as we can well . . . read the word. It also means that the same pronunciation can mean different things as the kanji is different while the pronunciation is the same. This is not much of an object to the Japanese as they can tell what you are talking about by the context. This gets harder if your grasp is less than complete, as I only know that word to mean “church” and I really don’t know how to apply it to the chemestry basics of Surge Arrestors (boundary layer btw). It is also fun the other way around because we just sorta piece together sentences with what we know and they tend to be fragmented. Anyway, for the Japanese amongst themselves, it is doable. For interaction with us, it is comical.
To the story.
If I were to be lost in France/Italy/Brazil/wherever, I could go up to a building and read what it said without knowing what it meant. For the locals it would be perfectly simple and the wrong pronunciation (and the completely puzzled look on your face) would tell them you don’t know what you are on about after which hand-and-foot latin combined with repeating the word SLOWLY AND LOUDLY would commence.
The same will happen in Japan. You will stand in front of a sign, read it (pronounce it wrong because . . . well, we always do), and some nice Japanese person will come and translate it for you. Which in this case, is not necessary. It is not possible to know how to pronounce a word without knowing what it means (outside use of hiragana/katakana/furigana/forgetting) but the Japanese are so used to Gaijin being lost I got told what 遅れ１５分 meant when I informed the other passengers of the delay of the train.
For a slightly more cynical view on the japanese language: Read this
In other, non related news, I saw a girl the other day wearing a shirt with “I am like a taxidermist, I’ll mount anything”. /comfortable sigh, Japanese and Language (their own or others), they go so well together.
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This theme is butt-ugly, just so you know
- Fair Maiden