日本語会話: The Japanese Conversation Thread

[DELTAprime]

This scene from Star Wars A New Hope demonstrates this kind of social faux pas:
"Well, if there's a bright centre to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from."
"I see, sir."
"Uh, you can call me Luke."
"I see, sir Luke."
(laughing) "Just Luke."

I need to watch A New Hope again, I was thinking that was an Alec Guinness line for a moment, or did he prefer Sir Alec Guinness?

[GoktimusPrime]

I don't know about knighthoods, but I know that when you get awarded your PhD then by law you have to be addressed as "Doctor" in any legal setting. At my previous school I had a colleague who has a PhD in Chemistry -- she's very humble about it and doesn't normally tell people about it and never asks anyone to call her "Dr.", but it just came up in conversation one day. She told me that all legal documents that are mailed to her such as bills, address her as "Dr." because that's a legal requirement. But that's pretty much the only time she gets called Doctor. Likewise in court when she was getting divorced -- the court had to address her as "Doctor [surname]." If anyone calls her "Doctor" in any normal situations, she'll tell you to shut up and stop calling her that. She only uses the title when she has to, by law, otherwise she never does. But I've also met another teacher with a PhD who insists on being addressed as "Doctor," especially by students. Incidentally the first teacher teaches at a disadvantaged public school while the latter teaches at a very privileged private school (where teachers actually wear academic gowns like at Hogwarts ).

On the opposite end of the scale, every Karate instructor I've met demand to be addressed as "Sensei," even though a lot of them are just downright incompetent as teachers. (-_-) When I did Karate I refused to address my instructors as "Sensei" because - especially as a teacher myself - I don't believe in just frivolously throwing this title around, especially if you can't bloody teach. I was never rude to them per se, but for example, if my instructor's name was John Smith, I just called him John, and not "Sensei-John." And even if I were to address him as Sensei, I would never address him as "Sensei-John" because that makes no sense. As an honorific title, Sensei can only be used with surnames, not given names. Also, Japanese honorific titles always come after the name, never before. This is why Mr. Miyagi always said, "Daniel-san" and never "San-Daniel." Saying "Sensei John" is the equivalent of saying "John Mister" in English. It just looks stupid. Either call him "Mr. Smith," or "Smith-Sensei" or just "John"! I went for the latter option.

[GoktimusPrime]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TofNjIjt0TQ
^Interesting social experiment where 3 non-Japanese people (1 Asian, 1 black, 1 white) walked around and spoke with Japanese people to see if they would treat them the same as anyone else in Japan and respond in Japanese, or if they would attempt to mix with English or use English. The majority of respondents treated them the same as anyone else and exclusively spoke to them in Japanese.

In my personal observation, I find that one of the challenges for Anglophones in learning Japanese (or any other foreign language) is that a lot of people in other countries want to learn and/or practise English, and in countries like Japan, people are often more than willing to try and speak English with you (or at least mix some English with Japanese) to try and be helpful. But of course, it's not helpful because it hinders your ability to learn Japanese! But this little social experiment demonstrates that if foreigners are willing to take the initiative and speak in Japanese to Japanese people, then they will respond in kind. Where respondents mixed or used English it was often because the foreigner (the black girl) is speaking Japanese with a notable accent or she outright admits that she doesn't fully understand what is being said or shown to her (in her defence the video does explain that she is still a learner of Japanese whereas the other two are already fluent speakers; and the way that she tells off one guy for touching her hair was actually really good ).

So yeah, so long as you actually take the initiative to engage with Japanese people in Japanese, then Japanese people will respond in kind. And needless to say that your ability to learn Japanese will then increase exponentially. Anyone who is living in Japan (or has lived or will be going) will have the super added bonus advantage of being surrounded by native speakers and be able to do this on a daily basis. Those of us living outside of Japan obviously have more limited options, but we gotta take any opportunity where we can find it. And it's interesting what topics turn up... I managed to have a conversation with a Japanese friend recently and we talked about IVF in Japanese -- I learnt quite a lot of things about IVF (and fertility in general) that I never knew before.

P.S.: As I've probably mentioned before, whenever Japanese people speak to me in English, I just reply in Japanese.

[GoktimusPrime]

Tokyo 2020 promotion during the closing ceremony

[TAAUBlaster]

From this post in the Transformers Questions thread with the MP Cheetor translation request
http://www.otca.com.au/boards/showpo...postcount=8865

Recently I have been using scans like this to try and help me study kanji rather than selectable text (so I can't take the lazy way out and just copy/paste them into a translator ) I use a website to search for each kanji by their radicals which is also helping me to learn how each kanji is made up - and makes it a little easier for me to recognise them (I know - its a strange way to do it, but it works for me. )

Anyway my question is, What are the two kanji after ”ボディ”　at the start of the second line of text? I couldn't for the life of me find them the way I usually do (and I was probably mistaking the radicals when searching. )

[GoktimusPrime]

表面 = ひょうめん = surface

[TAAUBlaster]

Thanks Gok

I was mistaking the radicals as it turns out haha

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

What is this radicals site you're using Blaster?

Searching for a Kanji I've never come across is the bane of my JP study!

[TAAUBlaster]

What is this radicals site you're using Blaster?

Searching for a Kanji I've never come across is the bane of my JP study!

I use www.jisho.org They have a "radicals" search just to the left of the main search box. It's really handy because all you have to do is even just select one of the radicals, and it auto searches and shows all the kanji that include it. And you can choose multiple radicals, to narrow the results. It's made searching kanji so much easier for me personally.

[kup]

I may be going to Japan very soon so I wouldn't mind some Japanese Role playing. My Japanese has become rusted to crap as most of it was learned when I was a little kid and not in a 'fluent' environment where it was frequently spoken.

Let's start with typical tourist scenarios to see if I can bring it back to existence - Please keep in mind that this is more about the spoken language than written. I also would appreciate brief corrections to bad grammar or sentence structure.

*I walk into a store and notice a Transformers toy on the window that I am interested in. I point to it and ask*

Konishiwa, Kore wa Toransufoma desu ka?