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It may be just how normalised it is for English speakers to hear people speaking English imperfectly.
There’s no shame or judgement in it. But when you find whimsy, oh boy.
I still say “delicious” in the way my Greek coworker did almost a decade ago, because it sounds better
And my dog trainer called my dog’s arse his anoos one time and now that’s all we call it. Talking about mine? Arse. The dog’s? Anoos.
“Found in translation”
Beautifully said.
I was taking a summer afternoon nap with my girlfriend (now wife) and got up to look out the window for some reason about 8 years ago. She got up in a sleepy haze and said “Are you leave without say goodbye?”
We’ve been saying that to each other since.
In Japan, if you use a word wrong, people will almost certainly not tell you so as not to embarrass you unless your mistake is sufficiently more embarrassing or insulting.
Ya, I thought they told you that your Japanese sucked by saying “your japanese is really good.” And it’s only when they stop commenting on the quality of your Japanese that you know you are near native levels. Even then, if you don’t look ethnically Japanese they still might keep saying it, so there’s really no way of knowing.
My grandmother liked to tell the story of when she visited in Japan in the 60s and greeted a bunch of people by saying “Idaho.”
Can confirm, this is basically how it goes in Texas. Almost a decade ago, my best friend and I were browsing this little hole in the wall shop in central TX run by an elderly Japanese couple. They got to chatting with us and at one point, said we were “forever friends”. I’ve been using that phrase to describe us ever since.
Asahi Imports?
Can’t remember the name of the place or why we were even there, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in south Austin.
In japan don’t you just get jouzu’d for any less than native equivalency and/or for looking too gaijin
Once you reach a level of basic competency most people stop jozu-ing you. Basically you know you’re improving when people stop telling you you’re good haha
Sugoi! Nihongo jouzu!
Depends on where in Japan and the age of the person you’re talking to.
One nice thing about English, it will lexical borrow from you in an instant.
We just love new ways to say old boring stuff.
Ironically, same with Japanese. They have an entire alphabet dedicated to foreign words, Katakana. You want a hamburger and a beer? That’s a “ハンバーガーとビール” (Hanbāgā to Biru). Coffee from Starbucks on your way to work? That’s a “ドライブスルーコーヒー” (Doraibusurūkohi - a drive-thru coffee). Better fried chicken than anyone has a right to can be found at the “コンビニ” (Konbini - aka the convenience store). Learning Japanese it’s rife with these borrowed words. Half the time it’s “you’re fucking kidding.” The other half the time it’s learning some insane formalism that makes saying “thank you” take five minutes.
What’s cool is how English then adds those loanwords or portmanteau back into its lexicon like karaoke or, as I’m seeing more recently, egg sando. I really love how languages do that.
One of my favorite Dogen videos, about how many loanwords can sound normal in a conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4AiEqKGto
He had another one I think recently about a dentist who kept dropping random English words in sentences while talking with Dogen but he had katakana pronunciation so it was basically impossible to understand (one example was he threw in the word “jaw” but said “jō” instead).
I have been saying it for years, English is a very informal and open language, have fun with it. Sky water is not technically a wrong way to refer to rain, liquid laundry soup is absolutely a sauce for your laundry, dish bricks, day star, the list goes on
I still like the theory that the industrial revolution kicked off in England due to the English language.
English has an amalgam of several different root languages. This gives it an unusual amount of flexibility and granularity. This helps hugely with crystallising newer ideas into words. This, in turn gave English a slight advantage over France, Germany etc.
You think German and French don’t borrow words?
Oh they do, but the weird multi root nature of English, and it’s tendency to aggressively ransack other languages for vocabulary tends to give it a little more wiggle room for describing ideas. The cost being it’s evil to learn, compared to a lot of languages. Just try reading the poem “The chaos” aloud.
I think this is one of the reasons why English (or it’s descendants) will forever be the international language of trade. If it’s not your first language, it’s damn difficult to make yourself sound like a native speaker, but it’s damn easy to make yourself understood.
but it’s damn easy to make yourself understood.
Words ordering with grammar can be unimportant to being known.
On the flip side, a lot of other languages have retained structures which require a detailed knowing of grammar in part because they haven’t needed to be learned by amateurs.
Mate we’re all amateurs here. Unless you are being paid to learn languages
Whereas English has adopted so many idioms from other languages with different grammar that we’re entirely comfortable with the exotic phrasing, or if it’s ambiguous we make puns and/or poetry from it.
True, though I would personally count that as a bad thing. Purity of language, to me is irrelevant. That opinion may be coloured by the fact that I’m a native English speaker, and there hasn’t been anything resembling purity in this language for thousands of years. To me, the point of language is open communication. Any impediment to that is a negative.
I lik your way of doyng byzness
They’re talking about English, not Welsh
I just fixed your dumb spelling >:(
Here he is, fuckin get em
I remember an interview with Lisa Kudrow in which she described her French boyfriend’s failure to remember the English word for toes, and said they were foot fingers.
English: if the people you’re talking to understand what you’re saying, you’re ok. Even if the people you’re talking to don’t understand what you’re saying, you’re still ok. Just be fancy with your words, and everyone will like it.
In french, that’s really the name that is given to them, colloquially : doigts de pied (foot fingers)
The real term is orteils (toes)
They’re really good at it, too. Sometimes it’s even charming. For example, potatoes are “earth apples.”
I wonder if the meaning of pomme was broader in Old French, like how meat (from mete) used to mean food in Old English.
Yes it was the case, broadly pomme meant fruit.
Originally tomatoes were called pommes d’amour. There is pommes de terre (potatoes) pommes de pin (pinecones). If we would translate literally pomme de pin it would give us pineapple.
There were also other fruits beginning with pomme originally but I can’t seem to recall them.
Pomme comes from latin pomum which could be used for any fruit, apple specifically was malum.
I knew someone who used the term “bird leaves” which I find hilarious.
kennings are great
Laundry soup, yumm
Not sure what a dish brick is, but yeah, the others make sense 👍
Edit: just figured it out: it’s a Lego piece shaped like a dish
I was assuming one of these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Detergent_tablet.jpg
Could also be a brick that’s designated for smashing dishes.
I’d say it’s a plate
My kid calls them “nose holes”.
I love the silly things we say!
They mean a slightly different way
but still connect to things I know
and make the silly language grow.
One phrase I have eaten from Joe Abercrombie for anything eloquenty put is simply “those were good words”. Even simple words hit hard when meant sincerely.
Would recommend the book series (First Law trilogy)!
You’ve got to be realistic.
Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a linguist.
I love how wholesome this is.
Just don’t dig into the history of the account.
And thus how many English words were created.
I’ve been talking like that for years. So instead of saying, “Dallas’ blue bonnets”, you could say, “The blue bonnets of Dallas”.
