Randomness

[Sombre]

Thanks for helping, everyone. So I guess I'll stick with it. Like cabl3 said, you can't learn too many languages. Besides, Japanese is cited frequently in linguistic analysis, so working knowledge of the language would at least help my understanding of linguistic studies.

[DHC]

dollar dropping like a lead weight :_(

[Faust]

/\ just looked. fuck. we, the lovers of all things foreign have been fucked for the last 5 years, and it's not getting any better.

[lowrey]

hmm need to cop some more dollars tomorrow

[crouka]

I started Japanese last week. I wanted to learn a new language and it seemed interesting. But there are so many linguistic loans from English I feel like I'm butchering my own language. Computer = "konpyuutaa", Australia = "Oosutoraria". As if that's not bad enough, today the professor told us to pronounce the name Smith as "Smis" because Japanese doesn't have the -th- sound. Why should I deliberately mispronounce a common name in English just because one of the sounds doesn't exist in Japanese?

Get over the linguistic loans and apparent juvenility of Japanese, or drop it and take something else?

you don't have to mispronounce one's name all the way. japanese would appreciate your pronouncing it rightly.
and you should learn it until you come to see things from another perspective.
until you realize, even within the limited space of this forum, there are not a few english examples you'd refer to as "loans" or "apparent juvenility".
even the professionals like A seem to ram a term "totu" which is sort of nihoungo, like engrish to english.
the right nihongo is noto.
and "be" of junya watanabe,
most of the english speakers don't pronounce it correctly although english has the sound for the right be.
you'd find there are user names that are japanese words even elementary schoolchildren in japan would be too embarrassed to use.
but it's natural that, once a word enters into a foreign envilonment, it can be pronounced differently and be used in another way, charged with some new meaning.

it's not like one language is superior to another.
and if you consider human intelligence to be equal wherever they live, you'd never say "juvenility" about one language and you could quite easily imagine things like above are happening mutually even if you are ignorant.

[crouka]

from phonology and pragmatics viewpoints, the system of japanese language is opposite to that of english.
it's like there are figure and ground, and the figure for english is the ground for japanese. it's a matter of difference in focused point. to be able to switch them might enrich your world anyway.

[Fade to Black]

ballin + mayne

= balmain

woooooooo-EEEEEEEEEE

[lotek01]

it's the same as pronouncing words like "samurai" as "s-eh-mer-rai" vs the correct "sah-mu-rai" or any other Japanese name I think. that is, pronouncing the romanji phonetics of a Japanese word in an accented way that is more akin to your native tongue. it's the same for any other language really; in the context of fashion, the pronunciation of a foreign designer's name (eg pronouncing "Loewe" as "Low-wee").

and anyway, saying the phonetically correct version of an English word when speaking Japanese sounds completely out of place and retarded imo. just think of it as a completely different word rather than a borrowed one, or just a slang version of it.

[laika]

and anyway, saying the phonetically correct version of an English word when speaking Japanese sounds completely out of place and retarded imo. just think of it as a completely different word rather than a borrowed one, or just a slang version of it.

Agree, and I also agree with crouka's posts, above.

In my own language, "butchering" foreign words is grammatically necessary for a sentence to make sense. Even proper names are modified--i.e., "Tomas Cruisas" for Tom Cruise... It sounds comical to the foreign ear, but when you are dealing with multiple declensions, there's no other way. I don't know if this is true for japanese--to my knowledge, the grammar is not so complicated--but it's not so unusual--and certainly not "juvenile"--for words to be modified in this way.

[galia]

Every language borrows from other languages, so unless you say "chirurgien" instead of surgeon or other such examples (and believe me english is quite full of them) you don't really have a leg to stand on in your position

[Spencer]

I wanna buy a toy gun. It's 900 bucks. I need help.

[Sombre]

Ok ok let me clarify. I never said Japanese was juvenile; I said it seemed that way to me. This is not exclusive to Japanese; I can pick out instances of what I call juvenile in English and other languages as well. Basically, use of a word from a foreign tongue when a language has sufficiently extensive lexicon and phonology to form its own word is, to me, distasteful. I consider it distasteful because the "borrowers" of the word almost always mispronounce it, mutilating it and doing it and the foreign tongue no justice. Perhaps my opinion will change as I progress in my studies, but for now, that is my opinion.

I still maintain that it is ridiculous to mispronounce a name in one's native language just to appease a foreign ear (I'm referring to the Smith --> Smis example). Names, IMO, should never be altered. I hated it every time one of my Spanish professors pronounced my name as a Spaniard would, especially since he knew better.

In the case of languages borrowing words from others and butchering the pronunciation, I agree it happens in every language. My point was not that it happens in Japanese more frequently than in other languages (although I did imply that - my apologies), but rather that it seems silly to mispronounce words derived from a language one knows how to pronounce. Call me a snob, but if I know the correct pronunciation of a linguistic loan, I pronounce it the way speakers of the original language would (btw who says s-eh-mer-rai anyway? I assumed everyone pronounced it sa-mu-ra-i).

[almroth]

I wanna buy a toy gun. It's 900 bucks. I need help.

I know how it is. I want to buy so much random things. lately I've been craving a gigantic crystal lamp, so that people would hit their heads in my room (to get an idea of how big I'd want it.) I'd want it to be kind of literally centered, black or faded. but uh, too expensive..

otherwise, one of those sick chinese lamps they have in restaurants which I can't find.

[crouka]

Ok ok let me clarify. I never said Japanese was juvenile; I said it seemed that way to me. This is not exclusive to Japanese; I can pick out instances of what I call juvenile in English and other languages as well. Basically, use of a word from a foreign tongue when a language has sufficiently extensive lexicon and phonology to form its own word is, to me, distasteful. I consider it distasteful because the "borrowers" of the word almost always mispronounce it, mutilating it and doing it and the foreign tongue no justice. Perhaps my opinion will change as I progress in my studies, but for now, that is my opinion.

I still maintain that it is ridiculous to mispronounce a name in one's native language just to appease a foreign ear (I'm referring to the Smith --> Smis example). Names, IMO, should never be altered. I hated it every time one of my Spanish professors pronounced my name as a Spaniard would, especially since he knew better.

In the case of languages borrowing words from others and butchering the pronunciation, I agree it happens in every language. My point was not that it happens in Japanese more frequently than in other languages (although I did imply that - my apologies), but rather that it seems silly to mispronounce words derived from a language one knows how to pronounce. Call me a snob, but if I know the correct pronunciation of a linguistic loan, I pronounce it the way speakers of the original language would (btw who says s-eh-mer-rai anyway? I assumed everyone pronounced it sa-mu-ra-i).

so, as I said, you don't have to mispronounce smith all the way in actual japanese environments unless you can do it naturally.

but, the point is to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your own language.
it's not play foreigners with your professor and friends who speak to you in some common language.
although I understand your love of your own pronunciation, you sometimes have to pronounce some words the way the foreigner does in order to make yourself understood.
aside from a possibility "the original language" is not really original.
of course you can do without any words you are familiar with. I guess your professor didn't want it to sound too intimidating at the start?

to me there is not any language that seems juvenile.
a speaker who commands it could be, but it's not language's fault.

[Sombre]

so, as I said, you don't have to mispronounce smith all the way in actual japanese environments unless you can do it naturally.

but, the point is to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your own language.
it's not play foreigners with your professor and friends who speak to you in some common language.
although I understand your love of your own pronunciation, you sometimes have to pronounce some words the way the foreigner does in order to make yourself understood.
aside from a possibility "the original language" is not really original.
of course you can do without any words you are familiar with. I guess your professor didn't want it to sound too intimidating at the start?

to me there is not any language that seems juvenile.
a speaker who commands it could be, but it's not language's fault.

I love that you've made this point. Language is a creation of a population of speakers, so obviously cannot literally be held responsible for its characteristics. In such cases the speakers would be at fault, so my use of "language" is really a metonymy used to mean "the average speaker of that language". For example, American English is an accepted variety of English. The majority of Americans, or the average American, uses the phrase "different than" in favour of the grammatically correct "different from". It is not that the average American cannot distinguish the difference; he/she is just too lazy to speak grammatically correct English. I consider this juvenile (I won't say that my grammar is perfect, but I make a concerted effort to use proper English). Based on this any many other characteristics I have noticed of American English (of the average American's English) I would say that many Americans treat the language in a juvenile manner, ie. they speak like children. Given this, and the point I made that a language is controlled by its speakers (eg. "pwn" is accepted as a word now), I think the replacement of "speakers of X language" with " X language" in my phrasing is justified. I admit now that I do not have sufficient experience and/or evidence to make that claim of Japanese, so I will retract that claim. However, I don't see my substitution as a big problem.