barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (12/28/85)
Re "Juki-o oboete iru" deciphered as "I teach at a private academy": "Teach" is oshiete. Oboeru means to try to learn. But the -o marks juku as the object of the verb, as if it were lessons. What's worse, I think oboeru is intransitive. "Oboete iru" does NOT mean "I am learning." The Japan Times' Nihongo Notes (volume 4) explains that "obote iru" means "to remember" (and I think also to memorize). So the above sentence would mean "I remember the private academy." Sounds anomalous according to the definition recently quoted. * * * * * * * * I think one reason English speakers deciphered the lookalike sentence while the Japanese speaker didn't may relate to our smaller vocabulary to search. I know that the more Japanese I learn, the harder I find it to translate a phrase quoted (frequently imprecisely) by a friend without ideographs. For instance, I remember when looking at "kanajo" (really "kanojo") the possibilities that flitted through my mind included: kana-jo (syllabary-female): an esoteric word for syllabary signs, referring to the fact that during the Heian period women wrote in kana, men in ideographs. a misspelling of kanai-jo: a redundant term for a wife a misspelling of kanai-ju-: one's whole family If I knew more Japanese, I could have thought of more things. When I was helping my mother learn a little Japanese before her trip there, I told her that every time she mispronounced a word, she wouldn't be speaking gibberish; she'd be saying something else. Then I'd drag out the dictionary and tell her what she'd said. Seward tells a hysterical anecdote about a westerner who was a Mr. Sakamoto's business adviser (ko- mon) but who introduced himself to some Japanese businessmen as "Sakamoto-san no komon" (short o), Mr. Sakamoto's anus. A Japanese equivalent of Sesame Street I watched there showed such malapropisms as asking for a bowl of meishi (business cards) instead of meshi (rice) at a snack stand. The worse case I know is that of a friend who tried to refer to a sushi chef idiomatically but adapted the mispronunciation of "itame" instead of the correct pronunciation of "itamae", thereby calling the chef a wooden plank bastard instead of one who stands before a wooden plank. --Lee Gold
edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) (12/30/85)
In article <2547@sdcrdcf.UUCP> barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) writes: >Re "Juki-o oboete iru" deciphered as "I teach at a private academy": > >"Teach" is oshiete. Oboeru means to try to learn. >But the -o marks juku as the object of the verb, as if it were lessons. Was this my sentence ? If so it was oshiete iru, not oboete iru. > * * * * * * * * >I think one reason English speakers deciphered the lookalike sentence while >the Japanese speaker didn't may relate to our smaller vocabulary to search. The english language has more words than Japanese according to a recent issue of U. S. News. >I know that the more Japanese I learn, the harder I find it to translate >a phrase quoted (frequently imprecisely) by a friend without ideographs. > >For instance, I remember when looking at "kanajo" (really "kanojo") the >possibilities that flitted through my mind included: > kana-jo (syllabary-female): an esoteric word for syllabary signs, >referring to the fact that during the Heian period women wrote in kana, >men in ideographs. > a misspelling of kanai-jo: a redundant term for a wife > a misspelling of kanai-ju-: one's whole family > >If I knew more Japanese, I could have thought of more things. A point understood and well taken. It is difficult to read Japanese in romanji, even though it would be much easier to write it that way. But I think english has a few of the same problems. In recent leters from my japanese girlfriend, she writes, " ... lap presents", or it might of been, "... rap presents". Undoubtably she means "wrap". She also makes horrid syntax errors, omits necessary words, but I still recover (most of the times) the meaning. Let's try a sample sentence with a badly misspelled word. I beered my whole life on this one game. Is it understandable ? or have I gone off the deep end ....... mark.
das@ucla-cs.UUCP (12/31/85)
In article <2547@sdcrdcf.UUCP> barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) writes: >Re "Juki-o oboete iru" deciphered as "I teach at a private academy": > >"Teach" is oshiete. Oboeru means to try to learn. [More lines making the point that "oboeru" relates to remembering, not teaching] Now I'm confused -- how did "oboete iru" get into the conversation? Sure, it means "remember", not "teach", but neither Mark Edwards' original message nor my quotation of it contained that verb. For that matter, in the message where you essayed a translation of his sentence, you quoted the verb as "oshiete iru" and responded as if that were that verb. So why the change? Too many holiday parties, maybe? :-) -- David Smallberg, das@locus.ucla.edu, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das