iSoron Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Isn't arigatou originally from portugese obrigado?

I thought that hoax was only known in Portuguese-speaking countries.

I knew about it, but I've never been anywhere near a Portuguese-speaking country.

vosmiura Wrote:I always wonder why Japanese store clerks say ありがとうございました instead of ありがとうございます. Sounds a bit like "Was thankful before, but not anymore" . It makes sense to me to use "was thankful" when describing a past event - but giving thanks face to face seems like it is present tense to me.

Also, the fact that particle に can mean both "to" and "from" depending on the verb... is a pain.

The Japanese past is different from the English past, in that the Japanese one signifies completion more than the event happening in the past.

That's why you'd say 来たぞ! if you see your friend about to arrive at your picnic from a nice long walk from his house.

Here's one that recently irked me a little, but then turned somewhat amusing...

As I discovered on lang-8, there are, apparently, a gazillion ways to say hammer in Japanese.

ハンマー but not ハマー (ハマー is reserved for MC Hammer)
トンカチ (I think this one is an onomatopoeia)

All pronounced 「かなづち」, but I had natives claiming all three types are popular:
金づち
金槌
カナヅチ

Bonus trivia (extra use for カナヅチ):
「泳げない人のことをカナヅチと呼んだりもします。
カナヅチは絶対泳げませんから。」

iSoron Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Isn't arigatou originally from portugese obrigado?

I thought that hoax was only known in Portuguese-speaking countries.

I've seen it cited in articles as an example of early globalization.
It's also something to say to impress others with how you know obscure info.

Don't tell anyone it's not true or they'll argue with you regardless.

I do have to wonder, though, if way back when the Portuguese made contact, a Japanese and a Portuguese had an exchange like this:

ありがとう！
Obrigado!
ありがとう！
Obrigado!

...with both thinking the other kept mispronouncing their own word.

- Kef

Tobberoth Wrote:I'll ask some of my Japanese friends next time I talk to them, but I'm pretty sure わたし is the standard and 俺 and 僕 are the exceptions. That's also what our teachers taught us when the issue came up.

I've lived in Tokyo two years now and cant remember any of my Japanese friends using watashi at all, unless they were in fact speaking teineigo.

I think almost all my male friends use 俺, except some of my foreign friends here who tend to use 僕 when speaking Japanese.

I agree; I didn't think that any males ever used watashi outside of quite formal speech, although it might vary by region. Around here, if you went around calling yourself "watashi," I think it would sound a lot like

Quote:omae, eki doko? fukusatsu na michidakara sa. wakanai pyon.

to the natives.

I'm not going to claim it's a very good source, but searching for 私 on google gives 415 million hits. 俺 gives just over 100 million.

I'd say that difference is pretty massive, even including that 俺 can't be used in formal texts. I don't know your ages etc, but question is if the reason you hear 俺 a lot isn't because your friends are young.

nest0r Wrote:Not arguing either way, but with Google, one tip to make it a bit more viable (not saying it's ever that great a source) is to toss in a common kana word to differentiate the Chinese and Japanese hits. I usually use です or something similar, depending on what the main thing I'm Googling is.

Good point. I tried both 私は/俺は and 私が/俺が. A LOT fewer hits of course, but watashi is still a LOT more common. Watashi seems to get about 3 times as many hits.

As you say, Google probably isn't very helpful in this case. Women generally don't use either 僕 or 俺, so that would account for some difference. And analyzing written stuff to gauge the use of spoken/dialogue form won't really tell us much.

But I have the same sense that some folks underestimate how frequently polite language is used in everyday adult life in Japan.

Tobberoth Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Not arguing either way, but with Google, one tip to make it a bit more viable (not saying it's ever that great a source) is to toss in a common kana word to differentiate the Chinese and Japanese hits. I usually use です or something similar, depending on what the main thing I'm Googling is.

Good point. I tried both 私は/俺は and 私が/俺が. A LOT fewer hits of course, but watashi is still a LOT more common. Watashi seems to get about 3 times as many hits.

With a ratio of 3 to 1 and in the millions, sounds like they're both common use. Just a matter of experiencing enough Japanese (written and spoken) to know intuitively when to use it.

To add a few points of my own:

- Words which only differ by one letter yet are totally different in meaning: okiru - okuru - okeru - okoru - okaru, mitomeru - matomeru - motomeru and many many others...

- The way spoken language works where you have your noun and your verb... and then comes a very long tail of hiragana such as: っていうことなんですけれども. For some reason I find these really irritating, especially since they are often obscure (to me!) and can change the meaning of the foregoing part of the sentence.

- This one is related to the way some people write. In novels, authors often use somewhat outdated characters as a matter of personal style. Yet I'm reading lots of business-related correspondence every day, which is supposed to be very straightforward, with no style considerations and it looks like some people use them only because these characters come up in their text processors. For example, I am yet to see 或は in contemporary printed materials (unless it's a style matter). Yet it's all over people's emails. Once again, they are many examples like this...

In the intro to RTK3, Heisig talks about the increase use of kanji because of their inclusion in computer programs.

I use Japanese words in English because I spend more than half my time speaking Japanese and it facilitiates speed. I don't want to stop every other sentence and remember that it's called "hirakata park" instead of 枚方公園, especially when I'm talking to other foreigners who know exactly what I mean. If I'm talking to my american family on the phone I'll say "hot spring" instead of 温泉　and "faculty party" instead of 宴会.


What really bothers me is when people shoe-horn English words to fit Japanese objects and concepts. I have an American "aquaintance" who is very proper in never using Japanese when she's speaking English, this is especially annoying for food, which often has no English equivalent.

からあげ　become "fried chicken"; おにぎり　becomes "rice balls"; たこやき becomes "octopus balls"; べんとう becomes "lunch box". にくまん becomes "meat bun". ぎょうざ　becomes "dumplings". かつ　becomes "fried cutlet". なっとう　becomes "fermented beans" (eww); うずらたまご　becomes "quail eggs"; Even ラーメン becomes "noodle soup". Do you see how annoying this is?

酒 is not "rice wine", dammit.

esgrove Wrote:からあげ　become "fried chicken"; おにぎり　becomes "rice balls"; たこやき becomes "octopus balls"; べんとう becomes "lunch box". にくまん becomes "meat bun". ぎょうざ　becomes "dumplings". かつ　becomes "fried cutlet". なっとう　becomes "fermented beans" (eww); うずらたまご　becomes "quail eggs"; Even ラーメン becomes "noodle soup". Do you see how annoying this is?

酒 is not "rice wine", dammit.

I disagree with you. Those are all acceptable English-equivalents, with the exception of Sake, which is an English word. And maybe ramen. If you're not speaking J-J with her, then maybe she doesn't know your skill level and is just being polite. But "rice wine" still sounds cool.

My current pet peeve: rendaku

my only issue with learning the language is katakana loan words.

now, i'm not a japanese purist or whatever... but i absolutely HATE when i ask a teacher what a word means and their response is a katakana loan word. this situation pisses me off because i can never tell if the teacher is trying to use english (thinking i don't understand her japanese). it's really, really frustrating. of course, she does this with all the students (including chinese and thai, so it's really not a big deal)... but yeah, it's really, really frustrating.

i actually love loan words. they're great for western students. but when i ask a question and get either a loan word // english back, it feels strange.

stehr Wrote:I disagree with you. Those are all acceptable English-equivalents, with the exception of Sake, which is an English word. And maybe ramen. If you're not speaking J-J with her, then maybe she doesn't know your skill level and is just being polite. But "rice wine" still sounds cool.

In A foreign country those would be fine to use because most people are unaware of the normal (Japanese) words. It's like how they used to call the automobile the "horseless carriage" before it became recognizable enough that everyone used the real word for it.

This girl watched a lot of anime before she came to Japan and picked up the annoying habbit of using the translated words. They're accurate, but out of context. Calling から揚げ "fried chicken" makes it confusing when you're talking about フライドチキン.

Sorry, you're entitled to your opinion, but in a thread about Pet Peeves there's bound to be some arguing.

One more: わさび　is not "Japanese horseradish", calling something from Japan "Japanese" in Japan feels redundant.

esgrove Wrote:わさび　is not "Japanese horseradish", calling something from Japan "Japanese" in Japan feels redundant.

Yeah I agree, that's going too far. Even rednecks know "wasaaabeee," right?

Serge Wrote:To add a few points of my own:

- Words which only differ by one letter yet are totally different in meaning: okiru - okuru - okeru - okoru - okaru, mitomeru - matomeru - motomeru and many many others...

Oh yeah. I still haven't got the m*tomeru set straight (I went through and sorted them out and they've all got tangled up in my head again). And kuroi/kurai/karai/karui have the annoying property of all being basic adjectives which only differ in the vowels.

Personally I have no problem with one letter changed. I think it depends on how much you rely on romaji, that is, how used you are to kana. If you THINK in kana, you shouldn't have that problem because くらい and からい are as different as からい and ずらい, in a sense.

esgrove Wrote:One more: わさび　is not "Japanese horseradish", calling something from Japan "Japanese" in Japan feels redundant.

Wait, so what do they call Japanese Restaurants in Japan? Oddly enough, in English, they say Japanese Style Restaurants. In Japanese, it depends on the restaurant. (I know, it's a joke, but there was a serious answer so I'm going with it.)

For me, Katakana is the thorn in my side. I've always hated it. It's not aesthetically pleasing, the character's all look similar, etc. They might as well just write foreign words in romaji, or even kanji. No matter how much I practice reading it, I still have to sound out the words before I can pronounce them... Hiragana's ugly cousin.

Quote:This girl watched a lot of anime before she came to Japan and picked up the annoying habbit of using the translated words. They're accurate, but out of context.

She did that because she watched anime? Most people I know that watch anime tend to use the Japanese words for things even when it sounds bad in English. It's the people with no exposure to Japanese culture at all that tend to use English equivalents all the time. Strange.

@stehr
Meh, they have kanji, why these Japanese use so much katakana?
So much easier to read!