Why do people think this is staged? Is this part of the whole "native speakers can all read 3000+ kanji" belief?

oh reminds me of those obaka geinin. obaka kyara geinin like suzannnu

recent show i watched on youtube that had obaka geinin on it was this utaban episode:

It's pretty funny & there's a part where the girl meant to write unten and well... i couldn't really infer it at all lolz.

The girls doing the reading are 18 and 22, neither have gone to college. I don't know why you think that high school graduates who have probably focused more on being タレント than doing schoolwork would be able to read all of those words. Of course this is produced for entertainment, but that certainly doesn't mean the girls can read all of it and are completely faking.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Why do people think this is staged? Is this part of the whole "native speakers can all read 3000+ kanji" belief?

A lot of people, including me. Just use that number as a reference for "high level" reading/understanding. You only need 2042+ extra few 100's to get a good level in japanese. But if you want to compare yourself to university students in japan. Then they would know 3000+ and context as well. So it's something to aim for. I also read that somewhere that, some Chinese university students know 12,000 hanzi characters....(Special case though)

IceCream Wrote:oh, i don't think it's totally false... the producers probably do put in some words that they definately wouldn't get, and of course, there will be variations between people. But, to me, a good proportion of it seems pretty exaggerated and put on. Don't forget that we're looking at things from a totally different perspective than a native speaker. For example, mixing up 猛烈 and 熾烈 is understandable if you are guessing the reading. Saying しゃく烈, isn't, since it isn't a word.

しゃくねつ(灼熱) is, though.　　しょくれつ is a much more likely mistake.

しれつ isn't a common word either, though -- there are plenty of uncommon and rare words that they may not know in speech either; if you don't know しれつ, then guessing しょくれつ or しゃくれつ, you may just think those words exist and you don't know it.

我が物顔 is not a very common word either. I think what she did is say 我が, then noticed the next thing was a compound word so she tried to read it with the on-yomi ぶつ, but then the on-yomi of 顔 is fairly uncommon, so she put がお in there. Nothing about that seems fake to me.

one thing i was thinking while i was watching was that if they're fluent in Japanese the girl wouldn't be saying butsugao or whatever she was saying cause she would know in her head that's not a word, etc.

like when i type shokuretsu nothing comes up so i'm gonna guess it's not a word.
Do they not know it's a word cause like they're that dumb? or do they think it's a word but they haven't heard of it yet ? etcetc

that's the part i don't get. they should be fluent since they are 18-22 and lived in japan all their lives etc so it's like...

oh and one of the NEGATIVE comments:
「熾烈」「吹雪」「突貫」「招致」「開始」「雪辱」「傍若無人」が分からない社会人ｗｗｗｗｗ
学が問われない職業でよかったね・・・＾＾
out of these words the ones that i don't know are....招致 突貫
the rest i've seen/can read and i've been doing my own version of AJATT for like 2~
it's pretty pathetic..

Is it really so shocking... a foreigner knowing more about a language than a native? Really? How many times have you read about this sort of thing?

They've had one job since they were teenagers - LOOK PRETTY.

A 23 year-old who has done no studying since high school, and probably had to do very little during high school (whilst probably having a large vocabulary) has no need to know the readings of the non jouyou kanji's read in the segment.

It's not pathetic. It's normal.

Indeed, just open up to pretty much any random page of ダーリンは外国人
Tony knows tons more than Saori, simply because Saori (in this case, symbolizing "japanese people") don't tend to care so much.

It's like if a Japanese guy came up and was like "Hey, did you know that the character 'ſ' used to be used instead of "s" when it didn't terminate a word?!"
Not a great example, I realize, but like ropsta said, it's not that weird. Plus, I'm not even 100% if I'm correct about ſ

Asriel Wrote:Plus, I'm not even 100% if I'm correct about ſ

It's been a long while since I took "Chaucer in Middle English" but I am fairly positive your correct.

Edit: just googled it, you were right... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s

And you made your point. I had to read text printed like this for an entire semester and was only 99.9% sure until i went to wikipedia.

Lots of foreigners use news articles to learn a language, I know I do, and by the very fact that we're all studying a language puts us in a completely different category as a model/idol. So it's only natural that the most "common" words can be very different.

It goes both ways too. There's lots of people in the US who haven't read a book since high school, and never read the news, but most people learning English read the news in English all the time.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:one thing i was thinking while i was watching was that if they're fluent in Japanese the girl wouldn't be saying butsugao or whatever she was saying cause she would know in her head that's not a word, etc.

Being fluent doesn't mean knowing about the existence of every word in the language. And some people will guess at and remember incorrect readings for kanji anyway. Just look at Japan's last prime minister.

Quote:that's the part i don't get. they should be fluent since they are 18-22 and lived in japan all their lives etc so it's like...

Ditto above.

It's a well-known fact that 43% of high schoolers in the United States lack the vocabulary to understand refined literature in their native language.

Thora Wrote:@heritical rants - Its more likely that you can figure out what was meant than people will stop making typos and spelling mistakes.

True. I just don't see why I would be obligated to muck through their writing. No books are written in such a way, and most people who DO write like that post on forums that I have no interest in.

I don't even care about spelling or typos so much, except in extreme cases. It's when they use the wrong word entirely, or when it's obvious that they don't give a damn about how they use the language, that gets me.

Grammar and usage can also be an issue, but only if they vary significantly from any dialect of English that I'm familiar with. I have a few pet peeves, like starting sentences with "and" or "but," but I'm OK with writing like you talk. My own native dialect of English is faaar from Standard, so I certainly can't judge (see, I'm even using "creative spelling").

I would probably get better at reading that rubbish if I read it more often, but why bother?

傍若無人 is on Kanji Kentei 4, so it is expected to be known by middle schoolers. I saw it in Zelda too.
I also saw 我が物顔 in よつばと！ said by Miura I think (elementary age character).

The majority of the compounds were pretty simple so there is no "excuse" for not knowing the reading AND meaning if you are a native speaker of high-school or older age (other than doing it intentionally to be cute). Even if they didn't know the meaning it should have been extremely simple to guess the readings for most of them. 熾烈 was the only truly hard one I think.

hereticalrants Wrote:I have a few pet peeves, like starting sentences with "and" or "but," but I'm OK with writing like you talk.

This may be a pet peeve of yours, but starting a sentence with "and" or "but" is certainly not incorrect grammar. Used too frequently in writing takes away its impact and makes reading disruptive. But, there are certainly plenty of situations where it is perfectly appropriate to begin a sentence with a conjunction like "and" or "but", or even "because." For instance, the previous two sentences had an idea that needed to be connected but the sentences were already both long compound sentences which would have been unweildy and awkward if linked together as one compound. And, further, occasional non-standard sentence patterns make for much more interesting, varied reading. Because we--unfortunately--teach this to children as a rule in grade school, many adults believe its actually incorrect grammar when in fact I could point to multiple instances in the Great Literature of the English speaking world where these sort of sentence constructions are used. It just takes a great deal of intuition about the language to do it correctly, and young children do not yet have that facility, so we teach them that it is wrong usage in order to keep them from creating lots of sentence fragments in their writing.

Fallacy: appeal to authority.

Being a writer of great fiction doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at English grammar. English "rules" were also in a state of flux when most of the classic great English literature was being written. Fictional literature also should not be compared to general writing and non-fiction, since affected speech is often used to give character in fiction.

Anyways, they are considered bad style, not bad grammar.

But -> However
And -> Furthermore ("And furthermore" is redundant)
Because -> Rearrange the sentence to put because in the middle. Fronting it gives it emphasis that doesn't make sense in this context (even when fronted it should be preceded by "It is").

They are all grammatically acceptable (when they don't cause fragments or other issues), but they belong in spoken language, not written.

I even enjoy it when it actually adds something to the writing, stylistically. However, this is usually not the case.

Notice that most of the examples given were at least done correctly. They at least followed the conjunction with a comma (when appropriate) , and were used in a non-fragmented context. This dilutes my "URK" effect greatly.

The example involving "because" is a different beast entirely. I don´t know why it was put in bold.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Because -> rearrange the sentence to put because in the middle, fronting it gives it emphasis that doesn't make sense in this context (even when fronted it should be preceded by "It is")

My high school grammar teacher would disagree. OOOOOOooooOOOoo....Fallacy:appeal to authority. I gone went and done it agín!

Try to END a sentence with a conjuction, but.

hereticalrants Wrote:Try to END a sentence with a conjuction, but.

Sorry, I'm kind of busy today.
I would love to help you out, but...

This thread is (most likely unintentionally) hilarious.

nest0r Wrote:This thread is (most likely unintentionally) hilarious.

sorry 'bout dat, min'str!
ts me day ouf.

I don't claim to know the intricacies of English grammar at all, but I agree with what most that starting sentences with and, but, because is bad style, not bad grammar. I personally almost never start a sentence with those words just because it sounds really clunky to me.

As for using because at the start of a sentence, even though it is correct as long as the sentence isn't a fragment, almost every teacher I've ever had has said just don't do it period. And for the record, I sympathize with hereticalrants on that point because in my experience, 90% of the time someone starts a sentence with because it's a fragment anyway.

The rules taught in school are meant to be broken by those who can do it well. [edit: including fragment sentences] Thank goodness. And it's fine to use those words in writing. (Can you imagine if every novel used only furthermores and howevers?) ew psst J7 - your dialect is showing. :-)

Interesting about 熾烈. This is a word I would have guessed most Japanese would know. It appears regularly in many news sections: politics, business, sports, arts, world affairs, intl economics. It's like one of those default words that pairs with competitions and battles of many kinds. I'd say it's like the written equivalent of spoken 激しい,　in that sense. I have trouble imagining it not coming up during reading in highschool and after or while hearing any news.

Given: "________competition", many people would come up with "intense", "fierce, "cutthroat". It's like one of those pairings. In fact, because it's a common combination, I think editors will use it despite the non-standard kanji and sometimes add the reading (rather than finding a different word) In the youtube skit, I think she has ______ ~争い, so it surprised me that none of them even guessed しれつ.

But I guess it's possible to have never been exposed to it, as Grinkers suggests. I tend to read more business and policy stuff, so perhaps that's colouring my perception.

I also was under the impression that 我が物顔　is something kids know. Isn't 我が物　found in some stories and songs because it has a great old fairy tale sound?

I'm not saying everyone should be able to read everything. I just think that skit probably isn't a reliable demonstration. (I can't believe I'm writing this) We obviously can't determine exactly which words ought to be known and which are actually known by a person... in any language. But I think it's safe to say that I give Japanese high school grads credit for knowing more than ydtt gives them credit for. Kid brains are seriously saturated these days... :-)

Whatever! I do what I want.

ropsta Wrote:Whatever! I do what I want.

And you can, 'cuz you're cute.

Thora Wrote:

ropsta Wrote:Whatever! I do what I want.

And you can, 'cuz you're cute.

This pretty much sums up what it comes down to.

Whether or not the average Japanese person knows 熾烈 or not is up to countless debate, but when it comes to this video in particular, I think Jarvik7 said it best on page 1:

Jarvik7 Wrote:It's nice to know that I'm better at kanji than Morning Musume.

This is Hello Project something or other we're dealing with. There is SOME form of "exaggeration" or something, to make them look "silly" or "cute." It's the entertainment industry.

Whether they know the word or not...for the sake of the video, someone (producer choosing words, girls playing dumb, who knows?) enhanced the humor level for entertainment.