nest0r Wrote:I did a forum search and don't see anyone else using it.

Of course; there's no one else here; just you and your many aliases.

iSoron Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I did a forum search and don't see anyone else using it.

Of course; there's no one else here; just you and your many aliases.

Only nest0r uses methinks! With the occasional slip in other areas of the web.

nest0r is folksy like that.

masaman Wrote:OK. Forget about lurking on internet forums. All the bad grammar will rub off on you. I'll read more books But Shakespeare... I already gave up on Ulysses...

hehe

Someone actually wrote a whole article on 'methinks'! http://books.google.com/books?id=6FIsN-A...&q&f=false

If you can read Joyce's Ulysses and develop a deep understanding of it, you'll have mastered English, since nothing written before or after it comes close to its English-language nextlevel-ness. You may cheat and use the book Ulysses Annotated alongside it.

nest0r Wrote:If you can read Joyce's Ulysses and develop a deep understanding of it, you'll have mastered English, since nothing written before or after it comes close to its English-language nextlevel-ness. You may cheat and use the book Ulysses Annotated alongside it.

I gave up on Ulysses when I came across this part.
"Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here's a spot"

What is he talking about???? And according to the cheat book, it should read,

"Stephen's thought run as follows: He is speaking to me. The Englishman. Englishmen tub and scrub because of their bad conscience in regard to the countries they oppress, and he remembers Lady Macbeth and her bad conscience- yet here's a spot of blood which she cannot wash off"

Give me a break. Who said Japanese are indirect??? And this miraculously bring us back to the topic.

@vileru
I think they are good observations, but you can know all these without knowing a single Japanese word, or be completely fluent in Japanese without knowing them like some Japanese Americans right? That said, I basically agree with your observations except the Indirectness. That one really depends on where you go. If you are talking about people in Tokyo, then yes, that seems to be a right observation. But Osaka people are often as direct as Americans, more so than many British people, methinks, oops, imo

masaman Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:If you can read Joyce's Ulysses and develop a deep understanding of it, you'll have mastered English, since nothing written before or after it comes close to its English-language nextlevel-ness. You may cheat and use the book Ulysses Annotated alongside it.

I gave up on Ulysses when I came across this part.
"Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here's a spot"

What is he talking about???? And according to the cheat book, it should read,

"Stephen's thought run as follows: He is speaking to me. The Englishman. Englishmen tub and scrub because of their bad conscience in regard to the countries they oppress, and he remembers Lady Macbeth and her bad conscience- yet here's a spot of blood which she cannot wash off"

Give me a break. Who said Japanese are indirect??? And this miraculously bring us back to the topic.

@vileru
I think they are good observations, but you can know all these without knowing a single Japanese word, or be completely fluent in Japanese without knowing them like some Japanese Americans right? That said, I basically agree with your observations except the Indirectness. That one really depends on where you go. If you are talking about people in Tokyo, then yes, that seems to be a right observation. But Osaka people are often as direct as Americans, more so than many British people, methinks, oops, imo

Ha. I am actually seeking an equivalent work to Ulysses in Japanese literature, though so far looking at the most popular and canonized Japanese works I haven't found anything. Once I find, read, reread, and deeply understand such a work, I will move on to another orthography.

nest0r Wrote:Ha. I am actually seeking an equivalent work to Ulysses in Japanese literature, though so far looking at the most popular and canonized Japanese works I haven't found anything. Once I find, read, reread, and deeply understand such a work, I will move on to another orthography.

I like more secular things and although I read many classics when I was young, I've never ventured far into hardcore literature adventures. That said, I've seen that 好色一代男 by 井原西鶴 was compared, somewhat, with Shakespeare.

I don't think you'll find anything like Ulysses in Japanese. Japanese liked more abstract imagery than things like green snot (which I believe is an important part in Ulysses. I can see it can be snobby without these in-your-face descriptions but I've read only several pages ). I haven't even read 雪国, but even I find 国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。夜の底が白くなった is a beautiful sentence. Come on. Who can come up with 夜の底？ And of course, you have 源氏物語 and 枕草子. 俳句 is an important Japanese literature too. Everybody knows 古池や蛙飛びこむ水の音. Again, I'm a secular person and I don't read these things. I just have some brief ideas on them.

IceCream Wrote:personally, i think aquateenhungerforce is a better test of english than Ulysses

I found this on youtube and what the???

The Japanese equivalent to this I can think of is すごいよ!!マサルさん. That thing is in "what the???" category too. 稲中卓球部 is nonsense too but at least makes more sense than this one. A tiny little bit like South Park without the satire.

シシマイ君？ never heard of it...

...wow, it's a bit dark lol. And many expressions are extremely... mmm what's the word? idiomatic? not. Slangy? no. Subtle? close. Maybe this. Highly situation dependent. You do need to know many aspects of Japanese culture for sure.

The left guy is a pretty old art teacher. The word "ビニ本" was used way back my time, in the 70's for xxx magazines. They were wrapped in vinyl bags so they were called ビニ(vinyl) ボン(本) "エロ(erotic) ぼん (本)" is a newer term, but he pronounced it wrong. It's supposed to be エロ"ほん", at least where I grew up. Might be an attempt to show the old guy isn't familiar with the term but I'm not sure on this one. The dude on the right don't even know what ビニ本 is. He is very young. And of course he's wearing a new-school school uniform and talks like a today's brad. マッチョ(macho) has a tiny little bit of allusion to male homo sexuality in Japanese. Most Japanese people would probably get the hint from ボーボと露出 and interpret she's showing her pubes. Yeah, it'd be very hard to get all these. I don't feel too bad about Ulysses now

You know too much of these cra.. things. Are you sure your study of primates doesn't include homo sapiens?
http://video.adultswim.com/robot-chicken/girl-toys.html

This video reminded me though, that my sister got a ragddy ann about 30 years ago for her birthday present from my grand mother who is turning 100 years old this year and my sister cried so hard because she found it so freaky, and when I think about it, a Japanese grand mom who was born 35 years before WW2 giving a ragddy ann to her grand daughter wasn't at all a commonplace. Maybe there is a reason why I ended up in the states. mmm.

nest0r Wrote:http://books.google.com/books?id=fdYKAAA...&q&f=false

This seemed like a pretty definitive answer to Ryuuji's original question. I don't know why it was necessary for the thread to continue after it was posted.

Sorry, i'm like germs that only grow on off topic stuff

But you are seeing how a Japanese mind works in front of your eyes right now. How do you think we think? I mean honestly. Do I sound like I have a mind plus a heart and your mind is just a mind? I don't know. Seriously. What do you think?

Reversely, by the way, I wonder how you native English speakers think in English. The thing is, I think in Japanese even when I speak English.

mm non-natives count as well? D: Dutch is my native language. But when I type or talk English I just think in English. How did I came to this point? I am not really sure... I grew up with english cartoons with Dutch subtitles and english video games that might have helped allot.

IceCream's post on the first page might help allot as well if you replace Japanese with English.
(BROKEN LINK) http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pi...07#p122007

I think in Japanese as well as how far that is possible with my limited knowledge.. until I get stuck and try to search the word Dutch/English>Japanese

文化の日を楽しんでね！

Oh, you think in English which is not your native language. That's impressive.

loonytik Wrote:IceCream's post on the first page might help allot as well if you replace Japanese with English.
(BROKEN LINK) http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pi...07#p122007

Yeah thanks, actually I'd already read the post and thought it was epic, so epic that I read it over and over again and saved it as a text file. Now I'm analyzing what I usually think in Japanese and trying to replace it with English. Then I realized I like to say なるほど to myself a lot, so first of all, I started using the English equivalent instead. Ha ha

loonytik Wrote:I think in Japanese as well as how far that is possible with my limited knowledge.. until I get stuck and try to search the word Dutch/English>Japanese

My reading, writing and listening are not so bad I think, yet my speaking sucks. I'm happy to hear a non-native speaker like you thinks in English. And it's really cool for you to try and think in Japanese. Good luck!

bodhisamaya Wrote:文化の日を楽しんでね！

Yeah, today was 文化の日 in Japan, you know. それでね、文化の日に因んでというか、図書館である企画がありました。本の福袋。借りるまで何が入ってるか分からないという本の福袋。一人一袋までらしくて、なんか興味そそられたんで、借りてきました。自分からはまず借りそうにない本が３冊入ってました。まぁ、なんとなく文化的でしょ？　＾＾

Don't you guys know about ギャグ漫画日和？

Eikyu Wrote:Don't you guys know about ギャグ漫画日和？

I knew the show just by its name, but hadn't watched it before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_Manga_Biyori
Well, I kinda liked it. However, I do not recommend it for the purpose of learning Japanese. They talk fast as hell. It required some concentration to follow even for me (Japanese). Anyway, if you love the show, then I have no words to say. Just go for it. Here's a transcript of the episode you linked to. http://www1.atwiki.com/animetranscripts/pages/2578.html

Yesterday I've been watching this whole series of videos about various subjects in Japan.

One of them was the issue of being polite & modest (it appears almost everywhere but the Black belt video especially). From what I understand the general message is that even if you are awesome at something you shouldn't brag or even just state the truth about your abilities just for the sake of being 'Japanese like' (since this is exactly what Japanese seem to be doing in these kind of situations).

My question is: what about job interviews? How can you simultaneously 'sell' your skills and be modest about them? From my point of view this is not only a conflict of interest but sometimes also a matter of being impolite to your interviewer.
For example, if you are really good at something related to the job (skill, language etc.) you are usually interviewed by a person thats knowledgeable enough in that subject. But if your interviewer is visibly inferior to you (not always the case but it happens) and yet you stated (according to the canon) that you are not good, then it indirectly insults the person interviewing you.

How such situation should be handled Japanese style?

thurd Wrote:Yesterday I've been watching this whole series of videos about various subjects in Japan.

One of them was the issue of being polite & modest (it appears almost everywhere but the Black belt video especially). From what I understand the general message is that even if you are awesome at something you shouldn't brag or even just state the truth about your abilities just for the sake of being 'Japanese like' (since this is exactly what Japanese seem to be doing in these kind of situations).

My question is: what about job interviews? How can you simultaneously 'sell' your skills and be modest about them? From my point of view this is not only a conflict of interest but sometimes also a matter of being impolite to your interviewer.
For example, if you are really good at something related to the job (skill, language etc.) you are usually interviewed by a person thats knowledgeable enough in that subject. But if your interviewer is visibly inferior to you (not always the case but it happens) and yet you stated (according to the canon) that you are not good, then it indirectly insults the person interviewing you.

How such situation should be handled Japanese style?

If I was selling my English skills, I could say something like;
ネイティブの方に比べると劣る部分もありますが、仕事上は全く問題ないと思います。
(There are some areas in which I'm not as good as a native speaker, but I don't think there would be any problem in work-related situations.)

I'm admitting my short comings, but I'm implicitly saying that my English skills are as good as some native speakers in some areas, which may be pushing it a bit, but hey, I'm pitching.

I don't think Japanese people say "I'm not good" often when they are actually very good at something. They are more likely to say things like まだまだです = "There is room for improvement" or "I'm not up to the level I want to be at yet". The key here is you show you are not completely content with yourself or your current skill level. You don't necessarily need to say "I'm bad".

masaman Wrote:If I was selling my English skills, I could say something like;
ネイティブの方に比べると劣る部分もありますが、仕事上は全く問題ないと思います。
(There are some areas in which I'm not as good as a native speaker, but I don't think there would be any problem in work-related situations.)

I'm admitting my short comings, but I'm implicitly saying that my English skills are as good as some native speakers in some areas, which may be pushing it a bit, but hey, I'm pitching.

I see what you did there That is a very good solution, diplomatic but focuses only on positive qualities.

masaman Wrote:I don't think Japanese people say "I'm not good" often when they are actually very good at something. They are more likely to say things like まだまだです = "There is room for improvement" or "I'm not up to the level I want to be at yet". The key here is you show you are not completely content with yourself or your current skill level. You don't necessarily need to say "I'm bad".

Yeah, its usually a more blurred message but I thought the meaning was more definite. Sort of like some uses of ちょっと, its a soft message but the meaning is a definite "no".

I do about 1/4 of my thinking every day in Japanese. If I was more comfortable speaking Japanese I'd probably do more of it in Japanese.

I asked one of my Japanese friends who's really good at English whether he thinks in English at all and he said he just thinks in Japanese. I found that a little surprising cos I thought people learning another language who are pretty good at it would try to think in it as much as possible?

mezbup Wrote:I asked one of my Japanese friends who's really good at English whether he thinks in English at all and he said he just thinks in Japanese. I found that a little surprising cos I thought people learning another language who are pretty good at it would try to think in it as much as possible?

That's overthinking it, I believe. You don't think in words all the time, or as much as you think you do. It's more about what words in what language does that somewhat-less-than-verbal thought bring to mind quickly, then mentally translate to the target language if needed.

My first language is Russian, and I have been thinking mostly in English for about five-six years now. I never really planned to switch my thought process to English, it just started to feel right at one point, I don't remember when exactly. Although when I studied in England and the US I actually forced myself to think in Russian as much as possible, because I had met many Russians who had spent a lot of time abroad and had become very inarticulate in their native language. Now that I am back in Russia I think in English about 80% of the time, only switching when I need to write something in Russian or when I need to cuss . Russian profanity is just superior - what other language can come up with a phrase like that, using just one obscene root word?