So a friend of mine I met online asked me to write an essay in Japanese and English for his company that sells Japanese textbooks. Well, of course I said yes but what surprised me was that he added notes to his Japanese. I'm fine and dandy with superfluous help, it's sweet, but I found it very strange.

He said, "Dan-san, ____" "Oh, sorry do you know san? "It means Mrs./Mr."
(My name is obviously not Dan.)

Later on he writes in full Japanese because I had asked him on the word count. We write to each other in Japanese on occasion why does he assume I don't know san? :O



It's like the カタカナ-外人 thing where sometimes a Japanese friend will write things in カタカナ instead of 平仮名 to be helpful (which I do appreciate) but make things more complicated. T__T

Do you have any similar experiences with natives?

Most of the time it's when they find out I speak English they start trying to talk in English, or boot me from the server.

That sounds terribly annoying. You could always pretend you can't speak it because you are so or so European. (I am guilty of that -- and I am American. XD)

Funny, enough nearly all Europeans can speak English no problem so I find it funny when it works.

it's probably because they don't know how japanese is studied as a foreign language, so they don't know what's important and what's not, or when people learn things?

i really don't know how people study english as a foreign language.
trying to explain "would" was really difficult.

"would" comes from trees, right?

No, "would" comes from pants. </gutter joke>

There is a huge difference in being able to teach someone a language then one learning it. Most of us wouldn't even know where to begin if we where teaching English...

rich_f Wrote:"would" comes from trees, right?

oh, you wood make a joke like that.


( a slow day at work. *sigh* )

*golf clap* (-___-)//

I've experienced something of the reverse.... on Lang-8.com I try to give some feedback along w/ my corrections to other people's diaries. I try to base what I write by gauging their English level. Unfortunately one of my L-8 friends kindly told me she had no idea what my correction meant! Also, I've seen other English speakers write lengthy feedback corrections involving grammatical terms that I've never heard of, much less used. I think they only confused the original writer :/

It's not easy to view your native language from another's perspective! But good to be aware of the difference.

gyuujuice Wrote:*golf clap* (-___-)//

No, I'm pretty sure either a ‘drum punchline’/‘joke rimshot’ or a slow-clap-building-into-thunderous-applause would be more appropriate in this situation (given the cascade of replies in subsequent comments). The golf clap is reserved for sardonic appraisal of trifling ‘success’.

nest0r Wrote:

gyuujuice Wrote:*golf clap* (-___-)//

No, I'm pretty sure either a ‘drum punchline’/‘joke rimshot’ or a slow-clap-building-into-thunderous-applause would be more appropriate in this situation (given the cascade of replies in subsequent comments). The golf clap is reserved for sardonic appraisal of trifling ‘success’.

Perhaps he has only memorized the requisite 15,000 words of vocabulary to reach fluency in English, and has not added "rimshot" in his Anki deck so he made an unnatural mistake.

Okay, let me contribute something useful now.

wemaydance Wrote:Unfortunately one of my L-8 friends kindly told me she had no idea what my correction meant! Also, I've seen other English speakers write lengthy feedback corrections involving grammatical terms that I've never heard of, much less used. I think they only confused the original writer :/

Yeah I see that all the time, it's kinda embarrassing.

Occasionally I try to explain points in Japanese, or I try to explain things in very simple English (or so I think, I have no idea how many times I've wrote "don't begin sentences with 'And'" or "don't begin sentences with 'Because.'").

kainzero Wrote:Occasionally I try to explain points in Japanese, or I try to explain things in very simple English (or so I think, I have no idea how many times I've wrote "don't begin sentences with 'And'" or "don't begin sentences with 'Because.'").

Because English doesn't have a pre-written rulebook, I think it's generally best to disregard hard rules which serve no purpose, like these. And it's not like beginning sentences with either of those words creates unnatural sounding English, either.

"Did you at least tell him you preferred to be called by your actual name rather than Dan?"

Haha, I actually laughed to this.



"Perhaps he has only memorized the requisite 15,000 words of vocabulary to reach fluency in English, and has not added "rimshot" in his Anki deck so he made an unnatural mistake."

Was that really necessary? T___T

gyuujuice Wrote:"Perhaps he has only memorized the requisite 15,000 words of vocabulary to reach fluency in English, and has not added "rimshot" in his Anki deck so he made an unnatural mistake."

Was that really necessary? T___T

No, it was not.

Because it was a joke.
And I am bored.

At least you enjoyed yourself at the expense of my confidence?










I'm just teasing I can take a joke.

One of my language partners assume I don't know a lot of really basic words because she hasn't talked to me much yet. It's kind of funny. I finally got her to stop repeating everything twice, slowly, and typing it out in chat twice, once in kanji and once in kana. Chat went smoother after that.

On the other hand, I often make the same kind of assumptions for English, but I just don't tell them. Instead, I use easier words that I think are more common and just tone it down for them. They probably do this also, though.

One of my japanese friends. She kept talking to me in english but once I showed her a video I transcribed. She switched to full japanese lol

One thing that surprises a lot of jp is that....you know kanji. Seriously it's not like it's rocket science or something.

uhhh I would be surprised about the kanji thing

not many japanese learners learn Kanji. in fact, aside from this forum, it's usually pushed back to 'advanced stages' of learning.

zachandhobbes Wrote:uhhh I would be surprised about the kanji thing

not many japanese learners learn Kanji. in fact, aside from this forum, it's usually pushed back to 'advanced stages' of learning.

i agree but that's why a good majority of the time it's never mastered, because it's left to the end for some learners. While for a lot of people on the forum, it's usual the beginning.

kainzero Wrote:Occasionally I try to explain points in Japanese, or I try to explain things in very simple English (or so I think, I have no idea how many times I've wrote "don't begin sentences with 'And'" or "don't begin sentences with 'Because.'").

but you can start sentences with "because" technically. they just discourage it like crazy in middle/elementary school because they think you won't make a full sentence... as long as you finish it well you can start senences with because... or at least that's what my english teacher in HS told us.

Regarding "because"
You can definitely start a sentence with "Because" as long as you finish it. People have a tendency to say "Because [reason]" and just end there, eg. as a response to something. That's not a complete sentence, and so you can't do that. However, if you do "Because [reason], [result]." Then it's fine.
Because it was raining, we decided not to have a picnic.

The rule of them is that if you can move the "because" after the 2nd half, it's usually OK.
So I can say "We decided not to have a picnic because it was raining," but the inversion works as well.

I don't think you can start sentences with conjunctions like 'and,' 'or,' or 'but,' but I may just be blanking atm.

You can begin sentences with and. Particularly if it's dialogue.

I had the same experience. In 11th grade, suddenly it's OK to use "because" to start a sentence, when it never has been OK before.

I am supposed to put two spaces after the period or one? I learned two in high school (HS) but it may have changed since then.

I learned that it's the first thing, the second thing, and the third thing. But current grammar rules (which are different than those I learned in HS; I am 30) say either is fine but the preferred way is without the final comma.

Quote:One thing that surprises a lot of jp is that....you know kanji. Seriously it's not like it's rocket science or something.

Not rocket science, but there is much info you must memorize to learn kanji and your brain is not a computer, so memorization is hard.

Quote:[Learning kanji is] usually pushed back to 'advanced stages' of learning.

I don't think so. Any textbook finishes hiragana+katakana by chapter 2, and then goes right into kanji for 1, 2, 3, sun, moon, etc... (very common and simple ones) in chapter 3. What they don't do is assault you with 2,000 kanji in chapter 3, instead going for 15. It's the other extreme, maybe some other balance is better. Also, starting with chapter 3, textbooks won't hesitate to show kanji you haven't learned yet, always marking these with furigana.

Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up words, and phrases, and clauses.