[From WikiQuotes]

While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour. One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?" I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned. "No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, 'Would you like to see my garden? you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite." "Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use. Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens..." I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see." "No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?" Three or four different words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're doing it, it's elegant. I was learning Japanese mainly for technical things, so I decided to check if this same problem existed among the scientists. At the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the office, "How would I say in Japanese, 'I solve the Dirac Equation'?" They said such-and-so. "OK. Now I want to say, 'Would you solve the Dirac Equation?' -- how do I say that?" "Well, you have to use a different word for 'solve,' " they say. "Why?" I protested. "When I solve it, I do the same damn thing as when you solve it!" "Well, yes, but it's a different word -- it's more polite." I gave up. I decided that wasn't the language for me, and stopped learning Japanese.

**

Too bad he gave up in the end though.

Any pragmatist coming from a non-politeness/non-stratified based language like English would probably react that way to Japanese.

Disclaimer: Yes, English has ways to express politeness in similar ways like Japanese but not to the same degree, and nor is it concerned with 上・下 or 内・外.

Feynman seemed to approach almost everything he did with enthusiasm. He must have been pretty efficient and very curious about the world. I admire him for studying/learning so many new things, from drawing, to playing music, to doing physics.

Some people would probably say that he was a "natural" at all of this stuff and an arrogant person. But after reading his autobiography, it sounds like he was extremely enthusiastic and also spent a lot of time practicing his various hobbies. I think when he started drawing he wasn't very good, so he just kept trying and he improved.

Makes me feel a bit better about myself for sticking with Japanese when he didn't! :-).

If you have not read his autobiography, you should. It is a very interesting and (mostly) entertaining read.

Amusing quote, but it misses the point that you don't actually say 'May I see your garden?' or 'Would you look at my garden?' .... you say 'See (honorific) garden (humble)?' or 'See (humble) garden(honorific)?' (or something like that... I assume it was referring to 御覧 and 拝見, but I have no idea what the special temple expression was.)

So, anyway, you only know who's doing what in a lot of Japanese sentences because of giving/receiving/honorific/humble expressions.

All that complexity saved by -not- having a conjugation table with nine different subjects times twelve different grammar cases? Words saved by dropping explicit subjects? Yeah, that information is still conveyed in many cases somehow.... embedded into politeness levels.

As smart as Feynman was, he probably made the mistake of expecting too much logic from language. That seems to be what discouraged him. And while that, as such, is indeed discouraging, it's also what allows people to learn it despite making plenty of mistakes, and still be able to express themselves in very personal ways.

AlexandreC Wrote:As smart as Feynman was, he probably made the mistake of expecting too much logic from language. That seems to be what discouraged him. And while that, as such, is indeed discouraging, it's also what allows people to learn it despite making plenty of mistakes, and still be able to express themselves in very personal ways.

I was thinking it was probably his hatred for authority and so on that led him to quit. He's expressed in interviews how his father would teach him a distrust and disdain for authority. After finding out you have to respect someone else's efforts more than your own, despite doing the same thing as them, he probably got turned off more by that than the (il)logic of language. That's what I'd guess, anyway It would be interesting to have gotten the chance to ask him seriously about it :o

Edit: Fixed typos >.<

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:but I have no idea what the special temple expression was.)

Probably some variation of お目にかかる (although I guess you usually see this expression in the context of meeting someone).