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Old 09-14-2014, 08:56 PM   #301
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It's valid spoken Japanese but you might get some weird looks for writing it. Particles are pretty much essential in written Japanese and passiveness-activeness distinction is doubly built into the language that way.

So I sort of just randomly stumbled upon something that I've found is helping me a little bit. Just sort of screwing around on Youtube, I found this YT channel filled with videos from a strange Japanese TV program. ザ!世界行天ニュース. I like it because the stories are pretty interesting and the language isn't too far below my level generally. Additionally, like many Japanese taped programs, they show (sorta) subtitles for nearly everything they say, which makes it a wonderful study tool.

And now for questions:
1) Does anyone know why shows tend to subtitle more than they don't with news/gameshows/the like? I feel like this is a pretty widespread trend with most Japanese non-scripted shows or at least things that are minimally scripted/news-ish.

2) Any recommendations for anything else along these lines? Subtitles are preferred.
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Old 09-14-2014, 09:21 PM   #302
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerichi View Post
So I sort of just randomly stumbled upon something that I've found is helping me a little bit. Just sort of screwing around on Youtube, I found this YT channel filled with videos from a strange Japanese TV program. ザ!世界行天ニュース. I like it because the stories are pretty interesting and the language isn't too far below my level generally. Additionally, like many Japanese taped programs, they show (sorta) subtitles for nearly everything they say, which makes it a wonderful study tool.

And now for questions:
1) Does anyone know why shows tend to subtitle more than they don't with news/gameshows/the like? I feel like this is a pretty widespread trend with most Japanese non-scripted shows or at least things that are minimally scripted/news-ish.

2) Any recommendations for anything else along these lines? Subtitles are preferred.
A1. It's always been my guess that it's a solution addressing the problem of homophony. All languages have homophones, but most languages tend to cover these by context. Japanese does too, but Japanese is already such a heavily context-driven language that I can't help but imagine that, under the burden of so many homophones, the language simply can't cope sometimes and that you'll wind up with a lot of unintended double entendre. While story-based television tends to not have these subtitles (and is much less ambiguous / is much more rooted in audience-understood context than a news program or variety show), non-story-based television tends to lean on the subtitle crutch, presumably because a) unlike printed media, the audience cannot see the unambiguous text; and b) unlike conversations in person, the audience cannot ask the speaker to clarify in real time what he just said.

A2. You have your pick of every Japanese variety show under the sun. Series I have personally enjoyed watching which make frequent use of subtitles include:
  • comedy
    • anything produced by Downtown
      • their annual New Year's "No Laughing" punishment specials
      • their "Tasty ____" series of using odd ingredients with simple traditional Japanese food items to make something new
      • their blind taste-testing series where 20+ food or beverage items of the same type (e.g. 20 different brands of vanilla pudding) are lined up and the blindfolded comedian must correctly identify which of the items is the one that he was given to eat/drink
    • GameCenter CX
  • variety programs
    • AKBingo!, devoted to pop group AKB48
    • any of the shows put on by comedian Shimura Ken, e.g. Shimura Doubutsuen
    • the Pokémon variety show featuring (amongst others) Nakagawa Shouko
  • game shows
    • Karaoke Battle (sample; search by name, カラオケバトル, for more)
All of this stated, you also have the option of watching story-driven series with Japanese subtitles. Ever since 2006/2007 when transport streams started including subtitles for the hearing impaired, the same development which revolutionized speedsubbing also meant that people who wanted to watch raw with reading assistance could. I have to confess that it's been so long since I've gone looking for subtitle files to plop alongside raws that I'm rusty. But I'm sure you could find out if you really wanted to. I am like 99% positive that someone on D-Addicts (or a similar community dealing with the subtitling of live-action television) could help point you in the right direction.
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Old 09-15-2014, 12:10 AM   #303
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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
[*]variety programs[list][*]AKBingo!, devoted to pop group AKB48
I'll recommend AKBingo! very highly too. I pretty much just used that for studying and I learnt a huge range of vocabulary. The hosts are really funny too, which is a nice bonus.
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Old 10-03-2014, 05:05 PM   #304
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Just discovered this Nichijou cover of a song called "My Ballad". The Nichijou version is performed by a singer named Sasaki Sayaka, while the original song was performed by a middle school choir (from what I can tell). It's a nice song, and I could've just as easily made this post in our thread where we share what we've been listening to recently if I'd wanted to.

But I decided to post here, actually, because the lyrics are ideally suited to students in their first few years of study. The vocabulary is predominantly material taught in the first two years (with a few curveballs for beginners here or there); the grammatical conjugations featured in the song are diverse but, miraculously, none of them are advanced material. Examples include the plain volitional (歌おう), the -て imperative (出して), the -ず "without" (恥ずかしがらず), and the plain imperative (きらめけ, 届け).

I can keep you guys posted about future such songs featured at the end of Nichijou if you like. It looks like they're cycling through a number of famous folk songs. Episode 14 ended with this cover of super famous folk song "Tsubasa wo Kudasai" ("Please Give Me Wings"), a song that I was introduced to by my teacher when I was just starting to learn Japanese. That's another one to check out if you don't already know it. And from what I've read, the Evangelion 2.0 version was sung by none other than Hayashibara Megumi, a.k.a. the voice of Jessie in the Japanese version of the Pokémon television series. So there's a tangential Poké-incentive for you too!
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Old 10-06-2014, 11:20 PM   #305
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Topical reading practice:

Quote:
怪奇ゾーン グラビティフォールズ

ディッパーとメイベルは、12歳になる双子の兄妹。理論家のディッパーは常に悪巧みを考えているタイプなの に対し、メイベルの方は天真爛漫で笑顔の絶えないロマンチスト。そんな二人が夏休みをスタン叔父さんのもと で過ごすことになるが、このスタン叔父さんの正体は実は詐欺師。地元グラビティ・フォールズという静かな町 を訪れる観光客からお金をだまし取っていたのだ!
Source

I will admit: I did not know the word 詐欺師 before now. I knew 詐欺, but only as a spoken word. Had never seen it written down before. Now I know.
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Old 10-17-2014, 07:13 AM   #306
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This tweet reveals that not only do they have Toys 'R' Us in Japan but that, when they brought it over, they named it after how we say the name rather than with respect to the words' meaning. Rather than トイズ・アル・アス or similar, they named it トイザらス. (The Twitter user opts for pure katakana but the official brand appears to use a hiragana ら to emulate the 'R' spelling of Are.) I always find it interesting which loan words they bring over based on spelling and which they bring over based on native pronunciation.
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Old 10-17-2014, 07:35 AM   #307
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It also demonstrates the power of Japanese on Twitter; a full conversation (albiet a short one) crammed into one Tweet, complete with attributions and quote brackets.
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Old 10-29-2014, 05:54 PM   #308
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Wasn't familiar with ヤケクソ, but it showed up as an exclamation and, given the components and the context, I figured it was probably 焼け yake "burnt" and 糞 kuso "shit". It turns out I was right -- in that one of the accepted spellings is indeed 焼糞 -- but that rather than meaning "BURNT SHIT! " the term is more delicately translated as ...

Quote:
自棄糞; 焼糞 【やけくそ】 (adj-na,n) (See 自暴自棄) desperation
So today in The More You Know™, apparently the dysphemism "burnt shit" is a synonym for desperation.

And as though that weren't enough, it has a sister!

Quote:
焼け腹; 自棄腹; 焼腹 【やけばら】 (n,vs) desperation; despair
"Burnt stomach."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In the spirit of encouraging Jeri for his upcoming exam, some of the recent words I had to look up. The words: 動悸, 繁殖, 保護, 単身赴任者, 配慮, 自称, 危機一髪, 低下, あっけない, やりがい, かきむしる, and 振り子. Answer key below.

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動悸; 動気(iK) 【どうき】 (n) palpitation (e.g. heart); pulsation; throbbing

繁殖(P); 蕃殖 【はんしょく】 (n,vs,adj-no) breed; multiply; increase; propagation

保護 【ほご(P); ほうご】 (n,vs) care; protection; shelter; safeguard; guardianship; favor; favour; patronage

単身赴任者 【たんしんふにんしゃ】 (n) employee posted away from their family

配慮 【はいりょ】 (n,vs) consideration; concern; forethought

自称 【じしょう】 (n,vs,adj-no) (1) self-alleged; self-proclaimed; calling oneself; self-styled; would-be; (n) (2) {law} first person

危機一髪; 危機一発(iK) 【ききいっぱつ】 (exp,n) by a hair's breadth; in the nick of time; touch and go; close call; critical moment (From 危機 【きき】 (n,adj-no) crisis; danger; risk ;;; and of course 一髪 【いっぱつ】 one hair.)

低下 【ていか】 (n,vs) fall; decline; lowering; deterioration; degradation

あっけない 《呆気ない》 (adj-i) (uk) not enough; too quick (short, long, etc.)

やりがい 《やり甲斐(P); 遣り甲斐》 (n) (uk) being worth doing

掻き毟る; 掻きむしる 【かきむしる】 (v5r,vt) to tear off; to pluck; to scratch off (Note: saw it in pure kana, and WWWJDIC's two sentence examples also offer it in pure kana:
  彼女は身体を折り曲げておなかをかきむしった。
  She doubled over, clutching her side.
  彼は髪をかきむしりながら泣いた。
  He wept tearing his hair. )

振り子(P); 振子 【ふりこ(P); しんし(振子)】 (n) pendulum

Quite a few of these I have to admit I've already forgotten again. 単身赴任者 for example. For every one of these you can read, you know something I didn't (and may still not)! Here's to hoping you'll surprise me with a 10 out of 12, but I think even a 2 out of 12 would be respectable given how rare some of these expressions strike me as. It bears repeating that my own original score would have been 0 out of 12 given that I had to look every last one of these up for one reason or another. It also bears stating that I have no concrete idea what JLPT level any of these words officially are, so I guess take your score with a grain of salt either way? [/utterly undoing the motivation this was intended to be] If nothing else enjoy seeing possibly new words? ^^;
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Old 10-29-2014, 06:58 PM   #309
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So I've always been interested in the kanji that are used to represent countries in abbreviations or shortened capacities (like on Wikipedia when showing examples of words in other languages) but I've never been able to find a list.

Until now! It's actually been under my nose the whole time on this helpful Wikipedia page 国名の漢字表記一覧.
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Old 11-03-2014, 06:43 PM   #310
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Double post for a cool article on wasei-eigo ie made in Japan English. It's a fun read on an interesting and important topic in Japanese.

http://www.tofugu.com/2014/10/27/was...s-not-english/
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Old 11-03-2014, 07:09 PM   #311
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Won't lie: was expecting the classics like ドンマイ and ハイタッチ. Right off the bat the article hits me with one I've never heard before in over ten years of reading and listening to Japanese. Neato. :o

I can also say that after over ten years of reading eromanga that "bed in" is never used by anyone.

Ah, and here we go: a familiar, WaseiEigo 101 word in マイペース.

But yeah, most of these are new to me. And aww, the バタ臭い example. Though clicking on the link I sure don't think any of them look particularly "Western". ¬_¬

Okay, everyone knows オヤジギャグ, I think.

I have never heard ホモ達 before but I also figured out what it meant on sight. That's a pretty good one, I'd say.

ワンパターン I know ... アイスキャンディー I learned almost a decade ago in school ... same with キャッチボール ... スキンシップ ... ガッツポーズ ... シャッターチャンス ... チャームポイント ... yeah, I know about a third or so of the list? Maybe a quarter? (Too lazy to count.) But by far most of the words are completely new to me, whether because they're rare or my interests and experiences just haven't intersected with the part of Japanese life that sees those terms used.
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Old 11-03-2014, 10:31 PM   #312
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I'm rather fond of ホモ達 myself.
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Old 11-06-2014, 11:24 AM   #313
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Words can mean different things to different people. As one person jokingly observes, what women think "plump" means vs. what men think "plump" means. But generally speaking, my impression of the word ぽっちゃり "plump; chubby" is that it is much more favorable than 肥満の "obese", デブ "fatty", or even plain 太っている "fat".

So you might say I was surprised to see this headline:

Quote:
【ダイエット】ぽっちゃりから「マシュマロ体型」に進化する方法5つ
"[Dieting] 5 Ways to Evolve from Plump to a Marshmallow Figure". Wait, what? "Dieting," you say? But we're going from "chubby" to "marshmallow"?

I've not encountered マシュマロ体型 "marshmallow figure/body type" before, though obviously many a boob has been compared with the fluffy, squishy confectionary. So I decided to Google it, to see what sorts of returns I'd get. Would they be obese? Fat? Simply plump?

The image results suggested a spectrum of body types, so I quickly migrated over to text for clarification. There I found evidence to support the hypothesis that:



It seems that the term "marshmallow figure" has been embraced by some in the overweight community and/or the health media in Japan as a way to describe healthy, happy large women. Basically, like the American term "plus-sized woman." The article I mentioned earlier? Well I found it. And as you can see from that article, the idea seems to be about owning your fatness and being happy/proud about it. For example, in the section about color clothing, they write that while it's true that whites and blacks have a slimming effect, they also broadcast to those in the know that you have a negative body image and are trying to hide your fatness. Wearing bright colors, they advise, while it will not hide the fact that you're fat, will broadcast to men that you are happy, self-confident, etc.

Further research reveals that this term may be pretty recent. In fact, one of the Google hits I found was by a Japanese poster in June 2014 who was reporting to his fellow Japanese that foreigners are now saying:

Quote:
日本ではふくよかな体型の女性の事を『マシュマロ系』と呼んでる
"In Japan, plump women are called marshmallow[ type]s." In other words, pretty much the image macro I just shared. So I decided to read the replies, to see if this entire post of mine needed to be scrapped or not, to uncover whether foreign misunderstandings led to the image macro above. And what I found was this insightful reply:

Quote:
×日本ではふくよかな体型の女性の事を『マシュマロ系』と呼んでる

○日本ではふくよかな体型の女性の事を『マシュマロ系』と呼ばせる動きがある
suggesting that while it may not technically be correct to say that it's customary in Japan to call plus-sized women "marshmallows" that there is a movement to do precisely that.

Most people in the thread express the viewpoint that the mass media has taken something and run with it without doing their research first. Not sure whether they mean ours or theirs though. 'Cause I really doubt that our news ever reported on this. So I assume they mean that Japanese broadcasters have started using the term マシュマロ体型 trying to force its usage amongst common people and that some foreigner consequently caught one such use of the term -- like me, just now! -- and reported on it to his friends that, "Hey, guys, guys! Guess what? In Japan, they call plus-sizes 'marshmallows'!"

The recency of the conversation sheds light imo on why I've not heard the term before. Popular or not, and whether it's being popularized by women, the media, or mistaken foreigners, it sounds like the term has only been around a short while given that that one discussion thread is less than six months old.

And in the end, I don't think this is a case of complete foreign misunderstanding. Perhaps partially. Perhaps "marshmallow figure" as a term is not commonly used. But one thing is clear: beyond the connection between marshmallows and chubby women, there is a clear receptiveness to this in Japan. Amazon.co.jp would not be advertising a product as well-suited for "marshmallow girls" if it were going to be taken negatively by most overweight customers. The Japanese media wouldn't be using the term if it were a foreign concoction with no footing whatsoever in Japan. Japanese fashion magazines ...



Ultimately, Wikipedia shines the brightest light of all on this mystery. As they note in their article dedicated to the term 'marshmallow girl'," it looks like a fashion magazine for large women called la farfa (all lowercase, it seems) was started up only just recently and in its fourth volume (published November 2013) introduced the term マシュマロ女子 "marshmallow girl". Seems like they've been running with it since then. Their primary model, Gotou Seina, even has a blog titled 聖なるマシュマロ女子, "Holy Marshmallow Girl." ^^;

In conclusion, it's interesting how a term in one culture might be considered derogatory or offensive whereas in another culture it's considered appealing, fashionable, even inspiring.
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Old 11-06-2014, 01:29 PM   #314
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So translators aren't working to well for me, and Kin said ya'll may be able to help.

I'm looking for a word that would describe "Worn down by time" or something similar, as well as a word to describe a mechanical gear.

Please let me know in the latin alphabet rather than the native Kanji ^_^
I'm looking to use this for a nickname by the way.
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Old 11-06-2014, 02:10 PM   #315
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So translators aren't working to well for me, and Kin said ya'll may be able to help.

I'm looking for a word that would describe "Worn down by time" or something similar, as well as a word to describe a mechanical gear.

Please let me know in the latin alphabet rather than the native Kanji ^_^
I'm looking to use this for a nickname by the way.
Disclaimer that I had to look the stuff in the first half of the post up rather than pulling on information I already knew. If someone more fluent knows that what I've said is incorrect, then go with them.

A Google search for "日本語 wore out" (no quotes) produced a good ol' Weblio hit for the verb. Clicking it, optimistically hoping for a definition that would mirror gears ... the very first return:

Quote:
The gears wore out.
ギアは摩耗した - 日本語WordNet
So I looked up 摩耗 on Jim Breen's WWWJDIC, and:
Quote:
摩耗; 磨耗(iK) 【まもう】 (n,vs,adj-no) wear; abrasion
Its romanization is mamou. We're on the right track, but you said you specifically wanted "worn down; abraded" rather than "wear; abrasion." The past participle instead of the noun. And what sounds like the passive voice over the active voice. (Passive: "the gears were worn down by time." Active: "time wore down the gears" or alternately "the gears wore down.") 摩耗 offers some complications for me since it doesn't seem to exhibit anything near 1:1 correspondence with the tenses we'd use in English, but given what I find here, with Weblio defining the present tense active voice 摩耗する as "be worn down [away]"; and given what I see here, with Weblio offering sample sentences for the passive usage as well, my inclination is that if you wanted the specific name "Worn Down By Time" then it'd be something like 時に摩耗されてる Toki ni Mamou sareteru (passive progressive tense) or else something a little more compounded like 時摩耗 jimamou ("Time Abrasion", i.e. abrasion of the specific subtype that is the result of time's passage). Thing is, I've made up that latter one. And the first one just sounds like a clause, not like a username. (No more than "Worn Down By Time" sounds like a great username in English.) So I dunno what you want to do.

If you want something that sounds a lot less serious/technical and a bit more like a cutesy nickname on a forum, you might consider ぼろぼろ / ボロボロ boroboro:

Quote:
ぼろぼろ(P); ボロボロ (adj-na,adv,n,vs,adj-no) (1) (on-mim) worn-out; torn; crumbling; tattered; (2) tears or grain of rice falling
This is a very common expression that gives the impression of tattered clothes, a junker of a car, etc. Just the sound of the name alone feels more like something I could actually see a character in a kids show being named, a guy in a group of friends being nicknamed (somewhat cruelly? ^^; ), etc. The mamou-based examples sound too stiff to me. But if stiffness is what you're after and you don't want to sound like a Barney the Dinosaur type, then I guess stick with one of those earlier offerings over this latest one?
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Old 11-06-2014, 02:14 PM   #316
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I really doubt there's an elegant word for that that's not going to be a large number of letters in romaaji.
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Old 11-08-2014, 10:08 AM   #317
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They're kind of rare, so I figured I would share this example of a word that is normally written with just two kanji characters yet is read with a kunyomi reading that belies verbal conjugation: 取引 (とりひき), a transaction, business deal, or trade. While the word can be alternately spelled as 取り引き or 取引き, according to dictionaries, the standard spelling is just 取引. Despite this, its reading is とり (from 取る) ひき (from 引く) instead of, say, しゅいん (going off of their two onyomi).

Since we're on the topic, a word for trade that you might be more familiar with given our fandom: 交換 (こうかん), an exchange or trade. While 取引 (to my surprise; didn't think of it this way tbh) seems to have a more business-oriented meaning, 交換 is more general. (Examples: "exchange of ideas," "language exchange," and "ion exchange" all use 交換 while the words using 取引 that the dictionary provides mostly seem to have to do with business negotiations or stock market trading.)

Back to 取引, a common use for the term is in the English analogue "the ____ trade" / "the _____ market." So for example, pulled straight from the dictionary ...
  • 人身取引 (じんしんとりひき) human trafficking
  • 象牙取引 (ぞうげとりひき) ivory trade
  • 武器取引 (ぶきとりひき) arms business; arms dealing; weapons trade; weapons dealing
  • 闇取引; 闇取り引き (やみとりひき) illegal or black-market transaction; secret deal
  • 麻薬取引; 麻薬取引き (まやくとりひき) drug deal; drug dealing; drug trafficking; drug trade
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Old 11-09-2014, 08:47 PM   #318
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Had to look this one up because I couldn't believe it was real: ロワイヤル is an accepted spelling of "royal" and "royale", along with ロイヤル (what I've always heard) and ローヤル (which I could see happening). I'm sorry, but there is no way "roy" should be making any sound in your language aside from ロイ. How the hell you stuck a ワ in there I have no idea.
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Old 11-09-2014, 09:04 PM   #319
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It is a liiiiiittle bit closer to the French pronunciation.
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Old 11-09-2014, 09:19 PM   #320
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerichi View Post
It is a liiiiiittle bit closer to the French pronunciation.
I considered that for a good ten minutes. Rejected it as false. Then you post, I want to confirm for myself that you're wrong, I go to look up the IPA for it in French, and the true (French) pronunciation suddenly comes flooding back to me.

I'll agree that it's a closer approximation. I'll also note that that vowel sound presents enough trouble in English, let alone in poor Japanese. God have mercy on them with whatever vowel combo they attempt to replicate it -- they're going to sound foreign regardless.
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Old 11-09-2014, 09:48 PM   #321
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I totally see where the hesitance comes from. If it were me making decisions about katakana and trying for a more source-faithful transliteration, I'd probably do something more along the line of リョイアル, but that feels really unnatural, even to my second-language tongue. It's a closer to what I hear (something like [ɽjoiaɽu], which at least gets the glide in there) but it's also not quite there. I think what they were trying to get with the ワ there was trying to imitate the glide in French in the only way Japanese allows - which is a super awkward convention for us, who are more used to -o and -u row characters to fill in for consonants in a blend.

I'd be curious to know what someone like Okiku who speaks French natively thinks.
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Old 11-10-2014, 12:13 AM   #322
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WE WOULDN'T BE HAVING THIS PROBLEM IF THEY HADN'T FORGOTTEN HOW TO MAKE A 'W' WITH ANY VOWEL SOUND OTHER THAN 'AH'.

I love Japanese, but that is one quirk about 19th- and 20th-century Japanese that I have never understood. How does a nation so historically obsessed with China from top to bottom -- Chinese-borrowed literature, Chinese-borrowed religion, Chinese-borrowed architecture, Chinese-borrowed theories of war and politics, Chinese-borrowed cuisine, Chinese-borrowed orthography, Chinese-borrowed everything -- how does such a nation forget how to pronounce some of the most common of Chinese names? Wei? Wu? It's actually amazing to me that wo of all things hung on longer than wei did.

I specified "19th- and 20th-century," though, specifically to acknowledge the fact that 21st-century Japanese is more than happy to widen its consonant and vowel pool thanks to the internationalization of our planet and what that has meant for the Japanese youth of the '80s on up. Perhaps the Japanese babushka would have trouble pronouncing a word like "ding" or "suave," but bit by bit the modern Japanese man or woman is handling ディ as natively as じ and is shelving crude approximations like ラブ for closer approximations like ラヴ. Bit by bit by bit, they're getting there. They'll probably have a strong Japanese accent for at least a century to come given the language's hard-engrained opposition to ending syllables on consonants, but at the very least I have faith that they will pick up the schwa within the next 50 years. Adding it to their orthographic syllabary is a whole other question, unfortunately, and likely a huge hangup towards the vowel expansion of their language for any vowel sounds not covered by the preexisting ones and their diphthongs. :\

[/tangent]

Back to royal français, that vowel is really, really tough even in English. The way I butcher the first bit of the word myself, it's a hybrid of English "rwai" and English "roi", like I want to say French roi and English oi simultaneously. It produces an alien diphthong that sounds to my ear simultaneously like "rwai" and "roi." When I lean too strongly into any one of them, it clearly sounds incorrect; when I by complete accident nail the hybrid, it sounds right to me but also sounds -- and feels! -- so weird on the tongue.

I can well understand why they would have opted to go for r_wai for the start of the word. I just have to question why they opted for rowai over rewai or ruwai or any of the other vowel sounds that would have felt far easy to drop into oblivion, in an attempt to emulate the foreign glide an "rw" makes, than an o is.

Really, though, the problem's an inescapable one with vowels, it seems. Curious to see how they pronounce the far easier roi (which I would say approximates "rwa"), it seems like Japanese dictionaries offer both ロワ and ルワ (I feel like, of the two, the latter sounds closer to the correct pronunciation) -- but, and here's the kicker, they advise different selection based on use in the sentence!? Or at least one guy did:

Quote:
Le roi = ルルワ
Un roi = アンロワ
Not only does it strike me as ridiculous that he's suggesting the pronunciation of roi shifts from ルワ to ロワ depending on whether it takes a le or an un in front, but his sample illustrates a far greater handicap for the language: the utter, utter failure to emulate French 'e' as in le. ル!? Really!? Thing is, do I have a better suggestion? They're all horribad substitutions. It sure as hell isn't an あ, い, or お, and I can't really argue that え is that much better a substitution than う is. So they opted for う (or rather ル) and that's it. But yeah. "ル" ... standing in for le. If the Japanese need for a schwa is vital to emulating English properly, then the need for French 'e' is just as vital for pronouncing French properly.

Curious, I looked up how they say je, jeudi, peux, deux, and so on. Any words that use (according to French IPA) ř or ə. Well ...
  • je becomes ジュ (e.g. je t'aime = ジュテーム) (this also illustrates the lack of "zh")
  • jeudi becomes ジュディ
  • peux becomes プー (e.g. Je peux parler le français = ジュ プー パルレ ル フランセ)
  • deux becomes ドゥ
This illustrates a tendency to japanify the French 'e' sound as a Japanese う sound in most cases. ... Or so I wanted to say, but then I saw this while looking up that last example:
  • pas de deux = パドドゥ
What have they done to the de in the middle? They've rendered it a ド of all things. O_o So bamboozled are they as to how to handle French 'e' that they'll grab whatever vowel they have to to make it work. But yeah ... when le can become ル yet de becomes ド, you know we have a vowel problem.
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Old 11-10-2014, 08:44 AM   #323
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I think the biggest issue is that Japanese lacks anything approximating a schwa, which makes transliteration of it essentially a free-for-all. IF you go down to [a], you gain too much openness. If you go back to [o], it's pretty open, the backness is not super distracting and it can be devoiced, but you also get some unneeded roundness. If you go up to [u], it might devoice, but then you lose the vowel information altogether. If you go forward to [e], you get something pretty close, but it's still not quite there.

Japanese has learned to adapt to English and has developed what amounts to a new phonological toolkit to deal with some of the curveballs of English. However, since our vowels are much simpler (even if they still suck), English katakana words will be infinitely better until French really gets recognition in Japan as a good second language (which it most likely won't any time soon).
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Old 11-12-2014, 09:07 AM   #324
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So I've been doing some vocab studying for the JLPT and managed to find a nice list that groups things roughly by kanji they use. It's nice because it allows you to learn some quirks of kanji while learning vocab.

One thing I've noticed over the course of my studies is a tendency for kanji to swap around readings depending on where they are in the compound. I'm not talking about rendaku or the little tsu reduction, but rather a pretty significant shift in sound.

The first one I noticed is compounds with 力, which is generally read as リキ or リョウ. However, I found that words like 力作 (りきさく) tend to take the former while words like 努力 (どうりょく) take the latter. 色 is the same way, reading as シキ in front (色調 「しきちょ」、色彩 「しきさい」) but as ショク in back (原色 「げんしょく」、特色 「とくしょく」). I wonder if this is a relatively common thing or if there's a pattern with it? I've already noticed it in maybe 3-5 kanji but it doesn't seem to be talked about anywhere or even necessarily the case most of the time, even with these kanji.
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Old 11-12-2014, 10:12 AM   #325
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