[Multilingual Monday] 空耳
I think (at least, I'd like to think) that many people have heard a language learning tape commercial years ago, featuring a woman who, apparently, lost her key (house key? Car key?)
"Here it is! A key!"
"That's right -- and you just said the Spanish word for 'here'!"
"I did?"
"That's right -- the word is 'a key'!" Apparently the commercial claimed that this was a superior way to get vocabulary in another language to stick, by making English words as a mnemonic for words in other languages. To me, there's a plethora of problems with this kind of learning, mainly: it's quite limited as to how far you can go. Seriously, beyond "a key" / aquí, what could they have taught??
"Oh no Sue, your boyfriend pinned a hoe!"
"WHAT?!?! That asshole!"
"That's right, Sue! Your boyfriend is a 'pinned a hoe'!"
doonda had told me about many of the mnemonics that he used to learn various Japanese phrases when he and his husband lived in Tokyo. I'd just thought of this again while at the "bear" bar in Peoria on Saturday night. One of the two owners grew up in Japan and, after giving him a karaoke slip, I said, "Arigatou!" And he responded, "... don't touch my moustache!", a cute (and fairly popular) approximation of どういたしました, Dou itashimashita, "You're welcome!" These approximations are in Japanese known as 空耳, soramimi, or literally "empty ear". There are many of these "empty ear phrases" in Englis (IS there a word to describe this practice of linguistic approximation??h, and it's so common that a character in the Street Fighter Alpha 2 video game did nothing but blurt out these phrases, his most common being, "Die job death car?", his attempt at 大丈夫ですか？、Daijobu desu ka?, "Are you alright?" Figuring out some of these takes quite a bit of phonetic imagination. :: laugh ::
Of course it goes the other way too -- beyond obvious ones like ３９/三九, sankyuu, "Thank you", there have been other phrases made of Japanese words in order to approximate English phrases, the most common being, 掘った芋いじるな, hotta imo ijiru na, "Don't mess with dug-up potatoes," to approximate "What time is it now?" Other examples include ねーちゃん、氷水, Neechan, Koorisui, "Big sister, ice water!!!", for the English "Nature calls", and 悪酔いチンコ暴れ, Waruyoi chinko abare?, "Drunken frenzy cock rampage" for the English "What do you think about it?" (Heheh, my personal fave!!). Again, it takes quite a bit of imagination to make out "real words" with these phrases.
Have you ever learned via approximations like this? Did it help you? Do you have other examples of words and phrases in one language being used to approximate another?
"Here it is! A key!"
"That's right -- and you just said the Spanish word for 'here'!"
"I did?"
"That's right -- the word is 'a key'!" Apparently the commercial claimed that this was a superior way to get vocabulary in another language to stick, by making English words as a mnemonic for words in other languages. To me, there's a plethora of problems with this kind of learning, mainly: it's quite limited as to how far you can go. Seriously, beyond "a key" / aquí, what could they have taught??
"Oh no Sue, your boyfriend pinned a hoe!"
"WHAT?!?! That asshole!"
"That's right, Sue! Your boyfriend is a 'pinned a hoe'!"
doonda had told me about many of the mnemonics that he used to learn various Japanese phrases when he and his husband lived in Tokyo. I'd just thought of this again while at the "bear" bar in Peoria on Saturday night. One of the two owners grew up in Japan and, after giving him a karaoke slip, I said, "Arigatou!" And he responded, "... don't touch my moustache!", a cute (and fairly popular) approximation of どういたしました, Dou itashimashita, "You're welcome!" These approximations are in Japanese known as 空耳, soramimi, or literally "empty ear". There are many of these "empty ear phrases" in Englis (IS there a word to describe this practice of linguistic approximation??h, and it's so common that a character in the Street Fighter Alpha 2 video game did nothing but blurt out these phrases, his most common being, "Die job death car?", his attempt at 大丈夫ですか？、Daijobu desu ka?, "Are you alright?" Figuring out some of these takes quite a bit of phonetic imagination. :: laugh ::
Of course it goes the other way too -- beyond obvious ones like ３９/三九, sankyuu, "Thank you", there have been other phrases made of Japanese words in order to approximate English phrases, the most common being, 掘った芋いじるな, hotta imo ijiru na, "Don't mess with dug-up potatoes," to approximate "What time is it now?" Other examples include ねーちゃん、氷水, Neechan, Koorisui, "Big sister, ice water!!!", for the English "Nature calls", and 悪酔いチンコ暴れ, Waruyoi chinko abare?, "Drunken frenzy cock rampage" for the English "What do you think about it?" (Heheh, my personal fave!!). Again, it takes quite a bit of imagination to make out "real words" with these phrases.
Have you ever learned via approximations like this? Did it help you? Do you have other examples of words and phrases in one language being used to approximate another?