[Mutlilingual Monday] 使ってはいけない英語 Volume 1

May 02, 2011 11:59

One thing I miss about living near Chicago is having a Japanese bookstore nearby. I have an amusing number of books written in Japanese on the English language. If's fascinating to see another viewpoint in another language of a language I speak fluently. Some of the attempts to grasp the nuances of English amuse me, and some points I just plain disagree with. One of the books I picked up before moving to Peoria is 使ってはいけない, Tsukatte wa ikenai, which translates roughly as "English that won't fly."

The book has some great usage points -- for example, on pronunciation (there isn't an exact correlation to an English "f", with an English "h" being closer to the sound that would be used in place of words with an "f" -- not good when your word is "four" and it sounds more like "whore"), English loanwords into Japanese that have different meanings than their English originals ("naïve" was borrowed into Japanese, but in Japanese it's closer to meaning "sensitive"), and the dangers of translating literally from Japanese (嘘, uso has a meaning of "no way!" or "get outta here!" when someone says something unbelievable; however, its literal meaning is "lie" - obviously a no-go in English!).

But there are points in the book I don't agree with. One point stressed is gender-specific speech. Japanese has very different styles used between between men and women, and in my experience English comes nowhere close when it comes to differences in words or patterns being different between the sexes. Regardless the book stresses that, for example, starting sentences with "Oh" is feminine. Huh??? The example given is, "Oh, those are nice shoes!" (glossed as あらいい靴ね, ara ii kutsu ne, a fairly feminine form in Japanese), yet gives the MASCULINE as "Mmm, those are nice shoes." I find that, for starters, this is a poor example, but also that it doesn't seem to be any more manly to replace "Oh" with "Mmm."

The book also insists a time be immediately stated when inviting people on Sunday for dinner, because the sentence "Let's have dinner on Sunday" becomes 日曜にいっしょに食べよう, Nichoyou ni issho ni tabeyou, "Let's do lunch together on Sunday." Apparently Sunday dinner is different, the book explains, which is why clarification is needed. I don't know about anyone else, but to me "dinner" has the general meaning of an evening meal, and isn't prone to being different depending on the day.

Does anyone disagree with my disagreement on the points above? I'd love to hear it. Also, if you've ever read unhelpful English tips, please tell me about them!

books, multilingual monday, 日本語, chicago, japanese

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