(no subject)
1. The island of Iwo Jima, where the US won a famous (well, famously photographed) battle against Japan, has been renamed Iwo To. I am interested because the two names are written with the same kanji. Iwo To is the name it always went by until the island was evacuated in 1944. When Japanese naval officers came back in advance of the expected US invasion, they got it wrong: they saw 硫黄島 and said “Iwo Jima”.
The mistake concerns the last character, 島, one of the few kanji I can recognise and understand. It means island and like most kanji can be pronounced the native Japanese way (shima/jima) or Chinese style (to). If you're a beginner in Japanese, a stage I have never progressed beyond, saying one when you should say the other is a constant occurance. It's extremely gratifying to see examples of native speakers doing the same thing. The fact that enlightening anecdotes like this are conspicuously absent from any of my ‘teach yourself Japanese’ books is more proof of how hopeless most language teachers are.
2. Today's Guardian, as well as pointing me in the direction of that story, also had an interesting essay about literary dedications - those sentimental ‘to D. with love’ bits at the front of books. It was a rather doomed attempt to make the case for them as a subject of analysis, but it did quote a brilliant example of one by Rupert Morgan. The dedication to his book Let There Be Lite reads:
Thanks to my adored wife, without whose unquestioning faith and support this book was nevertheless written.