Comments | angharad: Ganbatte

angharad

Ganbatte

Sep 12, 2005 20:55

I just registered for an eight-session beginning Japanese class, to begin a week from tomorrow. Who wants to bet that I know the (spoken) content of the first couple of meetings already? Except that I can only count to five alreadyWhy Japanese before Chinese? Puns, mostly. (Are any other languages besides English and Japanese nearly as fond of ( Read more... )

school, update, languages, puns, japanese, anime

Comments 19

geeklibrarian September 13 2005, 04:05:38 UTC

The Swedes love their puns, trust me! Also, there is nothing more hysterical (that I've run across, at any rate) than Swedish idioms with their painfully literate translation, e.g. "standing with your beard in the mailbox" is akin to the Engish "being caught red-handed".

There used to be a great site a few years ago and while the owner is still online he pulled the pages and doesn't seem interested in putting them back online :(

angharad September 13 2005, 04:10:16 UTC

Haha, beards, that's great!

djinnj September 13 2005, 04:07:41 UTC

heh, the Chinese looooove puns. My grandparents named several of their children with puns imbedded. My eldest uncle's name means something very different, but sounds a lot like "baby bottle." They did the others that way too, but I don't remember the jokes.

And then, of course, there's the less funny word play which is heavily represented in poetry and such.

angharad September 13 2005, 04:11:29 UTC

Dangit! I could've registered for Mandarin. Hmmph. Well, it'll have to wait.

djinnj September 13 2005, 04:12:54 UTC

It's all good. And after Japanese, Mandarin'll be a walk in the park.

angharad September 13 2005, 05:23:24 UTC

Uh… Not sure I agree (except perhaps grammatically), but that's encouraging to hear!

osbick_bird September 13 2005, 05:22:35 UTC

Lotsa wordplay in OE, too!

angharad September 13 2005, 05:23:58 UTC

True, but this isn't one of the non-credit options to be had on the cheap.

(The comment has been removed)

angharad September 13 2005, 07:15:59 UTC

Oh, wow/cool, I didn't even realise that the different counting systems were native/non. I just thought they were for counting different things. I look forward to being able to count high enough to qualify for preschool, soon! (;

panda
Hee, yep.

bonelesspuppy September 13 2005, 13:46:21 UTC

Japanese counters are so much fun, once you get past the stage at which they are hateful and confusing. For me, getting past that stage took nearly a year of living in Japan, though. :)