There are a billion and one homonyms in Japanese (because Japanese just doesn't have enough sounds) which can lead to confusion even amongst native speakers
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Thank you very much, I'm so glad you do! I'll talk about this stuff to anyone who'll listen :D
I would like to read about your episodes of living in German if you have the chance to write about any. I gave up German after 2 non-productive years at secondary school with my only acquisition of language being "Ich habe durchfall".
I should really read my entries at least twice too! I find so many errors hours after I've posted an entry, and often quite strange ones too. I think I have some kind of miscommunication between my brain and fingertips. :D
Durchfall really is one of my favourite German words. "Through-fall." It's so typical of the German mentality: straightforward, literalist, and somehow charmingly icky in its graphic biological suggestiveness. I also like its opposite, Verstopfung, whose fricative consonants and glottal stop somehow convey the effort and hopelessness of managing to pass nothing but a little gas.
However, possibly because of the similarity of language and culture, I don't really notice living in Germany any more. (Or Switzerland, where I'm currently spending more of my time.) I'm used to it; it holds few further surprises. But maybe I can dredge a few interesting comparisons out of the past few years...
Ahahaha, I didn't know that was the literal meaning of it! Wonderful. And "verstopfung" too! In case you wanted to know the respective Japanese equivalents are "geri" and "bempi", and people seem quite relaxed about mentioning then in conversation. One of my colleagues found no qualms in telling me that he had taken the day off because he had a bad case of geriOh I really did mean "living in German", rather than "living in Germany/Switzerland", although I don't know to what percentage you do live and work in it. Just living in a foreign language and coping with it. I suppose it's a completely different ballgame being within Europe, you can also blend in easily if you want to. I am constantly met with a look of fear on people's faces which says "Oh my god a foreigner! I can't speak English! What am I going to do?!" which gets tiresome after a while. Time and time again I have to prove that I can speak Japanese, and when they learn to what extent it usually involves a period of shock and disbelief for them. Going to new places and
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I drove one of my housemates mad with that song, she's too young to understand how great TMBG are! The rest of the album's pretty good too.
It sounds like there's a lot more ambiguity to Japanese than I'd thought. I guess you can probably derive meaning from context most of the time but I can't help but feel they make it difficult for themselves when they have to resort to writing the symbols in the air with a finger.
Actually it was because of you that I found that album, I hadn't noticed they'd released anything knew. I've had a look at some of the other songs, and their candidates for class too.
There is a lot ambiguity, but Japanese people are partially psychic (don't quote me on that) so it's ok most of the time. Squiggly air kanji is ridic though, as often they'll write it from their point of view, which ends up being a mirror image for the onlooker. Other times they write with their finger on the palm of their hands. The Japanese written language however is a fantastic invention though, and in some respects prefer reading it to English.
Nooo! Don't be scared off my the homos! Of those words only the first two are likely to be used in common conversation.
By the way homonym/homophone is 同音語 どうおんご douongo in Japanese, same,sound,word. God Japanese is so logical. And synonym is similarly 同意語 どういご douigo, same,meaning,word. What's it in Korean?
Thanks for the list of words, please teach me any and all trivia about Korean. There is indeed a lot more variation, because Korean has a lot more vowel sounds
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Korean is 同音異義語, or 동음이의자 meaning "same sound different meaning word"; 同種異名 or 동종이명 for synonym meaning "same kind different name". Yes, I do like the simple logic in both languages.
애 and 에 used to be different, hence the two different characters, but nowadays everyone says them as 에. Some textbooks might say they're different (in which case you need to find a new textbook), and as far as romanisation goes 애 is "ae" and 에 is "e" (so it's easy to tell if foreigners have learnt Korean because of the way they'll pronounce place names
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I would like to read about your episodes of living in German if you have the chance to write about any. I gave up German after 2 non-productive years at secondary school with my only acquisition of language being "Ich habe durchfall".
I should really read my entries at least twice too! I find so many errors hours after I've posted an entry, and often quite strange ones too. I think I have some kind of miscommunication between my brain and fingertips. :D
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However, possibly because of the similarity of language and culture, I don't really notice living in Germany any more. (Or Switzerland, where I'm currently spending more of my time.) I'm used to it; it holds few further surprises. But maybe I can dredge a few interesting comparisons out of the past few years...
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It sounds like there's a lot more ambiguity to Japanese than I'd thought. I guess you can probably derive meaning from context most of the time but I can't help but feel they make it difficult for themselves when they have to resort to writing the symbols in the air with a finger.
Reply
There is a lot ambiguity, but Japanese people are partially psychic (don't quote me on that) so it's ok most of the time. Squiggly air kanji is ridic though, as often they'll write it from their point of view, which ends up being a mirror image for the onlooker. Other times they write with their finger on the palm of their hands.
The Japanese written language however is a fantastic invention though, and in some respects prefer reading it to English.
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By the way homonym/homophone is 同音語 どうおんご douongo in Japanese, same,sound,word. God Japanese is so logical. And synonym is similarly 同意語 どういご douigo, same,meaning,word.
What's it in Korean?
Thanks for the list of words, please teach me any and all trivia about Korean. There is indeed a lot more variation, because Korean has a lot more vowel sounds ( ... )
Reply
애 and 에 used to be different, hence the two different characters, but nowadays everyone says them as 에. Some textbooks might say they're different (in which case you need to find a new textbook), and as far as romanisation goes 애 is "ae" and 에 is "e" (so it's easy to tell if foreigners have learnt Korean because of the way they'll pronounce place names ( ... )
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