えいごでブログを書いてはいけません！！！

きょう、クラスはおわってから、くつをぬいで、コンピューターをつめて、ちょうと　日本語をべんきょうしました。。。

すこし　かんじをよむ　ことが　できますよ。８月に　私は日本語が　ぜんぜん　わかりませんでした。日本語をべんきょうしたくなかった！私は　スパイン語のクラスへ　いって、ロシア語のクラスへいきました。でも、学生が　おおい　ありましたから、スパイン語ロシア語を　べんきょうする　ことが　できませんでした。黒沢（くろさわ）と　安部　公房　（あべ　こおぼお）と　三島 由紀夫 (ゆきお　みしま）が　とても　すきです、そして　みんなの日本のぶんがくが　すきですから、日本語を　べんきょうしたかった、でも　ちょうと　むずかし　ですね。。。


でも、今　たくさん　ならいました！　そして　とても　たのしい　です！Incroyable!


Seriously, with all of these new forms, I think we are moving beyond the beginner stage! わたしたちの日本語は　じょうずに　なりますよ！がんばって！

私の好きな物

私はのうのおんがくが　好きです。

きって　ください：

いいですが、あまり　しずかじゃ　ありません！私はのうをみたいです。でも、のうをみませんでした。でも、私もこのえいがが　好きです：

 おにばばです。とても　とても　いいです。これを　みなければ　なりません！この　のうめん（noh mask) が　あります。

ふゆ休み

私はふゆ休みに ヴァージニアへ　バスで　かえりました。バスは　とても　やすいです、そして　べんり　です。わたしのりょうしんのうちで　あにに　ふたり　あいました。わたしのあには　パリに　すんで　いますから、とても　よかったです。クリスマスで　かぞくに　本をたくさん　もらいました。

これはわたしのおい（nephew)です：

私もともだちに　あいました。わたしたちは　レストランへ　bluegrassおんがくをききに　いきました。それから　あにと　私のかのじょと　ニューヨークへ　バスで　来ました。 ゆきが　ふって　いました。とても　きれい　でした。

ふゆ休みは　とても　たのしかった　です。でも、私は　あまり　よみません　でした。Victor Hugo と Alfred de Vigny と Alfred de Musset と George Sand と Jack Kerouacをよみました。

Alfred de Vigny:

さくぶん ３： 二十ねんのわたし

So here's the deal guys, I started out writing this realistically and honestly. About half way through, I was waxing bitter. That is why it takes a bizarre turn. For those of you who aren't in grad school and don't follow these things obsessively, here's the back story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/education/05languages.html. I think all the grad students are crossing their finger right now...

２０３０ねんに　私はしごとが　いちばん　ほしいです。しごとの中で　たいかぐの先生が　いちばん　よかったですが、２０３０ねんに　だいがくのしごとがありません。だいがくは　お金がありません。けいさいは　とても　わるいですから。じゃ、わたしは　しごとが　ありません。ブルックリンはし（bridge）のしたにいます。わたしは　お金がありませんから、　けっこんしません、でも　わたしは　かのじょとこどもおが二人います。わたしたちはおなかが　すきました。わたしは　わたしのかのじょとこどもおたべます。おいしくないです。それから、フランスへおよぎます。Sarah Palinは　Supreme Dictator for Lifeですから。

Katakana analysis final

Instead of restating what I already put in my draft, I am just going to make some broader conclusions referring back to my original examples. I don't really have any corrections to make to my draft.

I think the most fascinating thing about katakana is that it shows language in motion. In western languages we have all sorts of loan words adopted over the years, many of which we have forgotten are loan words, maybe because we don't write them in a separate alphabet. For example, many English words are actually loan words from French dating back to the Norman conquest and the forced use of French in the court and in legal documents. That's why we have redundant phrases like "aiding and abetting": one is from the French and one is from the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Both were used to ensure everyone would understand. It's also why we say, for example, "Tort law." The examples are endless--I've readed that up to a third of English is actually derived from Norman/French loan words. 

 

And of course, French is derived from all sorts of borrowed words from Latin, Celtic, and Germanic languages, not to mention the more recent influx of English words. And yet, if we look at French now, there is an institutional obsession with the purity of the language and stemming the flow of English words like "E-mail" and "stereo" into modern French. The Académie française strictly defines what is considered a French word and what is not. And they are known to refuse loan words, like "E-mail" and replace them with artificially Frenchified words, in this case "courriel" taken from the Quebecois. They actually fine companies and institutions that use the word "e-mail" in official documents. Most people still say e-mail. http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2003/07/59674

 

 

The Académie Française. It's imposing.

 

Now, why do I make this long digression? Because I think the most fascinating thing about katakana is that it creates a unique liminal space where loan words are indicated as such, but allowed to enter the language and begin the long process of Japaneseification. We've already seen words that seem pretty close to their English equivalent, like "シナモン", as well as words that have been modified such that we don't recognize them at first, like ”パソコン.” When do they stop being loan words? When do they become Japanese words? Thanks to three writing systems, reading Japanese is watching linguistic history in the making.

My second and third examples, 皮フ科 and the postal 〒, also show linguistic history in the making, but in different ways. In the first case, you see the official standardization of kanji  in for example 1981 with joyo kanji, the official 1945 characters established by the Ministry of Education. In the second example, you see the shifting use of the katakana alphabet itself over history. The postal mark is not from a loan word; rather, it is a historical trace leading us back to a time when literacy was less common and katakana was more widespread. It also shows how characters can make the long trek from ideograms (kanji) to phonemes (or in hiragana and katakana's case, syllabaries--symbols representing syllables) to an ambiguous mark that could be syllabary or ideogram, but is probably closest to a brand, like the McDonalds "M" arch, but with more history and less cynical corporate machinations behind it.

At first when we started learning katakana, I was frustrated: why are there two alphabets? Why does it have to be so complicated? Why can't they just write everything in hiragana. Now I am beginning to appreciate how katakana opens the Japanese language to outside influences in a way that, for example, official French is incapable of doing. At the same time, it seems to protect a core of Japanese words with their origins in very old Chinese loan words and innovations particular to the Japanese archipelago. it will be really interesting to see what katakana words are eventually written in hiragana or even kanji and how this decision occurs.

こちらは私のねこ

みんなさん　私は　ねこが　いっびき　います。こちらは　私のねこ。

ねこのなまえは　オリベル (Oliver) です。オランジとしろい　ねこ　です。オリベルは　きれいなねこ　ですが、とても　わるい　ねこ　ですよ。とても　たけだけしい　(ferocious) ねこ　です。

オリベルは　ドアのうえに　です。

 オリベルは　きょねんのふゆ　氷田（field of eternal snow) に　います。とても　ちいさかったです。My dad found him out in the snow on the farm when he was just a kitten. He was about to die from the cold and lack of food.

オリベルは　あたたかい　きゅにゅをいっぽん　のみました。I rubbed him down with some towels and stuck him in a box near the heater. オリベルは　いっしゅかんぐらい　ねました。それから、オリベルは　おげんき　でした。オリベルは　いま　とても　にきやか　ですよ。

オリベルは　さかなが　すき　です。はなも　すき　です。 わたしたちは　ときどき　いっしょうに　ねます。いいですね。

(しゃしん　forthcoming.)

War Guilt

I really hope some of you EALAC students speak German. This is a really interesting article comparing the development of the German and Japanese nation states up until WWII and then how they've dealt with similar issues of guilt as well as modernization and dealing with their imperial legacies since WWII. I'd be really interested to know what some of you think.

http://www.zeit.de/2010/46/Kriegsschuld-Deutschland-Japan?page=1

Here's the first part of this translated (by me, which means it's not a great trans.):

Following the big delusion

Japan and Germany are both burdened with difficult war guilt. [This article is about] how they tried to come to terms with their own histories and with their neighbors.

I. Japan, Germany, and their neighbors: what is similar or the same in our two countries?

We are both nation states. Both were, compared to other nations in the world, misled by imperialism relatively late—beginning in the end of the 19^th century and then brutally and recklessly [sick auswirkend] in the first half of the 20^th century.  This was a tragic factor in the history of our two countries.

I want to give two examples of what I mean with historically late imerialism. If German military imperialism under Hitler took place a hundred years earlier, then comparisons with Napoleon or Caesar or Alexander the Great would have been at hand [nahegelegen, lit. lying nearby].

Of course, all wars, everywhere in the world, and especially wars of conquest, go hand in hand with an increase in brutalities. Comparison is of course impossible, in the case of Germany, with the industrial extermination of millions of European Jews. Germany is, with regards to this point, dissimilarly more heavily burdened than Japan—or the Soviet Union or England, France, or the USA. If the Japanese aggressions, against Korea, Manchuria—and later all of China—and many southeast Asian countries, had taken place 100 or 130 years earlier, the rest of the world would have compared them to the imperialism of the big European nations, with Napoleons conquest of almost all Europe or with the colonial conquests of most European nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. If the slavery of Korean workers and comfort women had taken place 100 years earlier, then it might have been compared with slavery in the USA, which could only be suppressed through the bloody civil war of the 1860s. And the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, if it had taken place 130 years earlier, might have been compared to the bombardment of the Danish capital of Copenhagen by the British navy.

Obviously, the aforementioned significant historical comparisons can never erase the underlying fact: each crime remains a crime. In the process, however, one should put forth an import observation: there is no collective guilt of an entire nation for the crimes of its political and military leaders. Guilt only affects [betrifft] the criminals, not the entire nation. It does not affect [betrifft] therefore the entirety of all Japanese or all German soldiers. There is no collective guilt, but no doubt many personal guilts—especially in the political and military leadership.

Contemporary Japanese and Germans are in no way complicit to the crimes that took place in the Second World War. They are, however, no doubt on both sides responsible for insuring that similar crimes cannot occur again in the future. And it remains our task, in this sense, to appeal to the next generations.

With regard to the economic development of our two countries, we can put forth with satisfaction that both have, since the 1860s achieved enormous technological, industrial, and civilizational development, which at the same time imply opening [morally and politically] and modernization. The catalysts were the so-called Meiji Restoration (which is by the way a misleading word: 1868 was not so much a restoration as a modernization, really a revolution), and on the German side the Fin de siècle particularity of Bismark’s founding of the empire.

We can say today with great satisfaction: Japan and Germany belong to the technological, economic, and intellectual world elite [Weltspitze—apex of the world]. We have both globalized our economies far and wide. In the process, we have become strikingly dependent on imports of oil and other raw material and on maritime traffic [Verkehrswegen]. We are as a result affected in similar ways by the current world recession. Despite that, both nations continuously and structurally achieve trade surpluses, which the nations with trade deficits are not exactly ecstatic about.

To the similarities between the two nations also belongs the important hint of the fact that the populations of both Japan and Germany have been declining for several years as a result of low birthrates. This presents significant consequences. The current debate in Germany over Hartz IV or over Rente mit 67 is only a forerunner of future developments, which are going to play out fully in both nations.