What the Hell, Japanese
by Kiki Kawasaki
Hello there again, hopefully. If not, go back to a previous post or get lost. Previously on What The Hell, the author, Kiki, has explained how much english language does not make any sense such as pluralization and pronouns. Kiki, however, does have a confession to make. The english language is not that bad. There are languages that are worse and one of them happened to be Kiki’s mother tongue. It is the Japanese language. It is unpopular language to learn. The ratio of the native speaker of English to non-native speaker is almost one to three. That of Japanese is one thousand to one. How depressing. No one’s learning it. Here’s a reason. In Japanese, they use three types of writing system. Two of which have over 100 letters. The other has 2133 letters for daily usage. They have honorific that is distinctive to that of Indo-European languages. In French, which you are supposed to know, if you are Canadian, they use vous instead of tu as honorific. In Japanese, they use completely different verbs and pronouns. Japanese people do not use pronouns but names. Even when one is referring to a person to whom they are talking, they do not use “you.” If you fail to use their name, they are terribly offended. It would be shame for a Canadian to offend someone. Who would expect an offensive Canadian to exist. It is because they assume that one has forgotten their names. Also, they have feminine and mascuine pronouns of 1st person as we have she and he for 3rd person in english and there are over 20 pronouns for 1st person and 2 person whereby Kiki chooses either feminine or masculine “I” depending on a person to whom Kiki is talking to or a mood in which Kiki is on a day. Speaking of different verbs used as honorific, we have three different verbs for eat by which Kiki does not mean “devour,” or “swallow.” They ahve those words too. What Kiki mean by which is that there are eat (referring to the listener, superior), eat(referring to the speaker, inferior), eat (informal). As you all are supposed to know, in French, one owuld say “Je mange,” as to say eat; “vous mangez,” as to say you eat. When referring to a listener, you are able to show resspect by using vous instead of tu but you are not able to do so when referring to speaker, oneself. Thus Japanese people use degraded version of saying eat so that the listener is respected correspondingly. And there are preternaturally a lot of homophones. Examples of which are it’s, its; eight, ate; they’re, there. Kiki does not mean to fink here owing to the fact that there is already a finker in writing major but it is quite clear that there is a difference between it’s and its though a half of writing majors, the writing majors did not know the difference. One of whom said “I thought that it should be always it’s with an apostrophe.” The reason why this had to be aforementioned/finked is because in Japanese, there is a letter “日.” This could be pronounced 日(tachi)日(hi)日(bi)日(nitsi)日(jitsu). This is called heteronyms. It means that it spells the same but is pronounced differently. There is a catastrophic number of homophones in Japanese and one of the homophone has 48 meanings. So Kiki is quite sure that the half of writing majors would never learn Japanese.
Hello there again, hopefully. If not, go back to a previous post or get lost. Previously on What The Hell, the author, Kiki, has explained how much english language does not make any sense such as pluralization and pronouns. Kiki, however, does have a confession to make. The english language is not that bad. There are languages that are worse and one of them happened to be Kiki’s mother tongue. It is the Japanese language. It is unpopular language to learn. The ratio of the native speaker of English to non-native speaker is almost one to three. That of Japanese is one thousand to one. How depressing. No one’s learning it. Here’s a reason. In Japanese, they use three types of writing system. Two of which have over 100 letters. The other has 2133 letters for daily usage. They have honorific that is distinctive to that of Indo-European languages. In French, which you are supposed to know, if you are Canadian, they use vous instead of tu as honorific. In Japanese, they use completely different verbs and pronouns. Japanese people do not use pronouns but names. Even when one is referring to a person to whom they are talking, they do not use “you.” If you fail to use their name, they are terribly offended. It would be shame for a Canadian to offend someone. Who would expect an offensive Canadian to exist. It is because they assume that one has forgotten their names. Also, they have feminine and mascuine pronouns of 1st person as we have she and he for 3rd person in english and there are over 20 pronouns for 1st person and 2 person whereby Kiki chooses either feminine or masculine “I” depending on a person to whom Kiki is talking to or a mood in which Kiki is on a day. Speaking of different verbs used as honorific, we have three different verbs for eat by which Kiki does not mean “devour,” or “swallow.” They ahve those words too. What Kiki mean by which is that there are eat (referring to the listener, superior), eat(referring to the speaker, inferior), eat (informal). As you all are supposed to know, in French, one owuld say “Je mange,” as to say eat; “vous mangez,” as to say you eat. When referring to a listener, you are able to show resspect by using vous instead of tu but you are not able to do so when referring to speaker, oneself. Thus Japanese people use degraded version of saying eat so that the listener is respected correspondingly. And there are preternaturally a lot of homophones. Examples of which are it’s, its; eight, ate; they’re, there. Kiki does not mean to fink here owing to the fact that there is already a finker in writing major but it is quite clear that there is a difference between it’s and its though a half of writing majors, the writing majors did not know the difference. One of whom said “I thought that it should be always it’s with an apostrophe.” The reason why this had to be aforementioned/finked is because in Japanese, there is a letter “日.” This could be pronounced 日(tachi)日(hi)日(bi)日(nitsi)日(jitsu). This is called heteronyms. It means that it spells the same but is pronounced differently. There is a catastrophic number of homophones in Japanese and one of the homophone has 48 meanings. So Kiki is quite sure that the half of writing majors would never learn Japanese.