Category: Japanese (日本語)

Unexpected languages

By Simon

My course in Gleann Cholm Cille finished yesterday and I’m on my why home. I’m staying in Dublin tonight and continuing my journey to Bangor tomorrow. The hostel I’m staying in tonight is full of people from all over the world – so far I’ve heard French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and a Scandinavian language being spoken, and well as various varieties of English. I keep thinking that people are speaking Irish when I only half hear them as that’s the language I’m expecting to hear with my brain in Irish mode. So far though, I haven’t heard any Irish at all.

I had a wonderful time at Oideas Gael, met lots of interesting people, and spoke lots of Irish, as well as a few other languages. I’ll certainly be going back there next year. I just need a few days to recover from the late nights, especially from last night, when I was dancing, singing, playing music and talking to people until 3am.

On Thursday during a tea break one of the other students, an Irish woman, came over and starting talking Japanese to me, which was very unexpected. She worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese well, and when she heard that I speak Japanese she decided to speak it to me. As I was in Irish mode and the last thing I was expecting to hear was Japanese, it took me a few moments to realise what language she was speaking. Then when I tried to speak to her in Japanese I found that Irish words were coming to me first and I had to suppress them to let Japanese ones bubble to the surface.

I’m more used to switch between other languages, such as English, Welsh, French and Irish, but this was the first time I’d needed to switch between Irish and Japanese. I’m sure if I needed to do this regularly I would become better at it.

If someone speaks to you in a language you know, but are not expecting to hear, are you able to switch straight into that language?

Archerien

By Simon

An interesting word that came up in my Breton lesson today is archerien, which means police. It caught my attention because it has no obvious connection to the word police, and because it is completely different to the equivalent words in other Celtic languages:

– Welsh: heddlu (“peace force”)
– Cornish: kreslu (“peace host”)
– Irish: gardaí (síochána) (“guards of peace”); póilíní
– Manx: meoiryn shee (“peace keepers/stewards”); poleenyn
– Scottish Gaelic: poileas

The English word police comes from the French police (public order, administration, government), from the Latin polītīa (state, government), from the Greek πολιτεία (politeia – citizenship, government, administration, constitution). It is shares the same root as policy, politics, politician and various other words [source].

Many languages use variants on the word police, e.g. Politsei (Estonian), პოლიცია (polits’ia – Georgian), Polizei (German), पुलिस (pulis – Hindi), پلیس (pulis – Persian), Booliis (Somalia), Policía (Spanish), Pulis (Tagalog), but some do their own thing:

– Bavarian: Kibara
– Chinese: 警察 (jǐngchá); 公安 (gōng’ān)
– Faroese: Løgregla
– Greek: Αστυνομία (Astynomía)
– Hungarian: Rendőrség
– Icelandic: Lögregla
– Japanese: 警察 (keisatsu)
– Korean: 警察 (gyeongchal)
– Thai: ตำรวจ (tảrwc)

Are there other examples of languages with a word unrelated to police for police?

Fantastic octopus wiring!

By Simon

The title of this post is an example of the English sentence that appear on tweets by a certain Mr Nakayama, who aims to introduce Japanese people to “Non-essential English Vocabulary: Words that will never come up in tests”. He makes up these useless but memorable phrases as an alternative to all the books and websites that help people prepare for tests, and they are proving popular with English learners in Japan. Nakayama san has also published a books of these phrases.

More examples include, “My brother has been observing the slugs since he got divorced.” and “What nice barbed wire. Thank you, I knitted it myself”, “The mayor got a lot of shampoo hats by dishonest means.”

The writer of the article where I found this suggests that this might be a good way to learn vocabulary in any language as the bizarreness of the sentences makes them relatively easy to remember. Quite a few of them feature somewhat crude language, though that probably makes them memorable as well.

Best languages to study

By Simon

According to an article I came across in the Daily Telegraph today, the best / most useful languages to study, for those in the UK, are:

1. German
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Mandarin
5. Polish
6. Arabic
7. Cantonese
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. Portuguese

The reasons why each language is useful vary quite a bit. For example Brazil is the sixth largest economy in the world and will be hosting the next (football) World Cup and Summer Olympics; apparently Russia is the UK’s fastest-growing major export market; and Poland is the largest consumer market in the EU. Languages valued by UK employers includes German, French, Spanish, Polish and Mandarin.

If a language is useful or in demand by employers, that’s quite a good reason to study it, but if you that’s your only reason for choosing a particular language, studying it might seem like hard work. If you also have an interest in the language itself, the culture of those who speak and/or the places where it’s spoken, you’re more likely to enjoy your studies and became proficient in the language.

Have you studied any languages solely because you thought they might be useful?

One of the comments on the article suggest that it is better to study a vocational subject such as science, medicine or law and to study a language as a secondary subject, rather than just focusing on a langauge. Another comment states that a university in a language or languages isn’t particular useful if you don’t have other skills.

Scottish adventures

By Simon

I’ve been in Scotland since last Saturday, mainly at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye. I’m doing a course in Gaelic mouth music (puirt à beul) and waulking songs (òrain luaidh) with Christine Primrose, and am having a wonderful time.

There are eight of us in the singing class – some from Scotland, some from England, one from Japan and one from Sardinia. The ones from Japan and Sardinia are both professional singers, and earlier today we were treated to some lovely songs from Okinawa, which sound quite similar to Irish traditional songs.

I’ve been speaking quite a bit of Scottish Gaelic, and find that I can now understand most of what I hear in Gaelic and have relatively complex conversations – so my Gaelic has improved a lot since I was last here four years ago. When I don’t know how to say something in Scottish Gaelic I try saying it in Irish and it’s usually understood, though not always.

I’ve also spoken some French, German, Czech and Welsh here, and quite a bit of Japanese. My Japanese is very rusty, but it’s starting to come back. It’s great to have opportunities to speak so many languages 🙂

Honchos

By Simon

I thought that the word honcho as in head honcho (big leader / big cheese) came from Japanese. The OED and the Online Etymology Dictionary both say that it comes from the Japanese word 班長 (hanchō) or squad / team leader, and that it was borrowed by American servicemen in Japan and Korea in 1947-1953.

However, according to The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky, which I’m reading at the moment, the word honcho is a version of the Basque word jauntxo /xaunʧo/, a wealthy. powerful, rural landowner – a word with a ironic, negative undertone. From jaun (sir / lord / god). This sounds kind of plausible, though I haven’t found any other sources which make the same claim.

The book is interesting and includes quite a few bits of Basque language, and even some recipes. It is also somewhat biased in favour of the Basques.

ウェールズ語

By Simon

ウェールズ語の基本

According to a report I found today, a textbook for Japanese people wanting to learn Welsh entitled ウェールズ語の基本 (Wēruzugo no Kihon – “Basic Welsh”) by Dr Yoshifumi Nagata (永田喜文) and Takeshi Koike (小池剛史) was recently published.

Dr Nagata teaches Welsh culture at universities in Japan and developed an interest for the Welsh language through the Welsh poetry of R. S. Thomas. While trying to learn Welsh in Japan he was frustrated by the lack of material in Japanese so decided to produce the textbook. Takeshi Koike learnt Welsh in Lampeter and speaks and writes it fluently and has published several works on the Welsh language.

This isn’t the only Welsh language course in Japanese though: on Amazon.co.jp I found 毎日ウェールズ語を話そう (Let’s Talk Welsh Every Day) by Hiroshi Mizutani (水谷宏), which was published in 1996.

Do you know of any other resources in Japanese for Welsh learners?

Oes llawer o bobl yn dysgu Cymraeg yn Siapan?

日本ではウェールズ語を勉強する人がたくさんいますか？

Ear training

By Simon

Most days I listen to online radio stations in a variety of languages – at the moment I listen mainly to Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh, and also to French and Czech, and occasionally to Mandarin and Cantonese. This keeps these languages ticking over in my head, and helps me learn more of them. With the exception of Czech and Cantonese, I can understand them all well, or at least fairly well, and can often guess the meanings of unknown words from the context. Even with Czech and Cantonese, which I don’t know as well, I have a basic idea of what they’re talking about.

Yesterday I decided to listen to some Japanese and fired up the radio player on NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster. To my surprise what came out of the speakers was first Spanish, then Indonesian, Vietnamese and Burmese. I checked the website and discovered that they cycle through 17 different languages in their international broadcasts. In each language they have news from Japan and around the world, and it’s possible to get some idea of the stories they’re covering even in completely unfamiliar languages from the names of places, people, countries.

So if you feel in need of a good linguistic workout, have a listen to NHK World or a similar multilingual radio station. Also, after listening to languages you haven’t got round to learning yet, the ones you’re studying will seem much easier to understand.

Christmas

By Simon

Nadolig Llawen
Joyeux Noël
聖誕快樂
Nollaig shona doibh
¡Feliz Navidad!
Nollick Ghennal
Bo Nadal
Nollaig chridheil
メリークリスマス
Buon Natale
Frohe Weihnachten
Bon Nadal
Veselé vánoce
and Merry Christmas!