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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   3070 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 28, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I bought Alan Moore's new book of short stories and so far I'm not that into it. It's rare for me to not like anything Moorish. But I bought another book Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man by Steven Alpert and I like it a lot. Alpert is the highest ranking non-Japanese guy at Studio Ghibli and he's got lots of interesting stories about Japanese business culture and stuff. Did you know that most non-Japanese men speak Japanese like a woman? According to the book it's because most Japanese language teachers are women.

Also, here's the rationalist steam group, if you're interested:

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/astralcodexten

Did you know that most non-Japanese men speak Japanese like a woman? According to the book it's because most Japanese language teachers are women.

This does not line up with my experience at all, unless the meaning here is just "more like Japanese women speak than like Japanese men speak". I believe most Japanese language programs start out teaching a polite, gender-neutral form of Japanese, later moving on to other forms as the student becomes more and more fluent. This has the effect of causing non-native speakers to "default" to this particular form since, being the form they learned first, it is the form they are usually the most comfortable with. Japanese women tend to use this form more often than Japanese men and thus non-Japanese men speak Japanese like women in this sense, and I could see an argument that this form being the default starting form is a result of most Japanese language teachers being women. However, there are also many grammatical constructs and vocabulary that are nearly exclusively used by (EDIT: men or women) one gender or the other. You won't typically see non-Japanese men using the ones used by Japanese women unless they are intentionally trying to sound like a woman.

Interesting...

While I can't actually speak/read/understand Japanese having only studied for a dozen hours, to make things clear for others, an example that stands out to me (with nearly zero comprehension) is the issue that "Watashi wa [name]" is one of the first sentences most learn in Japanese, it's for introducing yourself, it's "I am [name]", so lot's of guys stick with "Watashi"=Personal pronoun, but it's fairly gendered and situational. Good table just above the linked section as to usage percentage in context, with explanations below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pronouns#List_of_Japanese_personal_pronouns

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