[TAG] Japanese help

[Kat Tanaka]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 03:20:10PM +0000, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
> Kat Tanaka wrote:
> >On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 11:17:16AM -0800, Mike Orr wrote:
> >
> >>Perhaps look for an expression that's similar in English and Japanese
> >>rather than the closest translation to "I love you".  I don't know
> >>Japanese but maybe something like "LIsa is my favorite" or "Lisa is
> >>the one".  Even if it doesn't say all of "I love you", she'll remember
> >>the unspoken part every time she sees it.  And when a Japanese guest
> >>sees the scroll, maybe they'll think, "I wouldn't say that but it
> >>sounds pretty cool."
> >
> >
> >While you're not far wrong in principle, I think what you're missing is 
> >that any sort of declaration like that is by its very nature (of being a 
> >public declaration) somewhat juvenile from a Japanese perspective. It's 
> >not just about the wording.
> 
> "We have to include a lot of adjectives and adverbs to get across 
> details of people's feelings, while Japanese verbs often contain these 
> subtleties already. One result of this is that Westerners make strange 
> blunders in Japanese because they are unaware of which emotion the verb 
> they have chosen conveys."
> 
> Something like that?
> 
> (From "Japanese for the Western Brain", 
> http://www.mindspring.com/~kimall/Japanese/)

Sorta. Ish.

It's not that "love" has unusual subtext, it's the action of declaration 
is sort of...Hmm. It's like "I'm going to kiss you now". That would be 
weird, yes?


Kat
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