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From: das@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: A second Try at Japanese Look-Alike Sentences
Message-ID: <8176@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 24-Dec-85 19:21:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.8176
Posted: Tue Dec 24 19:21:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Dec-85 04:08:37 EST
References: <1791@uwmacc.UUCP> <839@h-sc1.UUCP> <1809@uwmacc.UUCP> <6711@boring.UUCP> <1847@uwmacc.UUCP> <2541@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Reply-To: das@ucla-cs.UUCP (David Smallberg)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 39

In article <2541@sdcrdcf.UUCP> barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) writes:
 [Mark Edwards:]
>>Ima watashi no kanajo wa nihon ni modotte, juku o oshiete iru. Kanajo
>>wa mochiron nihonjin desu. Kanajo wa sugu america ni kaette kuru to 
>>omoimasu.
>
>This group seems to mean, "Now my lady has returned to Japan; I am studying
>at a private school.  She was certainly Japanese.  I think she will someday
>return to America."

No, I think he means that his girlfriend is teaching at a private school.

There's something weird going on here.  I, a native speaker of English, knew
almost immediately what he was saying when he said
>(nihonjin no kanajo ga iru mo)
despite the errors, while a native speaker of Japanese didn't understand it.
Perhaps the context helped -- remember, he was explaining why he was
studying Japanese:
> Whats my execuse ? Two years in Japan (knew nothing before I went).
> (nihonjin no kanajo ga iru mo.) 
Now, why did I recognize "kanajo" as a mistransliteration of "kanojo", while
a native speaker did not?  And how come despite the syntactic error of his
using a pronoun instead of a noun, I keyed on the semantic essence, "female",
and understood what he meant, while a Japanese was confused?

Would a native English speaker be confused by the following written exchange,
or would s/he understand it despite the errors?

   Q:  So why are you studying English, Taroo?
   A:  I lived two years in America.  (too, there is an American she.)

[This is a written exchange, so Taroo's not raising his little finger.  :-) ]

Someone postulated that English speakers understand malformed English because
there are so many English speakers for whom English is not their native
language.  Is there some way that this linguistic "forgiveness" carries over
to English speakers using other languages, then?

-- David Smallberg, das@locus.ucla.edu, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das