Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!barryg
From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Lookalike Japanese, Mispronunciations
Message-ID: <2547@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Dec-85 07:49:32 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2547
Posted: Sat Dec 28 07:49:32 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Dec-85 05:36:29 EST
References: <161@aero.ARPA> <926@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Organization: System Development Corporation R&D, Santa Monica
Lines: 43
Keywords: Proper Nouns, Idioms

Re "Juki-o oboete iru" deciphered as "I teach at a private academy":

"Teach" is oshiete. Oboeru means to try to learn.
But the -o marks juku as the object of the verb, as if it were lessons.
What's worse, I think oboeru is intransitive.

"Oboete iru" does NOT mean "I am learning."
The Japan Times' Nihongo Notes (volume 4) explains that "obote iru" means
"to remember" (and I think also to memorize).

So the above sentence would mean "I remember the private academy."
Sounds anomalous according to the definition recently quoted.
	*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
I think one reason English speakers deciphered the lookalike sentence while
the Japanese speaker didn't may relate to our smaller vocabulary to search.
I know that the more Japanese I learn, the harder I find it to translate
a phrase quoted (frequently imprecisely) by a friend without ideographs.

For instance, I remember when looking at "kanajo" (really "kanojo") the
possibilities that flitted through my mind included:
	kana-jo (syllabary-female):  an esoteric word for syllabary signs,
referring to the fact that during the Heian period women wrote in kana,
men in ideographs.
	a misspelling of kanai-jo:  a redundant term for a wife
	a misspelling of kanai-ju-:  one's whole family

If I knew more Japanese, I could have thought of more things.

When I was helping my mother learn a little Japanese before her trip there,
I told her that every time she mispronounced a word, she wouldn't be
speaking gibberish; she'd be saying something else.   Then I'd drag out
the dictionary and tell her what she'd said.  Seward tells a hysterical
anecdote about a westerner who was a Mr. Sakamoto's business adviser (ko- mon)
but who introduced himself to some Japanese businessmen as "Sakamoto-san no
komon" (short o), Mr. Sakamoto's anus.  A Japanese equivalent of Sesame
Street I watched there showed such malapropisms as asking for a bowl of
meishi (business cards) instead of meshi (rice) at a snack stand.
The worse case I know is that of a friend who tried to refer to a sushi
chef idiomatically but adapted the mispronunciation of "itame" instead
of the correct pronunciation of "itamae", thereby calling the chef a
wooden plank bastard instead of one who stands before a wooden plank.

--Lee Gold