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The Three Japanese Cultures

Hi!  It’s been a while since I posted here, so I have a lot to say.  Truth be told, I don’t really think I’m fond of the blogging method of expressing myself, but I haven’t come up with anything better yet.  I’m working on it, though!  First, an update. The Lily project (https://lovelylilylives.com, in case you didn’t know) is almost a year old now!  In that time, the story has progressed from a sweet but confused girl who didn’t know who she was, to a sweet but confused girl who… Read More »The Three Japanese Cultures

Loanwords

One thing I find fascinating is that a large fraction of the Japanese language is made up of loanwords, I’ve heard about ten percent of their language being of English origin.  But they take our words and adapt them to their syllabic structure, making them Japanese words.  Most English speakers wouldn’t even understand them.  There’s a hilarious music video called “Japanglish” that makes fun of that, and I still can’t hear “ma-ko-do-ru-no-DO” without laughing to myself. English has very few loanwords from Japanese.  There are a few, “skosh”, from “sukoshi”,… Read More »Loanwords

Pronunciation

On a YouTube channel I watch, the person who made a video mispronounced the word “Hitachi”.  He pronounced it “Hai-TA-chi”.  I posted a helpful comment telling him the correct way to pronounce it. Someone “took me to task” for correcting his pronunciation, with the rationalization “we aren’t Japanese”.  Of course, he devolved to calling me stupid in a roundabout way, so I ended the chat  But I’m going to explore that here. He’s right about one fact:  we aren’t Japanese.  But that’s not important.  I think there are circumstances where… Read More »Pronunciation

Japanese Food and Stores in Austin, part 3.

I had some errands to run this morning up in Cedar Park.  On my way back, I decided to stop at Lakeline Mall to see what they had to offer.  I was not disappointed. However, I was indeed disappointed by their “Japanese” fast food restaurant in the food court.  It was kinda sorta Japanese food, but just barely.  I had a chicken bento, and while nothing in it was particularly bad, it was just not of any quality at all.  Basically, Japanese food of mall quality.  I’ll pass. So after that, I… Read More »Japanese Food and Stores in Austin, part 3.