Re: subjective feelings about actions?

From: necoandjeff (spam_at_schrepfer.com)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 07:28:12 GMT

"Sean Gilbertson" <sean@bluebeard.org> wrote in message
news:2004083100423616807%sean@bluebeardorg...
> On 2004-08-31 00:16:45 -0500, "necoandjeff" <spam@schrepfer.com> said:
>
> > "Sean Gilbertson" <sean@bluebeard.org> wrote in message
> > news:2004083023211275249%sean@bluebeardorg...
> >> On 2004-08-30 19:29:25 -0500, "necoandjeff" <spam@schrepfer.com> said:
> >>
> >>> "Kevin Wayne Williams" <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote in message
> >>> news:10j7gml78ah7eb1@news.supernews.com...
> >>>> necoandjeff wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> "Kevin Wayne Williams" <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote in message
> >>>>> news:10j79a55o5dtkab@news.supernews.com...
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> necoandjeff wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> "Kevin Wayne Williams" <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote in message
> >>>>>>> news:10j758ol9afr803@news.supernews.com...
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Sean wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> I was giving myself a bit of practice by writing a short email
to
> > a
> >>>>>>>>> friend in Japanese. I was going to ask him "Do you want to come
> > over
> >>>>>>>>> to my house today?" but I didn't get very far.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Try looking up the -tai conjugation of verbs, and see if you come
> > up
> >>>>>>>> with any inspiration.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I think it would be a bit unusual to express "Do you want to come
> > over
> >>>>>
> >>>>> to my
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>> house today?" with a -tai verb, unless the -tai verb was with
> > respect
> >>> to
> >>>>>>> your own wishes.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> My first inclination would have been something like
> > 僕の家へ遊びに行きた
> >>>>>> いですか?, and I might use
> > 僕の家へ遊びに行くことはいいですか？
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I was taught to use -tai forms for my own wishes and those of
second
> >>>>>> parties, and -tagaru when the wishes were those of a third party.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> How far off are those rules from what you consider to be normal?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> First, you don't need the personal pronoun. It is clear from the
> > context
> >>>>> that it is your house since, if it were anyone else's house, you
> >>> wouldn't
> >>>>> call it uchi.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Second, from your perspective they would kuru to your house not iku.
> >>>> Wouldn't that depend on where I was in relationship to the listener
> > when
> >>>> I asked? If we were at the office or school, wouldn't 行く be
> >>>> appropriate? (Serious question: I always struggle with perspective on
> >>>> coming and going).
> >>>
> >>> This is difficult in any language. I think if you were with the person
> > and
> >>> suggesting that you go to your house right then, you would use iku.
But
> > most
> >>> other situations would probably be kuru. When talking about some point
> > in
> >>> the future, the presumption is that you would already be there so they
> > would
> >>> be kuruing from your perspective. I think even in English we would
tend
> > to
> >>> say "come over" even when actually with the person wouldn't we?
> >>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The problem is, even though "want" is involved here, you wouldn't
> >>> typically
> >>>>> express this request as "do you want to..."
> >>>>
> >>>> I guess I see a difference between "Would you like to go/come to my
> >>>> house?" and "Please come to my house." For "Please come to my house",
I
> >>>> like all of yours and Juha's suggestions.
> >>>
> >>> Right, but the point is you wouldn't really ask if someone wants to
come
> >>> over like we might in English. This is an example of a situation where
> > the
> >>> direct translation approach just breaks down.
> >>>
> >>> Jeff
> >>
> >> This is the part I'm very interested in. I would like to know if the
> >> culture exerted a force such that the actual language only allows you
> >> to ask it in this way? Or, are there colloquialisms that have a more
> >> western approach? I'm fine with either, I just want to know.
> >
> > In my experience, you could also ask in the positive with the right
> > intonation such as "uchi ni kuru?" but it would be highly unusual to
invite
> > someone in the Western way by referring to the invitee's wants. You'll
> > notice that none of the other examples given by Cindy (an NSoJ) referred
to
> > the wants or desires of the invitee either. I'm not saying there is
never a
> > situation where you could refer to whether someone wants to come to your
> > house with a -tai verb, but just that you wouldn't typically invite
someone
> > over with such a construction.
> >
> > Jeff
>
> It's interesting to learn a language in such a way that you have to
> consider approaches to certain situations, rather than just trying to
> convert an English phrase to a Japanese one. It seems to be that way
> for commands as well, but I haven't gotten that far; I've been jumping
> around a bit.
>
> I don't know a whole lot of kanji, so some of the more verbose replies
> I haven't sunk into yet, but I got some of the short phrases. Also,
> some of the replies were encoded in ISO 2022-JP, which threw me off.
> This has already been an educational thread!

If you could measure the extent to which one language can simply be
translated into another successfully, Japanese to English and vice versa
would score quite poorly. Focus on learning the way Japanese say things and
don't try to teach yourself Japanese by learning phrases that you have
created with by doing straight translations using a dictionary (and BTW, do
a Google search on some of my past posts regarding the pitfalls of eiwa and
waei dictionaries.) I know this isn't what you want to hear, and it will
slow down your learning, but it is the only way to learn Japanese properly.

And I would suggest right now figuring out how to deal with your Unicode/ISO
2022-JP issue. As others have pointed out ISO 2022-JP is the standard for
this newsgroup and that is what people post in predominantly. Most people
here will be able to read posts in Unicode because it isn't hard to
configure your browser or mail reader to switch based on the headers. But
some cannot read Unicode at all, which is why it is considered a bit rude to
post in it. At best, your posts simply won't reach a few key members of this
NG. But if you are having trouble *reading* messages that are posted in
SHIFT JIS, despite the fact that the headers clearly denote the encoding,
figure out how to fix it or you will miss out on most of the Japanese posted
here.

Jeff

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