Re: "A fake form of old-fashioned Japanese speech supposed to represent the old style of the language is used."

Richard VanHouten wrote:
Zhen Lin wrote:


aesthete8@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:


It's something I've always suspected, but since my Japanese is not very
good, I was never certain.



Well, it is to be expected. After all, we can barely understand
Shakespeare as it is written, let alone as it is pronounced.


Which reminds me that it has probably been several years since I last
mentioned here my old experiment of throwing "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore
art thou Romeo?" as a zero-point bonus English-to-Japanese translation
problem in third-year (mostly graduate students) Japanese quizzes.

But probably not long enough yet to do it again.

Bart


I by no means would place myself so high as a third year student in
skill, but how is this?

ロミオ、ロミオ、どうしてあなたの名前はロミオでなくちゃかな

Better than all but one of the roughly 100 (unfortunately, I didn't do
this very scientifically) students--about 2/3 graduates--to whom I gave
the test.

Since no one misunderstands "the whys and the wherefores" or "[Hey, you
ancient mariner with a grizzly beard,] wherefore stoppest thou me?" it
is my surmise that it is only because someone long ago made an
oft-repeated joke subsequently not recognized as such that most people
seem to think it means どちらにいられるの (blanking out on the following
"A rose by any other name...").

Bart
.

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