Junbungaku: "April Issue of Asymptote Has a Lot of J-Lit"

So I was reading the Japanese literary news site Junbungaku (which you guys should check out, by the way) and he mentioned that the April issue of the journal Asymptote has some translations of Japanese works. If you're interested in Japanese literature that in itself is cool - yay for free internet journals! But guess what? This is Japanese language study fodder, too. How, you ask? I will let Junbungaku's Will E. tell you:

"What I love about Asymptote is that it also has the original Japanese text online for your reading enjoyment, and sometimes there’s even an audio recording of someone reading the original Japanese text as well."

 

It's for real, guys! 

Check it out! I gotta head to work.

Accents of the Doctor

A bunch of clips from the "Fires of Pompeii" episode of Doctor Who. The Doctor and Donna go to Ancient Rome and due to the translation prowess of the Tardis, everyone seems to speak in English. The funny thing is that when either Donna or the Doctor says something in Latin, it sounds like Welsh or Celtic to the Romans.

When I hear the various English accents in Doctor Who I can recognize that there are differences, but I have no context for them regionally/geographically. So I read the comments of this post from Language Log about the 10th Doctor's northern accent with some interest. Besides the comment that made mention of the Doctor Who episode above, I found this one, which I thought was funny:

 And this one, which made me repeat 'pen' and 'pin' to myself until I couldn't even tell if I was speaking English any longer:

I'd heard about the pen/pin merger and come across it most in my mother's speech (her family is from the Texas/Arkansas border and thereabouts). For myself the merge of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before the nasal stops ([m], [n], and [ŋ]) doesn't seem to be an established rule. I call my cousin /bɛn/ and I write with a /pɛn/, but I order from a either /mɪnju/ or /mɛnju/ at /wɪndi:z/. It seems like I switch between them. This may be a result of living in very international environment as a child and a pretty diverse area culture/language/accent wise here in south central Texas, or maybe because my father's side of the family has a kind of 'chicano' accent (yes, my grandma pronounces 'chair' kind of like 'Cher').

I don't remember how my friends up in upstate New York pronounced words like 'pen' or 'Wendy's'. The only example of glaringly differing accents I remember is the Reese's episode I had as a freshman. We were in the drama house watching the local improv group and my roommate said, "It smells like Reese's in here!" She pronounced it /ri:si:z/. In the noisy room I misheard her and thought she said, "it smells like feces in here!" I'm sure my reaction puzzled her. (I pronounce it /ri:sɪz/, by the way, like the commercial.)

Up to 2 Years or a 2 Million Yen Fine for Illegal Downloading

I have to stop looking at the internet a good 30 minutes before I have to leave for work, otherwise things like this happen. Now I'm gonna post a little bit about possible Anti-Downloading bills in Japan and end up leaving ten minutes late.

I saw the headline on Rocket News, who got it from the Chuunichi Newspaper. The Rocket News head line is: 違法ダウンロードに罰則を科す法案が10月1日に施行される可能性浮上！　ネットの声「日本終わるの？」 I just skimmed the article but it seems like illegally downloading something could net you up to 2 years in prison or a 2 million yen fine. It hasn't  been implemented or anything yet but has a high chance of passing in the Japanese Diet? I put a question mark because I'll have to read it better later. 

Time for work now, though.

LOLcats... en español y 日本語！

So the Spanish learning site Zambombazo has some "Miáucoles" or Lolcats for your enjoyment. Despite the very little Spanish that remains in my head, I still managed to find them hilarious.

Miáucoles: Lolcats en español: qrs hcr algo?
"Wanna do smthg?" "No." "Me nthr."

Miáucoles: Lolcats en español: Gatiposa
"Look, I'm a Catterfly'

So I got to wondering if they have LOLcats in Japanese, too. I didn't look that hard - I just typed LOLcatって何？ and LOLcat日本語で into Google and found "LOLCATS IN JAPANESE". The images are in English with a translation below.

美しさは罪

I was interested to see how they would translate the "I iz, I can haz" bits, but the translation is pretty straight-forward. In one of the Spanish examples above they use a distorted/abbreviated version of Spanish ("Todos los miáucoles publicamos un lolcat con un texto escrito intencionalmente con una ortografía y sintaxis fuera del español estándar, con verbos extrañamente conjugados y también con abreviaturas SMS en español”), but I don't think any of the Japanese translations are purposefully distorted like LolCat(ese?) is. Actually, they usually have the proper English version along with the Japanese, as you can see above.

I do remember having a なめんなよ免許書 when I was in high school though. It had a yankee-looking cat and his girlfriend with his bike, if I remember correctly. It probably looked a lot like this one:

なめんなよ　免許証2

I couldn't understand much Japanese back then, but it reminds me a little of LOLcats. I wonder what happened to it...

Translation Exercise: 「わたしが殺せないところまで成長した子供よ。ありがとう」

「わたしが殺せないところまで成長した子供よ。ありがとう」, from 『女のセリフ１２０』 by 伊藤雅子 ( 未来社, 1995)

"Thank You, My Child, for Growing So Big I Can't Kill You"

The rest of Hoshiko Kanazawa's poem, "Kisetsu", continues: "To protect you meant that I could kill you - what a weight to bear."

Agata Hikari's short story, "The A-Ha-Ha Expedition", features similar words: "Newborns... seem like they could be smashed to pieces by the slight pressure of an overeager embrace. I shudder to think that death is, in reality, so near at hand - my hand  could bring about such horror."

She continues, "I wonder if I could properly embrace them, if I could hug them without suffocating them."

But Yuriko Oka expresses a different point of view in  "I Am 12 Years Old": "What plagues me most since the death of my son is the thought that I didn't hug him tightly enough."

These words run completely contrary to each other, but both strike a chord in a mother's heart. You fear holding them too tightly, you blame yourself for maybe not embracing them tightly enough. A mother who has devoted herself to the upbringing of her child  is always wavering between these two extremes. 

The weight of the child in my arms is the weight of that life. Or perhaps, for this mother who hangs her own life on that of her child, it is the weight of self-judgement.

Luna Sea: "SHADE" and "TIME IS DEAD" English Translation

Luna Sea is Japanese band that began in the visual kei vein in the late 1980's. They're very influential in that scene, though they'd pretty much moved on from that style by the time they broke up in 2000. They re-formed in 2010 for a world reunion tour, and released their first new single since disbandment just this past March. The members are J (bass) and Inoran (guitar), who were founding members, and Shinya (drums), Sugizo (guitar/violin) and Ryuichi (vocal). They have a facebook and all.

The first song I heard of theirs was the 'never-give-up' ballad "UP TO YOU." It's still my all-time favorite Luna Sea song, but I'll introduce you to some others here.

"SHADE"
By the way (or b-t-dubs, as the young say): do you ever listen to Japanese music and the う's start to sound like French ue's? Almost like い's? I notice it a little in this song, but much more in the next one.

招かれた絶望　エナメルの夜に ガラスの心崩れ落ちて　残ったものは…  壊れた砂時計　悲しみを刻む 冷たく包み込む　あなたのような影  この苦しみを呉れてやる この悲しみを呉れてやる この苦しみを呉れてやる　Ah  Throw a shadow on me

Despair visited me, one black night  My glass heart shattered and all that's left is...  A broken hourglass, marking my sadness  A shadow like you, engulfing me I'll let you taste this bitterness  I'll let you taste this sadness  I'll let you taste this bitterness Ah Throw a shadow on me

"TIME IS DEAD" (the 'reboot' version and the 90's version, which starts about 4:00). I like how they both have the same pose in the thumbnails, ふふふ. The lyrics on the lyric sites are a little different that what he sings at two moments (like for one he isn't saying 仕掛けが, he's saying けりかりくあ or something I dunno I listened to it too many times to care anymore), so I kind of just went with whatever I thought made more sense. I like corrections if you have some.

崩れ行く 現実は 残された 死を選ぶ  思い出せない 歯型の跡に気がふれる  土に帰れば 幸せは来る? 仕掛けが 生れ  月の光を すべてを 引き換えに微笑んでいた  思い出せない 歯型の跡に気がふれる 土に帰れば 幸せは来る?  仕掛けが 続き  雨を降らせる ネ・フ・テ・ュ・ス 毒を降らせる ア・ヌ・ビ・ス  捕らわれた 人々は 禁断の 赤い実を齧じる  思い出せない アダムとイブの誤ちが  歴史のフィルム 終わらせていた  仕掛けが 終わる  その目が閉じる時 ネ・フ・テ・ュ・ス  もう戻れない ア・ヌ・ビ・ス  「月の光の下 終る」

Our crumbling reality chooses death, all that remains  We are all driven mad by these teethmarks that no one can remember  If we return to dust will we be happy?  The game has begun  We laughed in exchange for the moonlight, for everything  We are all driven mad by these teethmarks that no one can remember  If we return to dust will we be happy?  The game continues  Nepthys brings us rain   Anubis brings us poison  The captives nibble at the forbidden red fruit  The sin of Adam and Eve, lost to our memory, ended the reel of history  The game is over  When those eyes close Nepthys  We can't go back Anubis  "It ends beneath the moonlight"

Where does the 丸 in boys' names come from?

I'd noticed that 丸 is attached to some boys' names, or boy animals, or manly object, especially in folklore. I just assumed it was a marker to indicate boydom or something. However, while watching 世界のみんなに聞いてみた today, I learned that the 丸 apparently comes from お丸. Let me paste the definition of お丸 from gogen-allguide.com below for you:

おまるとは、幼児や病人が用いる、持ち運びのできる便器。

 Yes. The　丸 comes from a Japanese word for bedpan or chamber pot. Why on earth would you attach that to your child's name?  Or a really cool sword? Or a beloved dog?

The custom didn't stem from angry parents who bitterly called their babies "Stinky Poo Pot" though. It seems that the act of adding 丸 to your child's name kept him safe from monsters, who apparently, like humans, curl their lips in disgust and turn tail at the thought of chamber pots and the contents within. Not a bad strategy.