From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: fj.misc
Subject: Re: complement/compliment (was NG for gaijin topics.) (English)
Date: 23 Jul 92 01:21:58 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

ishikawa@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp (Chiaki Ishikawa) writes:

>Dear David,
>Thank you for the long response you posted.

Hope it wasn't tooooo long. I have a hard time stopping once I get started :-)

>>>>>> On 22 Jul 92 01:32:05 GMT, davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) said:

>Dave> ishikawa@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp (Chiaki Ishikawa) writes:

>Dave> I grew up in the suburbs of NYC. My father was from Missour and my
>Dave> mother grew up in Canada so I never had a strong NY accent. I've
>Dave> also lived in Iowa, Texas for a year or so and California for 11
>Dave> years. Also, England for 6 months, France, Turkey, .... Phillipines,
>Dave> etc. So I don't teach them any particular dialect. 
>	Wow... Long list of places. I had a few friend who moved
>around all over Japan, but yours certainly is a wide list.

I was what was called a WT (World Traveler) for quite some years, 
meaning I just drifed around....

[* para about Anglo-Saxon omitted *]

>I understand what you are saying (after all I myself have had already
>tons of lessons/self learning to last another life time if there is
>one!). However, you might explain this better to someone unaware of
>this by using "small words" versus "big words", or using a political
>column article and a quote from a folksy politician instead of sports
>article. I think sports articles are less wordy (less wordier?) than
>high-brow articles you find in politics pages. I would think that the
>usage of "leg" in the quoted article was quite rhythmic and good. 

Yes, I could use 'small words' versus 'big words'. But I've found
that most of the people who come to the groups I lead understand
'Anglo-Saxon'. And I only want to demonstrate the phenomena which I
can do with one para from an article on the sports page. (Comparing
articles would take a long time!)

>(The same difference exists with written Japanese and spoken Japanese,
>of course.) 

I would guess. So in a way all I'm trying to do is help people speak
English in the same style in which they speak their native language
(short words, short phrases, etc.).  For example, in the beginning
when I ask them "How to you order a cup of coffee in NYC?", many
people have trouble and want to make up sentences like

   Excuse me, but may I have a cup of coffee?

But when I ask them how they would do that in Umeda, they say
"Cohi". So then I ask them, "How do you say 'cohi' in English?"....
They usually get the point:

   Coffee.

>Dave> IMHO, the single biggest reason why people in Japan have such a
>Dave> hard time speaking English is they are trying to speak what's meant
>Dave> to be read.
>	EXACTLY. From a personal experience: A Canadian coed and I
>were sitting at a dining room table at the campus residence dining
>room (well, it is not that posh, just a cafeteria/dining room for 1000
>students at the campus residence. Menus were set by nutritian[spelling
>not sure]).  We were just having small talk.  I can't remeber what I
>was talking about, maybe she was asking me something about Japan,
>etc..  But she suddenly interrupted me and said "Gee, you sound as if
>you are reading from a newspaper." 

It's true, it's true! Sounds very very funny!

> I found out what prompted her to
>say that was I useed passive forms often, and even "it was reported
>...."  too often.  Typical journalism English, I suppose.
> Apparently I had picked up written English by reading Newsweek, and
>TIME every week, Scientific American, Life, Readers Digest, Playboy?
>every month, and of course lots of course materials, and what not.

Yes, yes, exactly so. One of the first projects I launced when I
came here was to find what I called 'Actual English', that is,
English as people actually speak it, not as it is written and
definitely not as textbooks say it is written. I got lucky and
found that I could order transcripts from the Phil Donahue show
(interviews with famous/interesting people). For example,

  Merv Griffen: Where do you live?
  Audience: In Chicago.
  David Susskind: You aren't in Chicago?
  Phil Donahue: They'll be back.
  Merv Griffen: We'll be back very shortly here.
  Dick Cavett: Do you miss me at all?
  Audience: (Applause)

Can you understand it? Each word, maybe, but I can't understand what
they are talking about! My point is that speaking is something you
pretty much have to engage in. You have to be there and take part or
it doesn't make any sense. 

>	After this shocking incidence (well, if you are talking to a
>lovely coed, and she thinks you are a mouth piece for a louzy
>newspaper, what do you describe otherwise?), I took care to pick up
>conversational English by reading more lighter material, or books in
>which there are lively conversations.  (Nowadays, I even try to watch
>popular TV made in U.S.A. such as LA LAW, Moolighting, with the
>original sound track my TV/VCR combination produces.), 

Very funny. And how about this, a German fellow who came to Osaka in
the Melborne-Osaka yacht race told me that the first time he went to
America is was in a race and he took along many murder mysteries to
read along the way. And when he got into a conversation with some
lovely lady she asked him, "How come you speak like a gangster?  Are
you in the German mafia!"

>If I can give a young English learner a tip, try learning conversational
>English by reading books in which there are many conversations. What
>do you think of my advice?

Yes, I think so. The hard part is *which* and there I think each person
needs to decide for themselves what subject they are want to read about.

>Dave> Yes, excatly. And it even goes further than that, I think. Each
>Dave> local group of communcators develops there own communly used
>Dave> expressions so to be able to communicate (not be "correct", whatever
>Dave> that is :-) I think you need to listen to what people are saying for
>Dave> a while to pick up on which way the wind is blowing. 
>	It is true. I don't know if you were in North America when the
>phrase such as "swell" or even "dynamite" was kind of hip. These
>phrases if we hear it on old TV program or movie today really tells us
>the age of the program. So it is where/with whom/when of vocabulary.

Yes it does. And unfortunately a lot of the stuff that is sold in
Japan is very old (doesn't have any copyright). So a lot of the
expressions people pick up are out of date.

>Dave> While French can certainly be learned by non-natives, there is a
>Dave> great deal of work done to keep French *pure*. Only last year I read
>Dave> where they had finally decided that it was "le hotdog" and not "la
>Dave> hotdog". 
>This is why I said "despite all those Gaulic(?) French purists".
>Looks to me young French really don't care much. I doubt if the people
>who speak/spoke French in, say, Vietnam care what these purists would
>think. 

Oops, you did say "French purists"! I didn't see it until I read it
the second time. 

>Dave>American Indian (Manhattan, Los Angeles),
>Are you sure that "Los Angeles" is from Native American? Looks very
>Spanish to me. 

Ohhhh, I was in a hurry yesterday. Los Angeles is Spanish in "La
Pueblo de Los Angeles" (or something like that) meaning The City of
the Angels. San Francisco is Saint Francis, Santa Barbara is Saint
Barbara and so on. Lots of Spanish on in SW U.S....

>Dave> Sure. And if Japan had one the war, young people in L.A. would be
>Dave> sitting around drinking Kirin and saying "unbili!" (which I just
>Dave> learned yesterday is slang for "unbelievable!" :-)

>I hope "unbili" is an ephemeral existence. I had to re-read your
>explanation to understand it. I know that foreigners in Japan find it
>difficult to cope with the shortened form of many words and phrases,
>which the Japanese seems to like. "Pasokon" for personal computer, for
>one. But, "unbili" is "unbili".

It does seem to be trendy to shorten the "English" words. But
actually I doubt if "unbelievable" is Anglo-Saxon English (too long)
so maybe all they are trying to do is Anglo-Saxonize them :-)

Dave

--
Dave McLane                                       davidg@aegis.or.jp
You're free to copy/quote/translate this as long as credit is given. 
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087
Xref: sparky fj.misc:317 fj.news.group:2458