mercedo's Journal: Typical Way of Thinking in Japanese

That is emotional, illogical, ambiguous, tend to beside the point gradually I must say that always leaps the rational way of thinking.

Although I need to use Japanese when I talk to Japanese people, I do not usually use Japanese. I stopped reading Japanese newspaper before at age 30. I stopped watching Japanese TV four months ago, this is owing to malfunction of my TV set, I was reluctant to buy another one though.

I started listening to BBC world service at age 27 and still I make it a rule to listen to the program everyday - it varies from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours though. Before I'm struck with computers, I made it a rule to listen to BBC for at least two or three hours.

Now I can earn necessary information through the Internet, I can talk to many insightful people through Slashdot.

So I can stand a little bit a third party position when it comes to the typical way of thinking in Japanese people. Because I know they are weak in a logical argument. Since their language, grammar is 'This a pen is not', their argument is a kind of conglomerate of illogical thinking, always I am unable to understand what they are talking. Owing to the lack of subject of the sentences, owing to the absurd order of words, always not a preposition but a post position fixes after the words and that-postposition determines the meaning of words that makes the meaning of the entire sentences piles of complexity, riddle, ambiguity, owing to the structure always negation comes the last part of the sentences, their word order is just opposite to logics, their argument always doesn't make sense. I don't like to hear their argument, still less talk to them. I hope they do it in English. I don't think I can make a speech in Japanese, because inevitably it falls into illogical, ambiguous, unclear in meaning that's what I really don't want to do.

If I ran an election, could I make a speech in English? Yes, but voters are Japanese. Several years ago, former secretary general of UN, Mr Yasushi Akashi ran a Tokyo governer election but his speech made by Japanese was a little bit strange from ordinary Japanese like my English here, because he was so accustomed to using English that brought him into a bad Japanese speaker inevitably.

Ah, still I wanna run an election?

english...

[kesuki]

has as many ways to convolute what you're saying as japanese does, but the conventional usage is 'simpler' japanese has a number of useful gramattical rules, for instance saying 'zen zen' has a much different meaning than saying 'zen' in english if you say i'm 'good good' they'd just look at you funny ;) english as has been noted has only a single ambiguous word for love. quite a shame, especiallially since you can't 'double' or 'triple' repeat the word to emphasise the meaning of the word.

Re:english...

[mercedo]

Besides what I pointed out about their language, they still have many problems. How to write Japanese is also one of them. Currently they use three characters, and above all things to write kanji is too complicated.

I don't think it's worth while to learn how to write Japanese, I hope English will take the place of official language of this country.

Re:english...

[kesuki]

it would make me sad : Japanese is one of those languages that was designed by bored nobles with too much free time to complicate the language, and make writing it an arduous chore that few 'commoners' would ever have the time to master.

English is just a bastardized common toung that some barbarians spoke 2000 years ago, and stole a few extra words from other languages to fill the gaps...

And truly modern english is nothing like english being spoken 1000 years ago, much less 2000 years ago. english is only