WTF Japan? Epic thread of problems

[kthx]

A bunch of liberals all agreeing with each other about someone being wrong in what they are saying but not saying anything about it themselves. Go figure.

[kthx]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutenes...panese_culture

Many teenage girls began to write laterally using mechanical pencils. These pencils produced very fine lines, as opposed to traditional Japanese writing that varied in thickness and was vertical. Also, the girls would write in big, round characters and they added little pictures to their writing, such as hearts, stars, smiley faces, and English letters. These pictures would be inserted randomly and made the writing very hard to read.[2] As a result, this writing style caused a lot of controversy and was banned in many schools.

Great relevant article, still don't see anyone telling me I am wrong, just people crying about "me trolling" the thread and "why argue with him" posts littering the thread instead of something to dispute what I have said.

[PaulOakenfold]

A bunch of liberals all agreeing with each other about someone being wrong in what they are saying but not saying anything about it themselves. Go figure.

You disagree with people, looks like no one cares except those that take the bait. Wanna work on your troll skills a bit? You're really bad at them. A couple of us can help you out.


PS: It helps if you don't act like you're 13.

[Epinephrine]

Really damn cute, do you say armour and colour too? Firefox (well it just said I was with the wrong Firefox spelling too) even says it's wrong when I type it. Maybe I'm not typing it in right? I mean Roight.

Keep it real Epi, just playing.

We spell differently in Canada, so sue me

[PaulOakenfold]

We spell differently in Canada, so sue me

I know mate, it's so weird this English language of ours.

[PaulOakenfold]

Serious:
I hear it's the worst next to Finnish or Icelandic although "OMG MANDARIN HAS LIKE A MILLION LETTERS TO LEARN."

[Epinephrine]

Actually it's an interesting thing, how language can reflect a society so much. For instance, Chinese is extremely hard to learn. Learning it requires years and years of practice, memorization, very careful writing and more practice. As such, Chinese-style education and society is all about memorization, practice, and doing things carefully.

Meanwhile English is one of those great languages where it's phonetic, and easily adaptable. You can invent any number of words that you want, change around the grammar and still have things make sense, and add or take away with ease. As such, English is the perfect language for a society that's always changing, and always looking forward.

Meanwhile, you have languages like French where you're bogged down by things like having 'masculine' and 'feminine' words, and so on. In other words, it's a lot less flexible, and dare I say... anal.

Interestingly enough, Japanese has THREE separate systems at work.

*Kanji, ideographs from Chinese characters,
* Hiragana, a set of symbols (syllabary) that approximate syllables that make up words, and
* Katakana, another syllabary used for foreign borrowings and other sounds.

[PaulOakenfold]

Meanwhile, you have languages like French where you're bogged down by things like having 'masculine' and 'feminine' words, and so on. In other words, it's a lot less flexible, and dare I say... anal.

Interestingly enough, Japanese has THREE separate systems at work.

Honestly, as a second language as child I found French easier. It's easier as a child to remember feminine from masc. My first language was actually German (first year was in Lithuania before moving to Britain and then America many year later) and holy crap was that the best language. I think everyone should stop adapting to American English and Chinese Mandarin and start adapting to the so so easy German Language. I sound like god damn Hitler right now, but really, it's a basic language.

[Epinephrine]

Yeah German is a pretty cool language. Too hard for me to pronounce though. Also I felt when I was in Germany, everyone was always yelling at me madly, when they were just speaking normally. Kind of like Cantonese, not really elegant at all.

[Izor]

Izor, you clearly do not understand a thing about Japan. I don't know that much about it myself

(insert rest of the post talking about how much he knows about japanese culture)

[Izor]

And Epi, my point with Takeshi's Castle is that you really can't get a whole lot out of people's television. It's a part of their culture, dont get me wrong, but if they had a lot of characters in their television shows that worked the hours you explained then maybe youd have a valid argument to infer that that's how things are run there. I'm not disputing that they work hard. I'm merely disputing that they work -that- hard. The statistics then back me up as I had expected, and then being backed into a corner you throw out some crap like 'they work off the clock' which is backed up by a complete lack of evidence and then you say 'well look at their television, movies, newspapers' and it does nothing to back up the claim that they work these hours. It's simply speculation and you and I both know better.

Epi, when I make a post, and put some numbers behind it that prove what I'm talking about, it's then up to you to come up with another post that also has numbers that are logically laid out that prove your point...you havent done that

[Epinephrine]

And Epi, my point with Takeshi's Castle is that you really can't get a whole lot out of people's television. It's a part of their culture, dont get me wrong, but if they had a lot of characters in their television shows that worked the hours you explained then maybe youd have a valid argument to infer that that's how things are run there. I'm not disputing that they work hard. I'm merely disputing that they work -that- hard. The statistics then back me up as I had expected, and then being backed into a corner you throw out some crap like 'they work off the clock' which is backed up by a complete lack of evidence and then you say 'well look at their television, movies, newspapers' and it does nothing to back up the claim that they work these hours. It's simply speculation and you and I both know better.

Epi, when I make a post, and put some numbers behind it that prove what I'm talking about, it's then up to you to come up with another post that also has numbers that are logically laid out that prove your point...you havent done that

If you watch virtually ANY normal Japanese TV show about working-age people, you'll encounter multiple characters (usually the MAIN characters) who work ridiculous hours and are pressured to stay at work. I'm not saying these people enjoy working that hard, or are actually PRODUCTIVE during those hours, but they just can't physically leave work.

If you were a serious debating person, i.e. not contracting yourself over multiple posts, or obviously trolling, I'd waste some time to find some evidence.


BTW they have a low birthrate in Japan, because it's damn expensive to have kids. Why would you have a kid, if housing is so expensive there's no room for kids? More and more people are living at home even to age 30 these days in Japan, there simply isn't enough room for that many people. It's the same problem in Hong Kong, which in fact has THE lowest birth rate in the world.

[Kolar]

Actually it's an interesting thing, how language can reflect a society so much. For instance, Chinese is extremely hard to learn. Learning it requires years and years of practice, memorization, very careful writing and more practice. As such, Chinese-style education and society is all about memorization, practice, and doing things carefully.

Meanwhile English is one of those great languages where it's phonetic, and easily adaptable. You can invent any number of words that you want, change around the grammar and still have things make sense, and add or take away with ease. As such, English is the perfect language for a society that's always changing, and always looking forward.

Meanwhile, you have languages like French where you're bogged down by things like having 'masculine' and 'feminine' words, and so on. In other words, it's a lot less flexible, and dare I say... anal.

Interestingly enough, Japanese has THREE separate systems at work.

During my second internship I worked with a guy who had recently immigrated from China, I'm not sure which region. He was doing the whole "Canadian experience" thing to get his foot in the door. Not counting the language barrier the guy was extremely bright. I only remember this because you mentioned 'masculine' and 'feminine' wording. From what he told me in Mandarin there's no 'masculine' or 'feminine' way to refer to someone, it's gender neutral. It wasn't a good situation with our manger's boss and the department VP and a good number of his co-workers were all female... He also worked in the Business/IT sector back home and said it was very cut throat and extremely nepotic. If you didn't make it to a middle management or a supervisor position in your career by a certain age you never moved up ever.

[PaulOakenfold]

Yeah German is a pretty cool language. Too hard for me to pronounce though. Also I felt when I was in Germany, everyone was always yelling at me madly, when they were just speaking normally. Kind of like Cantonese, not really elegant at all.

It actually clicks for a lot of people naturally (although weirdly, because they think of hitler, nazis and loud language when they hear German), and is spoken (although broken) through many neighboring countries. I remember getting my MBA and being required (as well as Mechanical/Electrical/Computer Engineers and god damn Sociologist PHDs) to actually take a whole damn test in German!

For some people it takes a speech pathologist, but percentile wise it's actually less speech therapy than English requires! That's what my SP Nephew says at least.

Like I said, I found French easy, German easier, English was pretty damn natural, but I don't know what the effect of it was as I was growing up, nor any of my other languages. Mandarin just seems like it got one too many things wrong with it. You think English is complicated with its different spellings of the same word? Holy crap, try Japanese or Mandarin. Haven't tried CTN, but I hear it's much the same.

[Epinephrine]

It actually clicks for a lot of people naturally (although weirdly, because they think of hitler, nazis and loud language when they hear German), and is spoken (although broken) through many neighboring countries. I remember getting my MBA and being required (as well as Mechanical/Electrical/Computer Engineers and god damn Sociologist PHDs) to actually take a whole damn test in German!

For some people it takes a speech pathologist, but percentile wise it's actually less speech therapy than English requires! That's what my SP Nephew says at least.

Like I said, I found French easy, German easier, English was pretty damn natural, but I don't know what the effect of it was as I was growing up, nor any of my other languages. Mandarin just seems like it got one too many things wrong with it. You think English is complicated with its different spellings of the same word? Holy crap, try Japanese or Mandarin. Haven't tried CTN, but I hear it's much the same.

Mandarin is a very elegant language actually. Spoken mandarin is quite easy to pronounce (foreigners can usually learn it quite easily), and is very easy to say. Grammar in Chinese is pretty simple, and there is nothing like tenses to worry about or conjugation. Everything is contextual, including gender of people. Once you grasp the concept of it, it's very easy.

The number system is also pretty easy to use like English. I always loved the stupidity of French, where 96 is 'four-twenty sixteen'.

It's the writing which is very hard. The Communist Party of China actually created a 'simplified Chinese' (not used in Hong Kong or Taiwan) which is easier to write and easier to learn. As well there are systems to use english letters and various accents to accurately write any Chinese word (thus you had cities like 'Peking' being changed to the completely correct Chinese pronunciation of 'Beijing').