When You Die
June 15th, 2009They say when you die that your whole life flashes before your eyes. But since dying doesn’t take decades, it must be sped up.
With Yakety Sax playing as the soundtrack.
A Possible Reason for High Japanese Literacy Rates
June 1st, 2009Japan has a remarkably high literacy rate, which sometimes seems confounding, due to the complexity of the written language. Sure, it’s not as hard as Chinese, but it’s pretty high up there on the difficulty ladder. This is usually explained by the rigorousness of the educational system, which I’m sure is very important, but I think I have stumbled on another factor: it’s much easier than English, at the start, to pick up.
My son just turned 3 a few months ago, and is starting to learn to read. He learned his English alphabet first, before any Japanese, but, while he knows the alphabet well, the only word that he can spell (to my knowledge) is his own name, Alex. On the Japanese side, though, he can read a fair amount. This greatly surprised my parents, but what also surprised them is how excited he was about reading, and how much he read of his own volition. This reaction, in turn, surprised me, because, from what I’ve seen, his attitude towards reading is pretty much the standard attitude of kids in Japan.
What it comes down to, I believe, is just that his basic knowledge of hiragana has enabled him to read far more than his basic knowledge of the English alphabet.
Japanese (for those not already in the know) uses three basic forms of writing (four, if you consider the fact that Japanese all know the alphabet and can read things written in the alphabet, though not necessarily non-Japanese words written in the alphabet). There is kanji, which are the originally Chinese ideogram characters. There is katakana, which is a phonetic syllabary (not an alphabet) used primarily to represent originally non-Japanese words. And there is hiragana, which is a phonetic syllabary used to represent originally Japanese words.
Alex has no knowledge of kanji or katakana yet, so in a practical sense, he cannot read. That is, he can’t pick up a newspaper or book and read aloud (unlike, say, a child in Korea, who would have the ability to read most things, while not having the vocabulary to actually understand what they are reading). However, he can read a tremendous amount of things, and, if one were to write a book entirely in hiragana, he could read much of it, while understanding little to none.
Kanji is commonly held (correctly, in my opinion) to be much harder than English spelling, due to its ideogrammatic nature. What gets overlooked, though, is that hiragana and katakana are far simpler than English spelling. For example, “sushi”, written in hiragana, is すし. The first character is called “su”, and is pronounced…”su”. The second is “shi”, and is pronounced…”shi”. So “sushi” is formed by the characters representing the sounds “su” and “shi”. Compare this to English, where “sushi” is written with “es”, pronounced “s”, “yu”, pronounced “u”, “es”, not actually pronounced like anything by itself, but, when paired with “aich”, pronounced “sh”, and “ai”, pronounced “i”.
There are exceptions in Japanese, but minimal. An “i” sound, after an “e” sound, just makes a longer “e” sound. An “u” sound, after an “o” sound, just makes a longer “o” sound. And a small “tsu” isn’t pronounced, but makes the consonant that follows it stronger. But that’s about it.
So once you know the hiragana syllabary, you can just read out each letter, and you will have read the words.
Compare this to English:
“Cat” is pronounced…well, “cat” (since I don’t know the international phonetic alphabet). It starts with “c”, which can be pronounced “k” or “s”, according to complex rules (usually a “k” at the start of a word, unless followed by a “y”, and either a “k” or “s” in the middle of the word, or both (such as the word “accent”, where the first “c” is pronounced like “k”, and the second like “s”). It ends with a “t”, which is pronounced like a “t”. But the “a”? Well, that has a crazy number of possibilities:
1) “a” as in “about”
2) “a” as in “car”
3) “a” as in “at”
4) “a” as in “ape”
5) “a” as in “bare”
So, with two possible pronunciations of “c”, 5 of “a”, and one of “t”, you’re looking at 10 possible ways to pronounce “cat”, only one of which is correct. Versus, in Japanese, “ねこ”, which can only be pronounced one way. In longer words, with more vowels, this becomes even more pronounced. The name “adam” could be pronounced one of 25 ways, while “あだむ” can be pronounced one way. And that doesn’t even consider words like “table”, where one of the choices is to not pronounce one of the vowels at all. Sure, after years of learning English, you get an intuitive grasp of the rules of pronunciation, which enables you to pronounce words you’ve never read before, but the number of pronunciation rules is vast, and far beyond the grasp of a 3 year old.
So you have a three year old, who has finally learned a syllabary, and is immediately granted the ability to look at signs or words all around him and actually read them out loud, whereas his English alphabet knowledge basically just gives him the ability to say the names of the letters in the signs or words around him, but not to actually read them.
In a sense, a child learning to read English is somewhat like a child learning to read kanji. The alphabet gives a guide, but the only real way, at first, to learn how to read “cat” or “car” or “care” or “cape” (all of which have different pronunciations of “a”) is to rote memorize them. Little surprise, then, that kids are not as enthusiastic about reading the words around them immediately after learning the alphabet.
Perhaps (and this is the point of this blog entry) it is the generally positive experience that Japanese kids have with reading at a very early age that sets them on the right path for reading. Their first experience comes with learning a syllabary, which immediately opens up doors to understanding, while an English speaking kid has to struggle with each word, even after learning the alphabet.
The Way People Do Things Isn’t Always The Way They Really Do Them
May 5th, 2009The way people do things isn’t always the way people think they do things, but it’s always tough to point that out when they can do it but you can’t.
There are two examples that pop to mind:
The first was when my wife taught me to snowboard. One of the first things you have to learn when snowboarding, after “how to put on the snowboard” and “how to stay upright”, is how to turn.
I started out turning by basically lugging on my leg, which, while inelegant, worked, to some degree. However, it was extremely tiring, and led to a fair amount of wipeouts. I kept asking my wife how to turn, and her answer was always the same:
“Turn your body, and the board will turn”
I kept trying, and the board kept not turning. I argued with her that this wasn’t the way, because I wasn’t turning, but that got nowhere, as the obvious fact was that she was good at snowboarding, and I was not. Naturally, she would know more than I. She grew exasperated and annoyed, and insisted that if I stopped bitching and actually did it, I’d find she was right.
In the end, it was like a game of suicide Twister. My body was torqued so hard that I was facing up the hill, not being able to see remotely where I was going, while my snowboard continued in a resolute straight line.
Eventually, I figured out how to turn. I don’t know HOW I turn, but I can do it, and while by no means “good at snowboarding”, my wife granted, on our last trip, that I was now “a basic snowboarder”.
Another example, which I’ve experienced from both ends, is in language. I tried downloading a podcast on learning Korean, which in part consists of native speakers saying a word at regular speed, and then syllable by syllable. The very, very first example, right at the start of the podcast, was:
“Kamsa hamnida”
Repeated slowly:
“Kam Sa Ham Ni Ta”
…wait, what? That “ta” was distinctly a “da” when spoken at regular speed.
I was a little dissatisfied with the podcast (for other reasons), so I tried a different Korean podcast, which, likewise, had words spoken at regular speed, and then slowly. And there it was again:
“Kamsa hamnida”
Repeated slowly:
“Kam Sa Ham Ni Ta”
Now, I know why this is. The 다 in 감사합니다 is pronounced “da” when in the middle or end of a word, but pronounced “ta” at the start of a word. So when saying the word in individual syllables, the speakers subconsciously used the pronunciation it has when it’s alone, as opposed to the actual pronunciation in the word itself.
I experienced this a lot on the other end, when I was teaching English.
“I’m going to the store”, spoken at regular speed, is something like:
“I’m goin’ duh thuh store”
When I’d repeat it slowly, I’d subconsciously repeat it as:
“I’m Goin’ Too Thee Store”
I noticed the “goin’” versus “going”, but it wasn’t until my students tried to rapidly say “I’m goin’ too thee store” that I realized that the way I had thought I spoke didn’t really map to the way that I actually spoke.
So, yeah, receiving instructions from people who know what they’re doing is fraught with peril. Better to ask people who’re patently horrible at something they’ve studied for ages. After all, though they may not know how to do it, they’re chock full of examples of how NOT to do it.
Help Me Understand What I’m Doing Wrong (The Monty Hall Problem)
April 6th, 2009First, if you don’t know the Monty Hall problem already, go ahead and skip this problem. It’s really a question aimed at people who know the “correct” answer, which is nonintuitive.
Ok, so I heard about the Monty Hall problem a long time ago. At the time, I made the same, presumably wrong, guess that most people make. Then I read the logic behind the correct answer, and it took a while, but eventually made sense.
Much later, I was thinking about the Monty Hall problem, and couldn’t remember the logic, so to refresh my memory, I drew out a chart of the permutations of the problem. Here it is:
So here’s the problem: I didn’t make this to disprove the conventional, non-intuitive answer. In fact, I did it expecting it to jog my memory about WHY the non-intuitive answer is true. But, from what I can tell, if you look at every equally likely possibility of the Monty Hall problem, of which there are 12 possible, keeping the same answer will get you the right door 6 times, and switching the answer will get you the right door 6 times.
So, what did I do wrong? I’m not asking for an explanation about WHY the non-intuitive answer is true. The net has tons of those. But for them to be correct, the permutation chart has to come up with more hits for “switch” than “keep the same”, and it doesn’t, so unless EVERYONE is wrong (which I doubt), the problem must be in my permutation chart. So what did I mess up on?
Y2K Gets No Respect
April 1st, 2009Somebody today made another crack about how wrong everyone was about Y2K, and it’s driving me crazy. On the rare occassion when Y2K comes up, it’s always the same: “Look how wrong they were about Y2K”. While I, personally, wasn’t involved at all in Y2K preparation work, I was surrounded by people working to avoid problems, so I saw my deal of preparation work.
The standard opinion, slightly more fleshed out, is usually “They said that all this bad stuff was going to happen, but nothing happened”. And, yes, sure, that’s true. But it’s missing some important material. Properly stated, it should be “They said all this bad stuff was going to happen if they didn’t work hard to fix the problem, and then they did work hard to fix the problem, so nothing happened.”
Intonationally Left Behind
March 25th, 2009So, living away from English for a long time, one naturally starts to worry about losing touch with the language as-it-is-spake, especially when one’s contact with one’s home culture comes primarily through reading things on the internet, as opposed to talking to fellow countrymen or watching topical television.
One regular shock is hearing peoples’ names. I always assumed that Gwen Stefani was pronounced like the name “STEphanie”, not “stePHAnie”. I took it for granted that Sarah Palin’s name was pronounced like the “palin” in “palindrome”. I’m still not sure how Catherine Zeta Jones’s “Zeta” is pronounced.
But there is another, more long term and less immediately noticeable gap: the intonation gap. I was watching an old 50’s movie, and some young woman (note: not a teeny-bopper who was standing in for “the crazy way crazy kids talk”, but a regular person) used the expression “Isn’t that swell?” Which, in itself, is kinda dated. But what really stood out to me was that the primary stress was on “swell”, the secondary stress on “isn’t”, and “that” was unstressed. Nowadays, I assume, the stress pattern would be Primary: “Isn’t”, secondary “that”, tertiary “swell” if it were said in a non-question tone, and the reverse in a question tone.
What’s interesting is that not only was the 1950’s phrasing different than today’s, but it was recognizably 50’s. There was a definite 50’s feel. Even if the word “swell” had been replaced with a more modern “great”, you could still immediately place the speaker as a 50’s speaker.
Which must mean that the same thing is going on today. Even if you keep up with the new words and phrases, there must be some sort of gradual intonation shift, which will grind inexorably forward. And unless I start listening to English, as opposed to just reading it, I’m going to end up sounding like a time capsule of the 1990’s.
Transitive Property of Equality
March 24th, 2009So Alex has just turned 3, which means he’s starting to make interesting cognitive connections and jumps. The two which I’ve been impressed by lately were:
He was asking me about the sand people in Star Wars, and I explained that they were nomads, so they lived in tents. The conversation proceeded something like this:
Alex: “Tents are sleeping?”
Me: “Yes, the tents are for sleeping.”
Alex: “Stormtroopers sleep?”
Me: “Yes, stormtroopers sleep.”
Alex: “But…Star Wars…outside dark.”
…by which I realize he’s saying that in Star Wars (once they get off Tattoine), it’s always dark and starry (since they’re in outer space), but the stormtroopers aren’t shown as sleeping, so I guess he figured stormtroopers don’t sleep. So I got to explain the concept of outer space, and how it’s always dark and starry, much earlier than I had expected I would.
The other discussion was much simpler, but I enjoyed how concisely it corresponded to the transitive property of equality (A=B, B=C, therefore A=C):
Alex: “What do dragons eat?”
Me: “Knights”
Alex: “What are knights?”
Me: “People”
Alex: “Dragons eat people?”
Culturally Modified Female Voice
March 5th, 2009Most people with a passing familiarity with Japan, and anyone who has actually lived in Japan, is intimately familiar with the Culturally Modified Female Voice, by which I mean the extra-high voices that some (not all) Japanese women use.
There are actually two types of annoying voices, with very different roots. The first is the nasal voice used by young sales clerks. This one actually has a pretty good reason: clerks talk all day (constantly repeating “irasshaimase”, basically “welcome to the store”), and that can put quite a strain on the vocal cords. You can avoid a lot of that by making your voice more nasal. So it’s less a culturally forced voice than a sales clerk’s self-preservation trick.
The other voice, which is what most foreigners note immediately, is the high-pitched girly voice, obviously affected. The point is often made that Japanese women strive for “cute”, and Japanese society approves of this squeaky voice as “cute”.
This is all quite true, and an indictment of Japan’s approach to women. But lately, I’ve realized that we (in the US) have an inverse counterpart.
The American version of the culturally modified female voice is the opposite of the Japanese: it’s a deeper voice than the speaker’s presumable natural range. Basically, it’s a consistently crackly voice. It’s not the raspy voice of a smoker, but the same kind of voice I get when I try to speak in a lower octave than my natural speaking voice. I hear it in podcasts all the time, especially in serious podcasts. My guess is that it’s caused by something similar to the Japanese situation, which is cultural expectation, but in the reverse: Some Japanese females use the extra-high voice to align themselves with a cultural expectation of cute-ness / servility / what-have-you. Some American females use the extra-low voice to show that they aren’t just cute / servile / what-have-you. As much as America tries to be gender-blind, it’s still largely a man’s world, with men making higher salaries for the same work, etc., so I’m guessing that there’s a subconcious decision among some people to lower their voices in order to fit in the the existing hierarchy better.
Note from the author: I really struggled with phrasing here, as I’m trying to describe an interesting phenomenon, and not cast negative aspersions on the individuals involved. None of this is meant as a negative statement on the individuals using these respective voices, nor is it meant to equate Japanese and American treatment of women. It’s just really hard to phrase this to prevent accidental offense.
Prepared Comedy Doesn’t Work On Me Anymore
December 31st, 2008Do you remember, as a kid, laughing so hard you had to pee? Do you remember laughing so hard you couldn’t breath?
I remember both happening fairly often. Not every day, or even every week, but still rather a lot during, say, my first 15 years of life. The second 15, not so much.
I thought about that a lot, and came to the conclusion that, as you get older, your capacity for laughter decreases. Not for joy, mind you. I’m not saying you get dour. Just that you find less things funny, and the things you do find funny, less so. I guessed that this is because humour is based on the unexpected, and the more you get exposed to, the less unexpected funny things are.
That was a bit of a depressing thought, but recently I’m coming to rethink it. I’ve heard lots of recommendations for funny movies / tv shows, and I’ve checked them out, and while I enjoy them, and they’re pleasant amusements, I almost never laugh out loud. However, there ARE things at which I laugh out loud. Funny things I or my coworkers say, for example.
And then I noticed something odd: there’s a web comic I read, called Penny Arcade. I would put it squarely in the “amusing and pleasant, but no laughing out loud”. However, the two guys who write the comic put up a podcast which consists of a recording as they are coming up with the comics, and it’s awesome. No “peeing” or “shortness of breath”, but laugh-out-loud funny. Their conversation as they come up with the comic is really funny, while the comic is just amusing.
The plural of “anecdote” is “data”, though, and that’s where SModcast comes in. It’s another podcast, this one being of rambling discussions between director Kevin Smith and his producer, Scott Mosier. Smith’s movies (Clerks, etc.) are also “amusing and pleasant, with no laughing out loud”, but their conversations are often awesome.
So it looks like it isn’t that my capacity for humour is decreased, but for some reason it’s only attuned to spontaneous conversational humour, not set, scripted comedy.
Toys
December 28th, 2008I feel sorry for little kids between ages 1 and 3. All they have to play with is dirt.
“Oh-ho”, you surely say, “that isn’t the case! Toy stores are full of toys!”. But if you actually check at the toy store, you will find that there is a surprising gap. There are plenty of rattles and baubles and teddy bears for infants, all made with big, soft, non-flammable components. Unfortunately, these toys all bore the pants (or skirts) off of children over 1. The rest of the toys all seem to start from age 3. Play-doh, toy cars, even oversized crayons, are all marked “ages 3 and up”.
One would normally posit that it’s a big market just ripe for development, but, honestly, the market is full. Toy companies have just realized that there are two ways to sell toys for two-year-olds: market them as being for two-year-olds, and then pay huge legal fees when one kid in a million chokes on a toy, or market them as being for three-and-up, reaping the same sales but without the same legal headaches.
One wonders, then, why there are toys marketed as “ages 3 and up”. Wouldn’t it be safer to just mark all toys, even infant rattles, as “ages 18 and up”?
