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See also: longer quotes from specific authors:
From Language Change: Progress or Decay? by Jean Aitchison (1981):
Some older speakers, in particular, pay little attention to the questions they are asked. They may have certain favourite points of view that they want to express, and they have a great deal of experience in making a rapid transition from the topic to the subject that is closest to their hearts. [From W. Labov, Sociolinguistic Patterns, 1972, University of Pennsylvania Press][Aitchison, Chapter 3, p. 59-60]
From Verbatim by Erin McKean (Editor):
France's greatest lexicographer, Emile Littré, was once found by his wife, in flagrante, and in the conjugal bedroom at that, with their housemaid. Happily, the exchange that followed makes sense almost as well in English as in French.
"Emile,"
cried
Mrs
Littré,
"I
am
surprised!"
"No,
my
dear,"
replied
the
erring
lexicographer
calmly.
"You
are
astonished.
It
is
we
who
are
surprised.
"
I did pick up a self-instruction book on Latin, and with just a few days of casual study managed to completely forget the ablative. With early progress that good -- it took my father *years* to forget it -- I'm eager to get back to it.
-- Joseph Nebus in a posting on the sci.math newsgroup
From The Artful Universe by John D. Barrow (Oxford University Press, 1995):
From Words Fail Me by Philip Howard (Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1980):
Similarly the eyes of the purist fretter about language pass over any virtues on a page without a flicker, and are drawn exclusively to misprint, catachresis, misspelling, solecism, barbarism, and other evidence that English ain't what it used to be. [...]
In extreme cases the worrier takes the alleged decadence of English as a cause and not just a symptom of our supposed general decline.As the Dark Ages roll over us, he/she and a small élite of literati who still use the Queen's English correctly will be besieged in their Gowers-towers, while outside the troops of Midian will prowl around, splitting infinitives and grunting "hopefully" to each other.
[Introduction, p. 9-10]
In these and other ways English is losing some useful distinctions. This weakens the language, because the more distinctions there are available in a language, the more powerful and useful it is. [...]
English is changing because people, some through ignorance, others deliberately in order to persuade or deceive, attach new meanings to old words. It does not matter much that many of us led by Ted Heath, now confuse "flout" with "flaunt", although it can lead us to say the opposite of what we mean: "It sheds light on his character that he was willing to flaunt the conventions of his time." But it is sinister when somebody [...] uses "pacification" as a whited sepulchre for killing everything that moves. But our generation did not invent such weasel words. Accord to Tacitus, the British chieftain Calgacus accused the Romans of inventing the last one: "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant"; they make a desolation, and call it pacification. Calgacus was not fooled; and nor are we, yet.
[Introduction, p. 12-13]
[...] in our Age of Hyperbole such intensifying words as "very" and "extremely" and "the greatest" have come to be turncoat words that mean the opposite to what they say. They actually weaken what they qualify. [...] "I am pleased to meet you" sounds more sincerely pleased than "I am very pleased to see you." O tetracopros, blight radio commentators who wish one a VERY good morning first thing. [...]
When an economist or econometrician says, "Clearly, direct estimation of ß will produce biased and inconsistent results", he probably means, "Though it is not immediately obvious, two or three lines of algebra will reveal that ..."
If he says, "Of course, it turns out that ...", you are to understand that after toiling through pages of messy calculations on the back of old computer print-out [...] the same (surprising) conclusion will be reached. If the result is really clear, it will be trivially the case.
This mixture of technical terminology and fluff is a signal that the speaker belongs to a recognizable group. In their insecurity politicians keep themselves warm at night with such devices. [...]
[...] "Surely, Alexander intended to return to Macedonia", or "Joan of Arc was undoubtably a sweet kid", indicate merely that those facts may be true, but that there is no proof to hand. Leave out the emphasizers and you get positive statements. Memo to myself: when in doubt, leave out doubtless, and of course always leave out of course. How ever did it happen that dubiety and mistrust came to be implied by words intended to signify the complete lack of it? [...]
No doubt has decayed so far that it means its opposite. If you read a paragraph that said: "No doubt Lord Goodbody has an entirely innocent explanation of the fact that he was found in bed with two black ladies, a goat, and a quantity of rubber underwear", you would make two assumptions: one, that Lord Goodbody most certainly did not have an innocent explanation, and that indeed no such explanation could exist; and two, that the writer intended you to some to this conclusion. Bernard Levin pioneered this rhetorical discovery when beginning a sentence with something like "No Doubt X (an obvious but litigious politician) is an honest man."
With all respect is another Benedict Arnold turncoat phrase. In academic circles the man who begins his remarks with with respect actually means "I am about to demolish your argument and if possible you with a buzz-saw of disrespect." [...]
[... In Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers] Stout Tony Weller, in his agitation over the case of Bardwell versus Pickwick, sounds as hazy as we lesser men about the sharp point of the word [alibi]: "If your governor don't prove an alleybi, he'll be what the Italians call reg'larly flummoxed."
Alibi was once pure Latin. It is the old locutive case of alius, meaning "other", and therefore means "elsewhere, in another place". It was taken directly into English without modification in the eighteenth century, originally as an adverb: "The prisoner had little to say in his defence; he endeavoured to prove himself Alibi." [...]
[...] the word started to show signs of wanderlust, traipsing after vague excuses and pretexts. [...] The rot started in the United states. Big Bill Tilden [...] gave an early example of the extended use in his book Lawn Tennis published in 1922: "Don't offer alibis for losing." That is excellent advice, but a double fault with alibi.
From the United States the word has been widely extended to mean somebody providing an excuse, as in "Mary-Lou is my alibi"; and also as a transitive verb meaning "to clear by an excuse" or "to provide with an alibi", as in "I am not lugging in the fact to alibi myself away from anything." Yuk. An intransitive use is also possible though not advisable: "They alibied for not giving money to the teachers' organization."
[Chapter 1, Alibi, p. 15-19]
[Chapter 3, Arabic, p. 28]
[Chapter 5, Byzantine, p. 36]
[Chapter 5, Byzantine, p. 38]
[Chapter 6, Cheshire Cat, p. 44-45]
[...] "How infinite," wrote a master of the specious art of political doubletalk [Sir Winston Churchill], "is the debt owed to metaphors by politicians who want to speak strongly but are not sure what they are going to say."
[...]
Since Aristophanes reported the Athenian demagogues, political doubletalk has always pinched strong descriptive language to dress up flabby old ideas. The descriptive meat is sucked out of the strong words, as a weasel sucks eggs. And the weasel words then suck all the life out of the surrounding context, leaving only empty shells, broken promises, and lies.
The "social contract" (devised by Harold Wilson [...]) was a sad example. It was neither social nor a contract; and that passionate socialist and libertarian, Rousseau, whose phrase was plagiarized (Du Contrat Social was published in 1762), would have denounced it as an antisocial and provisional bargain between unscrupulous individual power blocks against the general will.
Its sibling the "social compact" (sometimes they called it a contract, other times a compact) was the sort of language that gives face powder a bad name. And Solomon Binding (Harold Wilson also tried "a solemn and binding agreement") has become a farcical laxative that no politician with any shame or sensitivity for language can use.
[Chapter 7, Concordat, p. 47,48-49]
[Chapter 8, Cowboy, p. 55]
Yes, but what does it mean? According to Gilman, not much.
[Chapter 13, Legalese, p. 75]
[Chapter 14, Lemmings, p. 79]
Common law wife is banned by The Times style book as a mythical creature unknown to English law. [...] A circuit judge recently [...] ruled that the term common law wife was applicable in only three circumstances: firstly, a couple who were married at sea by a ship's captain; secondly, a couple married by dissenting ministers before 1953; and thirdly, a couple married in a British consulate (not, however, in a British Embassy).
[...] The problem of finding appropriate nomenclature for the unmarried is so impenetrable that one begins to agree with Sir Thomas Browne: "I would be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetrate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition."
[...] A woman with four daughters alleges jokily that they are all living with ho-hummers. Herb Caen, the ingenious and mischievous columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle, has put forward ummer as the solution. The word is derived from the embarrassed resolution of a verbal dilemma posed by a mother introducing her daughter's cohabitant: "... and this is Oliver, my daughter's um, err ..." Mr Caen also records the inevitable Oakland wit. "You know what I call people who live together but aren't married?" she asks. "Smart."
[Chapter 16, Love, p. 88,93-95]
[...]
If you are lucky enough to meet a mermaid, do not borrow her cap or belt, her comb or her mirror. Try not to fall in love with her. Whatever you do, do not marry her, though at the same time try not to offend her. And do not address her in Greek or Latin, for she is unlikely to understand you. If you hear mermaids singing, each to each, before you block your ears in holy dread, the dulcet and harmonious breath you hear will probably be singing in Old High German, Old Low German, or Old Norse.
[Chapter 18, Mermaids, p. 105]
[Chapter 19, Millennium, p. 109]
The biggest cheat in the history of the Games was Nero, who did it on an imperial scale that makes our modern efforts look puny. He had Olympiad CCXI postponed from 65 to 67 A.D., so that he could take part in the Pythian and Isthmian festivals of that year as well. He compelled the organizers to include musical and dramatic contents in the Olympic programme for the first and only time in the history of the Games, and, by a happy coincidence, won the crowns for harp playing and tragic acting. No ordinary mortal could proclaim the emperor's victories, so he acted as his own herald, and won the competition for heralds. He won the chariot race for horses and colts in the hippodrome. In the ten-horse race he fell out of his chariot. He did not remount, but was replaced in it, rursus repositus. Even so he did not finish the course. But guess who won the crown, anyway.
[Chapter 21, Olympics, p. 117-118]
[Chapter 22, Over The Moon and Other High-Jumps, p. 122]
[...]
If those who can, do, and those who can't, teach, those who can neither do nor teach become educationalists. In the burgeoning jargon of educationalists or educationists hiccough is at present a vogue term, denoting a spasm or delay, usually in vital communications. There have been several recent cases in educationalist literature of the unsettling complaint of hiccoughs in the pipeline.
[...]
Ceiling, meaning limit or maximum, is another vogue metaphor in officialese, of which the literal meaning will not lie down and keep quiet [...] Hugh Dalton in the Attlee Government attracted notorious and deserved ridicule when he announced that he was going to put "a ceiling price on carpets."
[...]
Now that we are going metric, we seem to have forgotten how to use a real yardstick. Here is the Government Green Paper on Housing Policies [...]: "In relation to improvement grants, local authorities ought to apply broad yardsticks flexibly."
In all such new or newish metaphors the literal meaning is not dead, but dormant, or even lying there pretending to snooze with one eye open. We must take care in using them not to wake the sleeper into jumping out of bed and doing a dance of derision over our meaning.
[Chapter 24, Pipeline, p. 135,137,139]
The technical words of such argumentative disciplines as philosophy, which are attractive to politicians and other professional liars (a little prevarication, special pleading, and inaccuracy save a mountain of explanation), are particularly vulnerable to such weakening. [...]
Consider what has happened to the strong verb to refute. Television interviewer: "Is it true that you have abused your powers as President?" President: "I refute that totally and categorically." End of interview. To refute such a question totally and categorically would have taken the President the rest of the century as well as the rest of the programme, because he would have had to produce proofs that all this thoughts, words, and deeds since he moved into the White House had been as clean as a hound's tooth.
[...] To refute something is to disprove it, to overthrow it by facts or argument, to succeed in showing that it is false. It is not only to deny it, but also to provide sufficient reason for believing that what is denied is in fact false. A man who refutes something must do more than just utter the word with a righteous glare of indignation at the interviewer. If that is all he does he is weakening the language, and must expect to be challenged by anyone who understands the meaning of "refute" to supply chapter and verse to make good the disputatious part of the word that asserts proof.
[Chapter 25, Refute, p. 140-143]
"I hate to gossip ..." means, "Open your ears, for I am going to pour some delicious social sewage in them." [...]
George Solt, a London technologist and wordsmith, has invented a word-game that consists of spotting phrases that convey the precise opposite of what they literally mean. He calls his game "White Man speaks with Forked Tongue", and finds that he gets his best scores at Board Meetings. To avoid halting his colleagues in mid-flow, he uses a symbol to register a score: he places the clenched fist with the back of the hand touching the lips, while waggling his extended index and middle fingers like the fangs of a rattlesnake. He says that this used to make his colleagues rather cross, but they have got used to it over the years. I am amazed that they have not defenestrated him.
Formal subscriptions to correspondence are often reversible lies. "Yours sincerely" is written after millions of letters every day by correspondents who are neither sincere nor attached to the people they are writing to. At least nobody pretends to be our Humble and Obedient Servant any more. We should be thankful for that.
[...]
The traditional etymology observes that English preserves an intriguing distinction between meat on the plate and meat on the hoof. Mutton, beef, pork and venison are of Norman French derivation, presumably because our ancestral invaders were the ones to enjoy the meat. The English shepherds and cowherds preserved the Old English terms for the animals that they merely tended. It is as true as most popular etymologies.
[Chapter 26, Reversibles, p. 144-146]
[...] Barristers are formally esquires, at any rate after they have taken silk; but solicitors are never more than mere gentlemen. There was much enjoyable dispute among the experts about exactly who was an esquire and who was not. Today we find such distinctions invidious as well as ridiculous. In any case, it would take a genealogist some days clambering around a man's family tree to determine whether he was entitled to the suffix of esquire or not.
Accordingly, we have given up the monkey-puzzle and call everybody who is anybody "esquire". One of the paradoxical products of our age is that we have promoted the entire male population to this formerly elite class.
The abbreviation "squire" is a non-U and often sarcastic appellation, used to mock those suspected of having crypto-genteel tendencies, as in, "Can I get you anything, squire?" Larry Adler, wag, mouth-organist, esquire, and author of Jokes and How to Tell Them, says a TV cameraman once told him a joke, and not well. Larry said: "You should read my book, Jokes and How to Tell Them." The cameraman replied: "You should read mine, squire, Harmonicas and Where to Put Them."
[Chapter 28, Styles of Address, p. 153]
From New Words for Old by Philip Howard (Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1977):
[... The classical languages] have a precision and stability that is not available in a living language: the stability and constancy of the grave. Their syntax is preserved beneath the silence of the centuries as perfectly as the ruins of Pompeii beneath the killing layers of ash and pumice. So the prescriptive grammarian can make rules, and adjudicate magisterially that this is right, that is wrong [...] He can lay down the law without fear of contradiction by vulgar new usages or anarchists who refuse to follow his rules.
[Introduction, p. ix]
Nevertheless, not all change is for the better in the best of all possible worlds. Some new words and constructions are indeed mistaken and erroneous. Or, if those unfashionable epithets are considered too paternalistically prescriptive, they are harmful and inefficient because they reduce the precision of the language. [...]
The English language is an ocean [...] The only guardians it has are self-appointed. But to prevent its pollution benefits all. Fortunately we have no organization like the Académie Française charged with the task of keeping the language pure by acting as a linguistic censor to turn back alien undesirable alien words at the frontier [...] There is an agreeable irony about journalists in particular settings themselves up as guardians of the Queen's English. Journalists, in company with other communicators of the mass media and ancillary industries, are principle culprits in the erosion of the language by imprecision, exaggeration, cliché, hazy use of popularized technicalities, overuse of modish words and phrases, and other such literary vices. They do it because of the hurry in which they usually have to write, and because of their old Athenian instinct either to tell or to hear something new. [...]
Accordingly a journalist taking a high prescriptive line about correct English may seem to some as hypocritical and irritating a spectacle as Satan reproving sin. But at least he can please (as Satan can) that by being exposed daily in his business to linguistic temptation and falling continually into linguistic sin, he knows temptation and sin more intimately than people in more sheltered occupations. [...]
[...] A journalist, who may have to write a thousand words in half an hour on an unfamiliar subject, with his news desk screaming for copy, with no time to read let alone revise what he has written, and with sub-editors snatching the copy sheet by sheet from his typewriter, should be excused an occasional lapse into solecism.
Nevertheless, precision of language is beneficial both to writer and to reader. The primary purpose of language is to convery meaning. There are already enough opportunities in the world for misunderstanding each other, without adding to them by attaching inexact or chameleon meanings to words, and so fouling the channels of communication.
[Introduction, p. x-xiv]
[...] The suffix -wise, as, rebarbatively in situationwise, is not an odious American neologism but a respectable revenant from antiquity. Chaucer had doublewise; Bunyan dialoguewise; and Coleridge maidenwise.
[...] The converse of a boomerang word is a word inherited from our common vocabulary of the eighteenth century that has survived in BritEnglish, but become obsolete in AmerEnglish. For example [...] "I am too mean to go to the seaside for a fortnight, so I reckon I will fetch my bathing costume and paddle in the bath". The American translation of that is: "I am too cheap to go to the ocean for two weeks, so I guess I will get my swimsuit and wade in the tub". [...]
A third group of words are those that have survived in common usage in both BritEnglish and AmerEnglish, but have developed divergent meanings on either side of the Atlantic. Homely is the classic example of this group. It means "cosy" in Britain, but "plain" in the United States, and can be a cause of misunderstanding and offence. [...]
[Boomerang Words, p. 1-3]
[...] medical men [...] have clinical tuition, clinical research, clinical problems [...] all referring to the care of patients, primarily in bed. [...]
The contrasting adjective is, in many cases, laboratory. Some laboratory workers even use clinical pejoratively, to mean unscientific, cosy, and bedside-mannered: smoothing the fevered brow on the lace-edged pillow. Other branches of the medical profession can be more exact in their work. [...] But the clinician has to work by guess and by God [...]
Journalists, advertising copywriters, and other magpies of technical terms have seized this sharp, precise word, and, as usual, got hold of the wrong end of the thermometer. They use it to mean something like coldly detached and dispassionate, bare and functional, as under laboratory conditions; in effect, the precise opposite of the original, medical, bedside-mannered usage. [...]
[...] architects complain in vain that flamboyant has a precise technical meaning: the French style contemporary with English perpendicular, characterised by tracery whose wavy lines suggest the shape or motion of tongues of flame. Ignorant magpies carry on regardless, using it to mean florid, or flashy, or well, you know what I mean, flamboyant.
[Clinical, p. 13-15]
[Euphoria, p. 29]
From Teach Yourself Linguistics [5th Edition] by Jean Aitchison (Hodder, 1999):
[...] People sometimes wrongly assume that a word is recognizable because it represents a "single piece of meaning". But it can be easily shown that this view is wrong by looking at the lack of correspondence between words from different languages. In English, the three words "cycle repair outfit" correspond to one in German, "Fahrradreparaturwerkzeuge". Or the six words "He used to live in Rome" are translated by two in Latin, "Romae habitabat". And even in English, a word such as "walked" includes at least two pieces of meaning, "walk" and "past tense".
[p. 50]
[p. 51]
[p. 52]
Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
-- Source unknown, found on Kevin & Kell website
Using kanji is like when you first start having sex. At first you can't stop thinking about it. But eventually you'll get over the feeling of wanting to do it constantly to every word you meet, and just limit yourself to when it is actually appropriate...
-- usenet posting by "necoandjeff" in sci.lang.japan, dated Mon, 11 Jul 2005 14:53:42 +0900
From Japanese in Action: An Unorthodox Approach to the Spoken Language and the People Who Speak It (Revised edition) by Jack Seward (Walker/Wetherill, New York, 1990): [Note: I've altered the romanization by replacing the macrons for long vowels with the doubled vowels of the kana spelling, and used 'o' for the particle 'wo', and provided Japanese text where there was none in the original.]
-- [Introduction, p. 2]
[Postscript: Japanese in Action was originally published in 1968 and the quote above appears in that edition. Seward apparently had a change of heart; his book Easy Japanese was published in 1992]
Although
frequent
reference
to
a
dictionary
is
essential,
it
is
wise
to
double-check
the
dictionary
meaning
of
certain
critial
words
with
educated
speakers
of
the
language.
While
browsing
through
a
Kenkyuusha
dictionary
one
day
many
years
past,
I
came
across
the
phrase
keikoku
no
bijin
[
-- [Chapter 2, How to Study Japanese: Study Materials, p. 20-21]
Learn by memorizing pattern sentences.
-- [Chapter 2, How to Study Japanese: Specifics, p. 24-25]
The five vowels in Japanese have only one pronuciation each, whereas ther are twenty-nine ways to pronounce the five English vowels. With the possible exception of tsu and r, Japanese has no very difficult sounds for the beginner to master.
And yet incorrect - almost laughable - pronunciation is the most common seious failing I have noticed among Western students of this language. [...]
One [former classmate] has persisted all these years in saying o-na (vegetables) for onna (woman) and jousei (situation) for josei (female). Once he spent a weekend alone in an isolated inn on the west coast of the Izu peninsula. Back in Tokyo, he urged me to visit the same inn [...] while there, I casually asked the manager if he remembered my friend. The tall American? Yes. Growing bald? "Yes, indeed I remember him well," the manager replied. "A very kind gentleman. He was quite concerned about the welfare of the farmers around here. All weekend long he kept asking us about the vegetable situation".
One Saturday afternoon [the same friend, Peter] and I were waiting in Sakamoto's private office for him to arrive. [...] an eight-member delegation from Sakamoto's home prefecture came calling. There being no one else around, Peter took charge and - in his interesting Japanese - told the delegation: "Sakamoto-san wa mou jiki ni kimasu ga watakushi ni nani ka dekiru koto ga areba osshatte kudasai. Watakushi wa Sakamoto-san no koumon desu kara ..." (Mr. Sakamoto will be here soon, but please tell me if there is anything I can do for you. You see, I am Mr. Sakamoto's anus ...).
Never have I seen anything convulse a group of Japanese the way Peter's bland statement did that afternoon. Usually the Japanese quality of restraint prevents laughter from getting out of control - but not on that day. The delegation were already tittering from the unaccustomed experience of being greeted by a tall, blue-eyed foreigner speaking slightly odd Japanese, and, coming on top of that, Peter's solemn statement of the anatomical position he occupied in relation to Sakamoto-san shattered their control asunder. They whooped, they yelled, they howled, the did everything but roll on the floor.
What Peter had meant to say, of course, was not koumon (anus) but komon (adviser).
Two other classmates of mine [...] stopped near an innocent bystander and told him they wanted to find an inn. At first the bystander did not appear to understand what they said, so they kept repeating the word for inn.
After several minutes of this, he shook his head dubiously, told them to wait, and disappeared down a side street. After what seemed an interminable wait, the man came walking out of the darkness and handed them a plate piled high with a kind of Japanese candy made of bean-paste.
This candy is called youkan, while the word for inn is ryoukan.
-- [Chapter 3, Pronounce it Right: Women, Vegetables and Embarrassing Vowel Sounds, p. 27-29]
It is somewhat similar to the American child's gesture of dislike or defiance, but the finger does not touch the nose and is accompanied by bowing.
I saw this gesture used one day in a dining car on a Toukaidou express train. The dining car was nearly empty, and I was seated so that I could see two Japanese men, both eating alone at tables on opposite sides of the aisle. One was trying to eat half a broiled chicken and it was apparent from his difficulties that he had not had much experience with a knife and fork. The, while I was wondering why he didn't eat it with his fingers, he made another powerful thrust at the bird - which flew across the aisle and landed on the plate of the other Japanese man.
It so happened, at that precise moment, that the second Japanese man, who was aristocratic in mien and conservative in dress, was gazing out at the waters of Lake Hamana. An empty plate had been set before him but his lunch had not yet been served. The rattle and clatter of the train must have covered the noise of the chicken's descent because he did not turn back to the table for a minute or two.
When he did, he found half a broiled chicken before him. (The first man had not been able to get even a bite.) The table d'hôte menu gave us a choice that day of Lunch A (steak) and Lunch B (broiled chicken), and I guess that he too must have ordered chicken. At least, he accepted the fact of the fowl's arrival with equanimity and, taking utensils in hand, prepared to do it justice.
The now red face of the first Japanese man became a study in conflicting emotions. Should he retrieve his bird, order something else, or just forget about it? When he had made up his mind, he took a deep breath, stepped across the aisle, bowed, used the above gesture, and then silently picked up the chicken gingerly and returned with it to his table, leaving the astounded second man with his knife and fork poised over empty space.
The first man now assumed an air of studied nonchalance and returned to his struggle with the chicken, while the second stared in disbelief and wonder. Then he stood up abruptly and stalked to the rear of the dining car where he began to wave his hands in the air and talk excitedly with the waiter.
My naval was about to boil tea (o-heso ga o-cha o wakasu, meaning "to be convulsed with laughter"), so I dropped a thousand-yen note by the side of my check and fled out the other end of the dining car.
-- [Chapter 5, Sign Language, p. 42-43]
One day in Hakone, I was watching a Japanese girl-guide, whose American tourist-charges had become separated from her by a considerable distance, use this gesture to try to gather her flock of about twenty elderly, bewildered-looking souls about her. The diverse effects were amusing. Some thought that they had been abandoned by their girl-guide and began to mill about like worried sheep. Others appeared to think that this was the signal for a drink and started to straggle back toward the bar of the hotel. Still others apparently interpreted to mean that they were on their own and began to disperse through the town.
-- [Chapter 5, Sign Language, p. 44]
For years I was unable to fully suppress a feeling of irritation when someone I hardly knew asked me were I was going, and so, in defence, I devised and used a variety of reports hopefully designed to abash such interrogators. Some I used are: Yopparai ni mairimasu (I am going to get juiced), Soori-daijin to kinou no dekigoto o soudan shite kuru (I'm going to discuss yesterday's events with the Prime Minister), Kanai no imouto to issho ni kisha-oujou o toge ni ikimasu (My wife's younger sister and I are going to throw ourselves in front of a train), Makka na momohiki o katte kimasu (I'm going to buy a pair of bright-red long-johns) Mise-monogoya ni kimi no otousan o mi ni ikimasu (I'm going to the freak show to see your father) and Moyori no karyuukai ni mairimasu (I'm going to the nearest "flower-and-willow-world" [red-light district]).
Although I delivered these with a stern face and steely glance, I usually got no more than nervous titters in reply. Nor could I detect any subsequent diminishing in the frequency of questions about my destination. [...]
Over the years the patience of the Orient finally bested me. Like Kipling, I learned that you can't hustle- or change - the East. Nowadays when a man I scarcely know asks me, Dochira e? I smile a crooked smile and say, Chotto sokorahen made (Just down the street a ways). He probably does not really want to know my destination, anyway. And when someone asks, O-dekake desu ka? I breathe deeply and, forcing what little cheer I can muster in my voice, I answer, Hai, itte kimasu (Yes, I'm on my way).
-- [Chapter 6, The Civilities, p. 47-48]
One day in Kamakura [...] I happened to see a Japanese man relieving himself in a ditch by the side of the road. Just then a woman in kimono - evidently an acquaintance - came out of a nearby house and walked toward him. Ah, the dilemma: should he greet - or ignore - her? The struggle to decide showed clearly in his face. Once he made up his mind, however, he carried out his decision manfully. With remarkable flexibility for his age - and with remarkable self-assurance for any age, he lifted his hat with one hand and bowed from the waist toward the woman, all the while carrying on the business at hand - the other hand, that is.
-- [Chapter 6, The Civilities, p. 57]
-- [Chapter 7, Titles, p. 59]
-- [Chapter 8, The Reverse of the Coin: English Names for Japanese Products, p. 71]
-- [Chapter 8, The Reverse of the Coin: English Names for Japanese Products, p. 71]
-- [Chapter 8, The Reverse of the Coin: Fractured English, p. 72]
-- [Chapter 8, The Reverse of the Coin: Fractured English, p. 72]
Messrs. Aoki and Ushiyama now bow to each other, exchange meishi, and utter the tried-and-true locution: "Aoki [or Ushiyama] desu. Yoroshiku o-negai itashimasu" (I am Aoki [or Ushiyama]. I beg you to treat me kindly in the future).
Recovering from their bows, they now fall to studying each other's meishi and trying to change upon mutual acquaintances. Mr. Aoki might say something like this: "Aa, sou desu ka? Dai-Ichi Bussan desu ka? Naruhodo. Uchi no yatsu wa daibu mae ni Dai-Ichi Bussan no yunyuu-buchou no Iki to iu moushon o kaketa koto ga aru ndesu ga" (Oh, is that so? The Dai-Ichi Trading Company? I see. Quite a while ago my wife made a pass at a fellow named Iki, the import section chief at Dai-Ichi).
In the meantime you -- the introducer -- can be making explanatory comments about Messrs. Aoki and Ushiyama, such as: how long you have known them, what trustworthy friends they are, how important Mr. Ushiyama's janitorial duties are to Dai-Ichi and so forth. At the close of whatever social event you have been attending, Ushiyama should say to Aoki something like, "O-chikazuki ni narete kouei desu" ("I'm happy to have met you).
That part of it is easy enough. The difficulty with introductions, however, is that you, as the introducing party, are accepting responsibility for the future actions of Aoki and Ushiyama involving each other. If Ushiyama runs off to Atami with Aoki's flirtatious wife, Aoki may very well demand that you correct the situation -- assuming, of course, that he is displeased at all about his wife's leaving.
Whenever a Japanese is wronged, his natural inclination is to take his complaint to the person who introduced him to the one who did the foul deed rather than to seek legal redress. This explains why there is one lawyer for every 830 Americans but only one to every 14,000 Japanese. It also explains the basic objection of the Japanese to self-introduction (jiko-shoukai).
-- [Chapter 9, Introductions and Names, p. 77-78]
Here is one problem you will most likely have to cope with when you become proficient in this language. Suppose you are making a phone call in Japanese and you identify yourself as Mr. Smith: "Kochira wa Sumisu desu". The quality of your Japanese speech causes the other party to assume that you too are Japanese or possibly a Nisei [lit. "2nd generation", a foreigner of Japanese parentage] and he thinks that he has perhaps misunderstood your name, that it is really Sumida or something similar. So he says, "Ee?" (How's that?). You repeat your name, but he still does not catch it because he has on those mental blinkers and he is not considering the possibility that you are a foreigner.
This could go on and on, so what you should say is the Japanese equivalent of saying: "S as in Sue, M as in Man, I as in Italy, etc." My name, for example, becomes Suwaado in Japanese and the formula I use is: "Suzume no su ni warabi no wa o noboshite tokoya no to ni dakuten" (Su as in suzume, wa as in warabi - lengthened - and to as in tokoya - with nigori marks). I recommend that foreigners living in Japan devise one for their name; it saves much anguish. -- [Chapter 9, Introductions and Names, p. 81-82]
Herein we have two dangers or disadvantages. The first and more obvious is that any man sounds ridiculous when he uses such feminine expressions as Iya da wa! (I don't like it, No, I refuse, etc.) or Soo na no? (Is that so?). The second is that the average Japanese will often assume, quite possibly mistakenly, that the speaker has learned his Japanese from a Tachikawa or Yokosuka (or Chitose or Sasebo) bar girl with whom even now he may be living in sin.
-- [Chapter 14, Male and Female Speech, p. 113]
When you return to your table from the toilet, one of the hostesses [at the bar] may very well have a hot, wet towel (o-shibori) waiting for you. If she whispers, "Shakai no mado ga aite imasu" (The window of society is open), you should check your fly.
-- [Chapter 19, Names and Games and Things, p. 165-166]
-- [Chapter 24, Is the Game Worth the Candle, p. 203]
-- [Chapter 24, Is the Game Worth the Candle, p. 206]
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