Vocabulary in the Wild Again

This is probably my third post like this, maybe my fourth*. But I was watching two episodes of a gender bending*** show for the radio show yesterday and in the second episode***** I paused it to text my study buddies and tell them that I can’t really recommend the series, but if one wants to hear a ton of Nakama 2 Chapter 1’s vocabulary in an anime episode, one should watch episode 2 of onimai! 🤣

Then shortly after that I paused it again to tell them that there were a ton of plain volitionals too (this past week’s grammar).

And then again to tell them that I had just heard できた too being used for are you ready, is it done too (this chapter’s vocab) and an enhancement to the potential grammar point (or a gotcha to watch out for)… and that I had just realised I heard that before a ton of times and not known it but knew that potential form wasn’t right there from context... It's actually amazing that I managed to watch two episodes with all these pauses for language discussion.^^^

One of them texted back later to share a similar experience that day, that they had heard すぎる in Terrace House and recognised it! :D I haven't yet texted back to say that I can go beyond sugiru (you see what I did there...? ;)) because I had heard the informal spoken ch^^^^ negative form in the anime too!!!!

Later in the day, I ran into someone at the radio station that I hadn't seen for ages, and I had a chance to chat with him too, which was nice.  He asked what I was doing with myself recently, and I mentioned that I was now on my third semester of learning Japanese.  It really must have been a while since I had a chance to chat with him, not just wave in the distance as one of us was running into the studio to start a show, as he didn't know I was studying Japanese. He's been watching various Japanese shows and films, and we had a chat about the quality of subtitles, and pronouns, or lack of them, in Japanese^^^^^ I wasn't sure of the age of the items that the gender pronouns were being used interchangeably, so I threw in some history of he and she too.  We talked about one of the shows he's watching - a slightly older show that he's going to send me the name of and which service they watch it on, amazon or Netflix, where they send a small kid out into the world to run their first solo errand and follow them with cameras - he said that they like it and it might be good language practice for me, but they can only read the subtitles#### because they don't understand any Japanese except things like arigatou... so I also got to share with him my excitement at the first time that I heard a word that I had learned from learning Japanese in a show.  Even repeating it to him at the radio station, I bounced up and down in my chair slightly in remembered excitement and happiness :))).

Wow, this really grew.  It was meant to be a shortish piece about how cool it was hearing vocabulary in the wild and knowing that even just 2 weeks of the new course has drastically expanded my understanding... but it ended up consolidating a lot of meta thinking and drawing threads together... as blogging and thinking about a topic often does.  This one just took it to 11.  And I have to go update my "signs you might be learning Japanese" post now & add in "you learn more about English" - if that doesn't make sense, read the footnotes!.

* It's a bit early in the post for me to be starting my footnotes, that's a bad sign... ;) But I know at some point I blogged about how exciting it was the first time I heard a word in the wild** that I had learned from studying Japanese.  I still remember that feeling, as will be evident if you read on  in the main text... The second one was probably しあわせ & my original thoughts about that, followed by it instantly popping up in a new episode of a show I was following (& to be honest, probably the only reason I still remember that vocab word is because of that experience - https://nowling-jccc.blogspot.com/2023/07/blog-post.html ) & then this is the third, although I may have mentioned things in passing in other posts, or about hearing the new grammar forms.

** OK, in anime ;) :p 

*** Yes, it was only footnote 1 used up in the main text, but my footnotes have footnotes today, already.  I told you starting footnotes that early was a bad sign! But for anyone that doesn't know, a gender bending show is one where one of the characters, usually the protagonist, has their physical body flipped from male to female (or vice versa) by outside forces, or where one or more of the characters cross-dresses as the opposite gender****, whether consistently, or just sometimes.  For the first type, much of the show is the person trying to get their original body back (a quest we all know is doomed to failure, just like 5? seasons of voyager, because if they succeeded, the show would end...). Most gender flip shows seem to have a male physically converted to female, or females cross-dressing as males or males cross-dressing as females.  Sometimes, that is just a side character, like in several of the harem shows, where one girls' distinguishing trait from the mob of females throwing themselves at the protagonist male is that they are presenting female, whilst assigned male at birth (although it isn't usually explained that nicely in the anime... but they usually are still a welcome part of the harem after the big reveal, if there even is one).  Sometimes the cross-dressing is the main driving point of the story, like in ouran host club, or the Rose of Versailles; sometimes, it's just a feature of a character in a show, or something that provided the initial spark and the story rolls from there, like Princess Jellyfish.

**** For some reason, no one ever gets flipped from non-binary to a different flavour of non-binary... ;).  Maybe in a century or so :p  

***** I had already watched episode 1, so these are episodes 2 & 3.  The second show for anyone interested that wants to watch it, refers to the second episode in the series, not the second one that I watched yesterday. The full show title in English is Onimai: I'm Now Your Sister!  or お兄ちゃんはおしまい！ in Japanese^

^ subtle flavour difference there between "previously your older brother, I'm now your sister!" (which fails to capture that it's now your younger sister, not even your older sister still) and "older brother is done for!"...^^ anything could have happened that meant older brother was done for... it could even have been the overly present truck-kun...

^^ I don't think I've ever seen an honorific お in front of 姉妹（しまい - sisters）, otherwise the use of hiragana rather than kanji there would have left it open to a very appropriate pun because they are now part of siblings that are sisters instead... 

^^^ And you can all be very proud of me - I managed to keep the discussion on air on the radio to the topic at hand and not hijack it to share my excitement at hearing a ton of new vocabulary words and grammar in the show...

^^^^ which 中田先生 did say that we didn't need to know, it wouldn't be on the test and we wouldn't be using it in class, but I noticed it anyway (probably missed a ton of things that I did need to know, brains are funny like that ;)).

^^^^^ Oh dear, I've used up my second set of footnote markers (I don't like going beyond 5 in a symbol, it gets increasingly hard to read and track).  Anyway, I used an analogy about skipping pronouns in Japanese and not using anata to someone or referring to someone by the pronoun 彼 or 彼女 in front of them as being a bit like when I was young and my mother would say to me "Who's she?  The cat's mother?".#  It's something that had never sprang to mind before when I was learning about it being rude to refer to people by pronouns and terribly gauche to keep saying I, I, I all the time##  But when I was explaining pronouns and that cultural context to someone else, it did leap into my mind### - which is slightly ironic given that in the second show today, I had talked briefly about how you learn things better or make new insights into them by teaching them to other people, that you often make new connections when you do that, from the process of explaining them.

# As a kid, I understood that her saying that all the time meant that saying she about someone was rude.  What I didn't understand as a kid (& that I understood just now whilst typing this down) was that she was effectively saying that calling someone he or she in front of them is as rude as calling them an animal (high context phrase apparently and beyond my context grasp at that age).  

It was such a strange, nonsensical phrase, prima facie false that I never actually inspected it for any meaning other than "mom keeps saying this when I say she and looking mad, I'd better not do it". I suspect that I only understand that meaning now from the context of typing it down while writing and thinking about Japanese - and from having seen it explained about the difference between using 女 & 女の人 (or 男 &男の人%) & that 女 or 男 on its own did mean male or female, but unlike in English, you can't use those alone about people, that's the sort of term that you would use about an animal.  If you use it of a person, it's really shocking and blunt. 

Something reinforced by reading the translation of an interview with Miyazawa-san (miyazawa iori, who wrote Otherside Picnic) where he commented how shocking onna on its own is (he had a reason for saying it, he wasn't just trying to appall his audience).

But without all those pieces and then the context of where I was writing it today, I might never have understood that English phrase from my past. It would have just stood alone, monolithic, a nonsensical phrase that meant nothing, other than a rudeness signaller.

## I heard わたくし（私）in an anime during the week - I joined a friend's stream after class on Wednesday & they were streaming a really old one from the ?90s? The Dirty Pair, which they had actually cleaned up and corrected the video from the ancient disk copy that they had (if I understood them correctly when they were talking about the show & the video quality with another friend later.  The audio wasn't always brilliant).  I remember that I heard it because I said "wait, what? The CEO of the company is using watakushi, the most humble form of I to two people they are negotiating to hire?!?!? Her underlings that were doing most of the talking didn't even do that!  What's going on here????" Of course, it turned out that something was going on.  She was being far too sweet, young, innocent female to lull them into a false sense of security so that she could escape her bodyguards later and go off on her own... :D And I got that context and dubiousness about her character and intentions all from one word.  High context language indeed...

### Also leaping into my mind is that I should phone my mother today...

#### Another weird thing with pronouns and subtitles is listening to shows and reading the subtitles for the (sadly still fairly large) parts that you don't understand is hearing the Japanese use someone's name and san  and it just getting flattened into he or she in English. Or if they use oneechan or another title & it gets flattened into their name in the subtitles.  It feels very flat and lacking in flavour, and as if it is missing something.  Of course, in English, if someone kept calling sister! sister! it would sound odd too, as odd as keeping using I in Japanese, so it makes sense, but still feels off somehow.#####

##### And writing that about he and she versus using names made me wonder if that's one reason why English people are so bad at remembering everyone's names.  Everyone that I know has confessed to me at some point or another that they are terrible at remembering people's names, but we use them a lot less, so maybe our brains don't prioritise remembering them, because we can get away with using a people shaped placeholder word instead. And it sounds strange in English to keep referring to someone by their name, so you don't get that repetition to help you fix it in place.  

% Must be rude.  Just typing otoko on the keyboard brought up the kanji/autocomplete suggestions and otokonohito was higher on the list than otoko on its own... ;) And yes, I know I usually hate writing romaji but that was what I was having to type on the keyboard that triggered the autocomplete popups.