I'm a fan!

Sorry I haven't been posting here as frequently, but I *have* been reading Japanese frequently, as a part of my ongoing New Year's Resolution, and what I'm now reading is really great.

I asked my Japanese teacher about a manga that's based on reality (not fantasy like crazy fighting or fairies or whatever), and she recommended 島耕作 (Shima Kosaku). I love it! I'm reading 課長島耕作14 (Kacho Shima Kosaku) which is from the early 90's, and since then, the series became a TV show, and now, Shima Kosaku has been promoted to 社長島耕作 (Shacho Shima Kosaku). Which means that he was previously a Section Chief (課長/kacho) and is now the Company President (社長/shacho).

The manga is now in its 25th year, and I can see why! It's a great way to learn Japanese while being entertained at the same time. Even though it's taking me a lot longer to read it than a Japanese person, of course :D

Good local group: Wolfgang Jay

I saw Wolfgang Jay at an after-hours event at the Chicago Recording Company, and they were really good.

They performed Walker, Memories Of, and Now and Then.

The real Indian caste system

I know a Singaporean who comes from an Indian background, who shared some info from a Singapore newspaper about what India's caste system really is supposed to be:

Originally known as the varnashrama system, it comprises four broad scientific occupational divisions in society - the educator class, the administrator class, the entrepreneur class and the worker class - where everyone has the opportunity to take up an occupation befitting his or her natural tendencies and qualifications. This is based on the psychological propensity and character of the individual, and not on birth.

The writer also said that the classes worked together, which really should happen in any society. I'm just glad the US doesn't have caste system. That would make life quite rigid and seem more unfair than it sometimes is.

Happy Bastille Day/La Fête Nationale!

Well, it's no longer Bastille Day in France, but it's still July 14th in the USA. So Happy Bastille Day/La Fête Nationale! Even though I've translated a lot of French into English, I've never been there and would love to go!

Not surprised by these findings

A Canadian (who also knows some Cantonese) gave me a link to an article citing research that has discovered "that a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences."

I'm not surprised by this, and actually think that because the researchers assumed "that all speakers have a core ability to use grammatical cues", they were inevitably going to run into results that would contradict that assumption.

Specifically, they discovered that "A high proportion of those who had left school at 16 began to make mistakes" and "a proportion of people with low educational attainment make errors with understanding the passive, and it appears that this and other important areas of core grammar may not be fully mastered by some speakers, even by adulthood."

I think it's quite obvious that more education or more exposure to complex reading and writing will lead to an understanding of more complex grammar. One thing that bothered me when I was studying education and language acquisition in school was that everyone would gather around a theory, and if I would suggest anecdotal or observational evidence that would contradict what they were saying, they would dismiss it because the research didn't show that. But my experience did, so why diss it? Sometimes I think that academia doesn't tolerate exceptions because it messes up their tidy little package that they want to present to their peers.

Russell Peters on accents

I've been watching a lot of Russell Peters videos, and amazingly, there are more out there.

There's a really good interview with him where he talks about culture and international themes, including accents. It's a few minutes into the video below, but the whole thing is worth watching. You can watch part 1 here. Every time I see such good interviews, I want to do more myself (which I already do at my podcast, but on a much smaller scale). Maybe I should try to do an interview with him next time I'm in LA :D

She scored

Sue from Naperville Now recommended the book Girl in Translation, which is about an immigrant child from Hong Kong. I haven't read it, but it seems to be based on what the author and her mother experienced as well. Not the plot, but the difficulties of being an immigrant.

I'm sure it will become a movie, or will at least be optioned, because it's a bestseller and has gotten a lot of press, though the author keeps mentioning the same details (or the publisher does, and interviewers don't go beyond the basics). For instance, in various interviews and even a video, she says her family was "fairly well-off in Hong Kong" but had to start over in New York. But she doesn't say how they became poor when they came to the US. How can someone go from the good life to poverty in just one move? Why does she use the same general information without further elaborating?

Another thing I'm wondering about is why her mother never learned English even though she lived in New York for so many years. I know that it's hard to learn a new language, especially if someone is so busy, but eventually I'm sure her mother had the time to learn. I just think it's odd that people, especially who are educated, would choose to live in their own language for so long.

Anyway, the author had a hard life and overcame a lot to go to the Ivy Leagues and publishing world, so she's really scored.

Happy 4th! Independence Day!

Now that the Canadians had their Canada Day, it's time for our day: Independence Day! It's not when the US became a nation, but when the colonies declared independence from England through the Declaration of Independence. From there, there was a war that the colonies eventually won, of course. Otherwise, I'd be using British words and British spelling, and wouldn't be fascinated by the differences of our English :D

You can read it online. I actually made it a part of this week's test in my ESL class, though I think they were baffled by the 18th century English.

And the Canada celebration continues

A Canadian sent me this video on Canada Day. In case you want to become Canadian.

Happy Canada Day

A Canadian sent me a link to a site that celebrates Canada Day. It claims to offer a list of "unique summer activities" that actually seem very ordinary, so don't expect to get any specific ideas there. I can do a lot of those activities any day in the USA.

But at least they give some historical information: "Formerly known as 'Dominion Day,' Canada Day marks the anniversary of the Constitution Act of 1867, joining Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canada province (now Ontario and Quebec) into a single country."

But you can get more, and better, information about Canada Day at Wikipedia. And if you want to find some activities, go to the government's site in Ottawa, the City of Toronto's site, or About.com. And there are all those Canadian newspapers, depending where you are.

However you celebrate it, Happy Canada Day!

I got a French spam email

Sometimes I get requests to mention someone's article or site, which usually end up being sales pitches or full of copied content from elsewhere. Or if I ask the sender a question, they don't respond, which tells me they're like robots.

Well today I got some spam in French. It looked like a real letter and was addressed to me, and it mentioned my site, but it was from someone with a seemingly shady site. I couldn't tell what the site was about because there was not much focus, just a bunch of worthless links, including gambling. Plus, the person's name was questionably phony.

But at least it wasn't in English, and I got a chance to enjoy another language naturally (instead of through textbooks or whatever).

My student is an influential

A while ago, I read the book The Influentials, which described people who are hubs in our society through which information and recommendations flow, thus helping to accelerate word of mouth which leads to increased sales. It's a marketing book, but I also saw it as an interesting study of societal patterns.

Well the other day I was talking to a student in my ESL class, and realized that she's an Influential: she's active in her community, knows a lot of people, volunteers through her church, owns a business which is next door to her husband's business, and is high energy, so she does lots of activities. And she wants to go into politics. I really believe that one day I will see that happen.

If you want to find out about the latest trends in marketing, I highly recommend this book. After reading it, I realized I'm not an Influential, but I don't aspire to be one anyway.

Turkish Star Wars with English subtitles!

This video is really trippy: it's a Turkish space adventure called "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam" which includes scenes from "Star Wars" and soundtracks from various American movies (the explanation is at the video link). Feel free to watch it because the entire thing has been translated--thanks to the translator and the person who posted it!

Eccentric isn't negative

I thought that the Summit ESL book was great, until I saw that they define the word "eccentric" as a negative personality trait. They had a list of traits to demonstrate different kinds of adjectives, and they separated them into two lists. Eccentric went into the negative category. That is absurd. According to the dictionary, it means deviating from a norm, convention, pattern. So I guess we can conclude that the writers of that book are bland conformists. Or people who are unable to distinguish between disturbing difference and noticeable individuality.

For book lovers

If you are really into books, then you'll probably like Once Again to Zelda, which explains "the stories behind literature's most intriguing dedications." It hits several major books and gives sufficient explanations of the various backstories. It's also well written. It's clear that the writer loves books and knows that her audience does too.

An incredibly popular Japanese writer

We've been reading Banana Yoshimoto in Japanese class (her real name is Mahoko Yoshimoto, and I found out that she is insanely popular in Japan. Some of her work has been translated into several languages. She's living the dream, that's for sure.

What I like about her work is that it's very simple, but it has layers of meaning. So she's been able to attract a huge audience while also satisfying the more literary types who want to look at the symbolism, messages, themes, etc.

She's really been able to bring together commercial success and artistic integrity. It's great to create, but it's even better to be able to make a sweet living from it. Or any decent living at all, actually.

The Multilingual Teen is living his dream!

A few years ago, I met the Multilingual Teen, and now he's no longer a teen, but he's still multilingual. When I met him, he said that he really wanted to be an air traffic controller, and that is what he is now doing. Here's his latest news:

I'm done with the academy and passed all exams, so now I'm working in Hannover Tower! And besides that I'm writing poems because I love languages just as you do and I think that poems are the highest level of linguistic usage. Most poems are in German of course, but meanwhile I also dare to write in English^^ Though I'm never really sure whether my grammar is 100% correct.

I'm sure his grammar his great, because he is, after all, the Multilingual [former] Teen (I wonder if he should have a new name, even though I *did* meet him as a teen). He invited me to visit him in Germany, but my German is so bad at this point. Before he sent me an update in English, he sent out a group email in German, and I'm still deciphering it. I swear, there was a time when my German reading and speaking were pretty good.

My resolution is withering!

For the first time this year since I made a New Year's resolution to read/study Japanese daily, I have neglected to do it consistently! I've been teaching ESL a lot this summer, and I'm completely wiped out. Today I got home at a decent time, so I should've at least read a page of the Japanese book I'm reading, but I couldn't even read any English. And apparently, I've been so drained I forgot to post something here and haven't posted much elsewhere either.

So I'm saying this here because it's public, and because I love language, that I *must* resume regularly reading Japanese and doing the other writing I've been neglecting. How many people have made public promises like that? But seriously--I'm not happy about my lack of Japanese and Writing Perseverance, so that is going to change.

This seems like an interesting book

Tonight I heard a very interesting interview on the excellent show Sound Opinions with the author of a seemingly interesting book about the vocoder called How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks.

I'm interested in the vocoder not just because it's been used in a lot of music, but I also like the band Kraftwerk, which started using it several years ago. By the way, towards the beginning of the existence of this blog, I mentioned that I transcribed an interview they did, and I even translated a history that someone wrote in Portuguese, which I also mentioned here. Unfortunately, even though I spent a lot of time translating it (it was around 6000 words), they edited and altered it to the point that it barely resembled the original text. And they removed the Portuguese version from the site, too.

Anyway, they're going to post the audio interview on Monday, but meanwhile, there are a lot of interviews online (he obviously has good pr support), including this one.

I can't believe this is a real movie

Right now, a very odd, campy movie is on TV: Night of the Comet.

"A comet wipes out most of life on Earth, leaving two Valley Girls to fight the evil types who survive."

It sounds like a fake movie, but it's true! How did they get funding for such a movie? Why did they make it? Seriously, it's very puzzling.

You can watch it in parts online. Below is the trailer. I doubt a lot of people saw it when it came out in the 80's. I certainly didn't, and never heard of it either.