QUOTE (Karoline @ Oct 27 2010, 11:57 AM)
Actually, the only big difference is that Japanese puts the verb at the end of the sentence. So instead of saying 'I like kittens' you say 'I kittens like'. That's why you always get that last moment interruption in Japanese. Instead of "I love you." it is "I you love."
I really need to brush up on my Japanese, I'm having trouble even remembering basic sentence structure.
Clearly
in general, and in particular in this example, "like/love" is an adjective rather than a verb, so here we have the
adjective at the end. There are myriad other differences, some bigger than verb location; Japanese is pro-drop, so instead of saying "I kittens like" you say "kittens like" unless your point is about "who likes kittens" rather than your preferences.
As another example, a random sentence I came across this morning: "兄上を止めるのは儂の役目であったのに…". A natural way of translating this might be "even though it was my role to stop my brother", but that's completely scrambled structure-wise; to rearrange those parts into roughly the original order you'd get "[my brother] [to stop] [my role] [it was] [even though]". If you have a close translation to propose that even vaguely follows the original structure, please propose it—I can't think of anything.
Or a sentence from the ja.wikipedia page on eggplant: "世界の各地で独自の品種が育てられている。" Attempting to mimic the structure yields something like "around the world in various places unique varieties are raised", but that's—I mean, just read it. It doesn't even vaguely sound like something a native speaker would say or write.
QUOTE (ProfGast @ Oct 26 2010, 07:55 AM)
That's a bit different. English last names and similar are derived, taken, or bastardized. In the US at least, given the bastardization of the language and the Ellis Island syndrome (immigration officials who could not pronounce names as presented would often just 'make up' good ol' american names for the new immigrants) as well as people simply adopting the name from acquaintances (or in the case of former slaves, former owners) the names ARE just identifiers. This does not mean however, that that the NAME Johnson is NOT in fact derived from "Johnsson --> John's Son --> Johan's Son" etc. But at least in english the literal meaning is not necessarily retained.
I believe that we're drawing towards a philosophical distinction that lacks an accepted resolution, but this seems like an unsound line of argument—there are plenty of people of direct Anglo-Saxon lineage named Smith, which I can't see differing from the situation in Japanese.
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In chinese and japanese, regardless how a word is read, the meanings for a word are retained.
Not really true; 生物(なまもの) doesn't share any meanings with 生物(せいぶつ). No meanings are retained.
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Especially in japanese, where you can say "Shiro" or "Jou", just for example, and still mean castle. Despite the fact that Shiro, depending on how it's said, can also mean "white".
You can say either because both are words meaning "castle" (and the one that means "white" is a homophone with different kanji; it's not just how it's said, it's a different word entirely).
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右田 (Migita) still means, literally, "Right, Field" despite also being a standard family name.
前田 (Maeda) still means, literally, "Front, Field" despite also being a standard family name.
一郎 (Ichirou) despite being a very common male name, also does technically mean "first son". Well "One. Son." but still.
You're getting meaning from kanji, not words, but that's neither here nor there; more importantly, I don't see how this differs from "Smith".
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But at least when written out in kanji, it doesn't matter if it's read "kofuku" or "shiawase." The end result is the meaning of the words is still "happiness."
Neither here nor there for the argument at hand, but see the 生物 example.
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That is at least, the translation of the kanji you provided. I will grant, however, that there may well be many many ways to write "Shiawase" as a family name given the inordinately large number of ways that Japanese can read their kanji.
I can only find the one way attested, actually (which is why I proposed it despite the kanji not appearing in an English Shadowrun sourcebook that I know of. Someday I should pick up the Japanese version).
Also, something I missed:
QUOTE (ProfGast @ Oct 18 2010, 10:40 AM)
Fun fact, the term "katana" being used to refer to any given japanese sword is much more of a western adoption than anything else. I believe the term is derived specifically from the japanese sword type "uchigatana" which refers to a specific design.
You're right about the "any Japanese sword" bit being a western adoption, but you have it backwards; katana refers to
any backsword, including western-style sabers (with the specific design as an additional meaning). It's either extremely general or extremely specific.
~J