Bach

If you've ever heard the Japanese pronunciation of "Bach" and you're anything like me, you've probably scratched your head (at least figuratively) and thought "hmm, that's odd." Yes, I'm talking about the Bach the composer.

In Japanese, it is spelled/pronounced 「バッハ」. Yup, like "Baja." I always think of the Mexican chain Baja Fresh.

Well a little earlier I did a web search and found a few answers like this one: basically that the Japanese pronunciation is closer to the original German than the way English-speakers pronounce it. While this is certainly possible, I decided I didn't want to take it on faith from Japanese people that their way of pronouncing "Bach" is more correct than ours. 勝負！(showdown!)

After a few searches in English, I came up with this link, which has a little audio clip near the bottom with the proper German pronunciation of "Bach." Basically, English and Japanese are both off.

Not that I can speak any German, but I've heard enough of it in movies and such that I can somewhat pick up on pronunciations. The "ch" sound seems to be a more guttural union of "h" and "k" than we use in English. Almost a soft "k," if that makes sense. If you've studied any basic German, one of the most basic words is "ich" (I), and it has the same kind of sound.

It's not a sound we use. Japanese doesn't have it either, and so while we English-speakers decided to just go all in with a hard "k" sound, the Japanese dropped the "k" and went full "h."

Honestly I was going into this one hoping that English had it right, but it looks like a draw.

Hold up! Haf, one of our resident Germans, offers these comments:

The "ch" in "ich" and in "Bach" is pronounced completely different, it doesn't sound the same at all. I can't really describe it, but at least for a German person the voice samples show the difference quite well. Bach: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/De-Bach.ogg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/De-ich.ogg

I don't see where a "K" is supposed to hidden in the German pronunciation. It is however my impression that English speakers often substitute a "K" in place of the "ch". ;) 
Now Japanese people have a whole lot of other problems with the German language, oddly enough also with the distinction between the pronunciation of "auch" and "auf". But they usually can manage with a few minutes of pronunciation training. :)
[...]
I also believe that Englsih speakers map the German "ch" sounds to a "K" because it's the closest thing they got. :) That's usually how people start listening to and speaking a foreign language and it's where all the funny accents come from. 
Describing the pronunciation it really hard for me though, for one because English is not my mother tongue and second because I would even have problems describing it in German. ;) If I absolutely had to describe it, I would reluctantly say that it might relate a bit to how it's pronounced in Japanese and at the same time that the "ch" sounds a bit like the "wh" in "cool whip" (or was it whipped cream?) when Stewie from Family Guy says it with his odd "hwip" pronunciation, albeit more roughly expressed. 
I can't really say if the term "guttural" describes the pronunciation. I would say that the "ch" is aspirated, with a lowered jaw, a stiff and raised tongue and relatively closed lips, pressing the air out slowly. Is that guttural? :)

So then it appears that the Japanese does edge out the English pronunciation! And if I ever take up German, I'll have to work on my "ch"'s.

Strong Grapefruit!

Good heart-ism

So recently we got kind of screwed over by Dell in our office. I won't go into boring detail, but suffice it to say Amazon.com took care of us (as we ordered through them) after Dell gave us the runaround on faulty equipment.

Today my boss declared that Amazon was 良心的 (りょうしんてき), and asked me what that is in English. I told him I wasn't sure, and he said "maybe something like 'kind?'" When he suggested that word choice, I was able to surmise what kanji the word uses, and I guess I've heard it before. I'm not exactly sure that 「良心的」has a direct, clean English translation (maybe "fair," "honest," or "conscientious"), but the word itself is a good example of how straightforward some terms can be in Japanese. The kanji are "good" (良), "heart" (心), and 「的」, which is kind of like "~ism" or "~like."

New Shugo Tokumaru music video

Joe here, posting after a very long absence. Something has just happened that I feel compelled to share with you. I'm a huge fan of Japanese musician Shugo Tokumaru (トクマルシューゴ). I'm happy to announce his new CD has finally made it's way over to the US iTunes store today! It's called "In Focus?" and it's only $10! (I'm not paid to promote this, in case you were wondering :)

Still having doubts despite my glowing endorsement? Check out this incredibly cool music video which just came out 18 hours ago.

 
Play it again, Sam!

Up and down

人生って・・・もちろん見方は人のよって違うけど、難しいよね。確かに主観的だが。世界の一番お金持ちのアメリカの人だし、子供の頃悪くなかったし。でも人間って、充実感や幸せというと客観的に考えないね。周りの人に比べる。

この頃僕は「信頼失ってる」というか、今の状態はどうかな。多分思うよりわるくないけど、これは神様の計画なのか？ただ、運か？もしくは、僕悪い選択をした？

まぁ・・・去年の別れはまだきつい傷だけど、癒してる。と思う。でも強い感情まだある。昨夜、夢で会った、何度も。起きたら、物凄く話したっかた。メールとか送りたかった。でも駄目だよね。まだ凄く大切な人、僕にとって。だが進ませなきゃね。僕も前へ進むしかない・・・と言うはずだけど。

思い出すと、日本にいた時に凄くいいときだった。経験も、友達も、特に相手も・・・その２、３年間は運が良かった。だから今は公平のようかな？というより僕の態度のせいだ、かもしれないね。

とりあえず、落ち着いて日日頑張ろうな。

/メソメソ終了

Prayer of Serenity

神よ、恩寵を私に与えて下さい
変えられないものを静穏に受け入れるために
与えて下さい　
変えるべきものを変える勇気を
そして、変えられるないものと変えるべきものを
区別する賢さを私に与えて下さい

一日を一度に生き、
一瞬を一度に楽しみ
平和へと向かう小道として困難を受け入れる
神がしたように、
この罪深い世界をそのままに受け入れる
私がそれを味わうようにではなく
あなたが全てを正しくされることを信じる
もしあなたの意志に身を委ねたならば、
この人生が適度に幸福なものとなり得るように、
そして、天国で永遠のあなたとともに至福を味わうために

Amen.

Nothin' but graphite

The life of an ink cartridge

Could you repeat that?

It's amazing sometimes how much there is to learn. Earlier I was looking briefly at today's copy of the 日経新聞 (the Nikkei) and I noticed one of the headlines contained a non-kanji character I wasn't familiar with. The word was 「いすゞ」。

I asked one of my coworkers, and it appears I discovered the hiragana version of 「々」. This character is used to indicate repetition of the character before it. For example 「色々」is another way of writing 「色色」。

According to my research, these things are called 「踊り字」or 「繰り返し記号」, though you can call them up by simply typing 「くりかえし」and scrolling through the kanji choices.

Apparently there are separate characters for use in hiragana, katakana, and kanji:

Hiragana - ゝ (or ゞ)

Katakana - ヽ (or ヾ)

Kanji -　々

As you can see, unlike their kanji kin, the kana versions can be accented to represent a change in sound, just like normal kana (though the little circle versions don't seem to exist).

Learning something like this now makes me feel a little noobish, but at the same time it's gratifying to know that there are still simple elements of Japanese like this out there for me to discover.

あけおめ

Happy New Year! Just a quick Japanese post to start 2013.

If you follow a lot of Japanese accounts on Twitter or Facebook or other social media, you've no doubt seen a sizable amount of set phrases thrown around the past couple days. One that I started hearing a lot a few years ago (though it's quite possible it was a popular expression before that and I just was unaware of it) is あけおめ.

Japanese likes to shrink, shorten, abbreviate, and compress words and crunch them into nifty little phrases (NG, anyone?). あけおめ is a shortening of one of the two standard New Year's congratulations - あけましておめでとうございます.

Incidentally, the other standard (ことしもよろしくおねがいします) is also going around as ことよろ.

Note that these are casual and probably shouldn't be proffered to one's superiors or elders.