abcnovels
Chapter 334: [There Is No Such Thing As An Average Language]
Chapter 334: [There Is No Such Thing As An Average Language]
Chapter 334: [There Is No Such Thing As An Average Language]
?Watch out if you make the Japanese mad. They'll turn you into a beautiful girl (Ukrainian)
?? What kind of torture is this (Ukrainian)?
?? What a reward! (Ukrainian)
<No, not that. I meant anthropomorphism!>
Being teased in the comments, Ilyena hurriedly corrected herself again. I laughed and urged her to continue.
<Anthropomorphism is like "the wind whispers" or "the pen runs," right?>
<Yes. At first, every time objects were metaphorically expressed as humans, I had a moment of "huh?">
<Now that you mention it, it is a strange way to phrase things.>
<Exactly! But, after seeing that comment, I had a small thought.>
<About the "being turned into a beautiful girl" thing!?><No, no! I meant the Eight Million Gods! I started to wonder if there's a connection between anthropomorphism and deification. It feels like both might be influenced by religious views.>
<Hmm… I wonder if that's true.>
<But the way Japan views “gods” is quite unique, right?>
<For better or worse, it's casual. The idea is closer to thinking they're everywhere. I was even taught not to waste food because "seven gods live in each grain of rice.">
?Eating gods!? Japan is crazy, as expected (Ukrainian)
?Iroha-chan devours even gods? Big girl energy (Ukrainian)
?Today's Iroha-chan is huge (Ukrainian)
<No, no! It's just a metaphor! It means it takes water, soil, wind, bugs, clouds, the sun, and the people who grow it. Only when those seven come together do we get rice!>
?I thought the seven gods referred to the "Seven Lucky Gods," but I guess not.
?Still, it’s true that Japan doesn’t seem to worship gods as fervently as other countries.
?We tend to use the word "god" pretty casually, don’t we?
<Iroha-sama is a "god"! Also, Iroha-sama’s new song is "godly," so everyone, listen to it!>
?Iroha-chan is a god (Korean)
?Iroha-chan is a god, no doubt.
?? No, Iroha-chan is an angel, right?
<Ahaha… But yeah, English has recently started avoiding "Oh my God" out of respect for religion, while Japanese hasn't seen that kind of change.>
?In place of "God," people say "gosh" or "goodness" (U.S.)
?And sometimes "Gees" instead of "Jesus" (U.S.)
?Japanese doesn't distinguish between singular "God" and plural "gods" like English does (U.S.)
<That's true. We don't distinguish between monotheistic gods and the many gods of Shinto as clearly as other cultures might.>
The singular "God" with a capital letter and the lowercase "god" for general use don't have an equivalent distinction in Japanese.
By the way, as a side note… the reason "I" is capitalized in English has nothing to do with any deep significance; it was just easier to read that way when printing started.
<…Wow, we've talked a lot.>
<We sure have.>
<After all this talk, I’ve realized again that Japanese is a really unique language.>
?Yeah, right? Even though I speak it myself, I feel that way too.
?Ugh, I’m about to start learning Japanese, and it sounds like it'll be tough! (U.S.)
?Japanese really is strange (Ukrainian)
<Hmm…>
<Iroha-sama, is something on your mind?>
<Ah, no. I just thought it was about time I should clarify something.>
<Eh? Did I say something wrong!?>
<No, no! Sorry, I phrased that badly. You're not wrong, but some things aren't quite accurate, so I thought I should mention them.>
<Uh, what do you mean?>
<Well, you know how you've been pointing out unique features of Japanese?>
<– Almost all of them also exist in Korean.>
<Eh, EHHH!? They're not unique to Japanese!?>
<Not everything is exactly the same, of course.>
?Seriously???
?I thought those were all Japanese-only things.
?I was thinking they sounded kinda similar (Korean)
<Actually, the sentence structure is the same, there are three levels of politeness (respect, humble, polite), lots of counter words, and even onomatopoeia might be richer in Korean.>
<I… I didn’t know that.>
<Ilyena, you keep saying Japanese is “unique,” right? You're absolutely correct. But to be more precise… all languages are unique and special.>
<!>
<English is unique, Ukrainian is unique, and Korean is unique too. There is no such thing as an average language.>
For example, there's an artificial language called Esperanto that was designed to have no exceptions… but even that has the "exception of having no exceptions."
That said, each language has strengths and weaknesses. As I mentioned before, with Japanese, it’s things like "translation."
It’s a lot like programming languages in that way.
<Now that you mention it, I'm curious about why Japanese and Korean are so similar.>
<It could be due to convergent evolution, or because the languages interacted, or maybe it's related to geography or climate. It could be any of those, or even all of them. We don’t know yet.>
<Iroha-sama… language is fascinating!>
At Ilyena’s words, I nodded vigorously in agreement.