他のスレッドで見つけた英語表現について質問するスレッド

Kyoko_desu · 14 Dec 2006

thread title
Things I've only said in Japan

Post #7
Is it the guy who ijimated you ?

Since I couldn't find this word "ijimate" in any dictionaries, I've been guessing it might be a Maciamo-san's made-up word, originated by a Japanese word ijimeru (いじめる). Then the sentence would mean 「これが、あなたをいじめた人ですか？」or more informally 「これが君をいじめたやつか？」, and it could make sense to me.

If my this wild guess is right, now I wonder how many people can get it, because I don't think this Japanese word is that wide-spreaded as "kimono", "ninja" or "manga", and most of the non-Japanese people who have never been to Japan or who have no interest in Japan probably don't know it. He just used it here because it's an Japan oriented forum?

Or Maybe it was just a typo or misspelling?

By the way, the English translation for いじめ is "bullying", right? Does it include 精神的ないじめ such as 仲間はずれ or 無視 as well as voilence such as hitting, punching, and kicking?

moofs · 14 Dec 2006

Yep you got it right! It's common in english to just tack on verb ending inflections to non-verb words and it'd still make sense. It works with any suffixes actually. You could say "That guy's an ijime-er!!!" with the -er suffix meaning "someone who does (verb)" like teacher is "someone who teaches". Or the suffix -ish (らしい), you can make words up like "That guy looks ijime-ish... better not go near him." It's just like how you'd tack on る to make new verbs in japanese. =]

Bullying is usually physical but it does encompass emotional abuse and verbal abuse and whatever else bullies do.

Kyoko_desu · 16 Dec 2006

moofs said:
It's common in english to just tack on verb ending inflections to non-verb words and it'd still make sense. It works with any suffixes actually. You could say "That guy's an ijime-er!!!" with the -er suffix meaning "someone who does (verb)" like teacher is "someone who teaches". Or the suffix -ish (らしい), you can make words up like "That guy looks ijime-ish... better not go near him." It's just like how you'd tack on る to make new verbs in japanese.

moofs-san, that's so interesting that one can make up new English words like that, thanks for the explanation!
We (especially young school girls) do like making up words like that, for example:

*add "ru" and make a new verb*
マクる (maku + ru) = go to McDonald's
オケる (oke + ru) = do Karaoke
コピる (kopi + ru) = copy, make a copy
ラブる (rabu + ru) = love someone

*add the - ing suffix and make an English sounding words*
ホレッティング (horetting) = (horeru + ing) = （惚れる + ing )--- be in love with someone
むかつきんぐ (mukatsuking) = (mukatsuku + ing) ＝（むかつく + ing) --- be angry

moofs said:
Bullying is usually physical but it does encompass emotional abuse and verbal abuse and whatever else bullies do.

I see, so it can include any physical and social harassment, although it usually means physical. moofs-san, arigatou gozaimashita!

Kyoko_desu · 8 Jan 2007

（ちょっと遅くなりましたけど）明けましておめでとうございます。
クリスマスからお正月休みにかけて、英語の勉強はさぼりまくりでした。
でも、やっとエンジンがかかってきたようで、また、皆さんの書き込みを読んで勉強したいという気持ちがモリモリ出てきました。ということで、先生、今年もよろしくお願いいたします！

では、今年最初の質問です。

thread title
What is your mother tongue ?

Post #242

JerseyBoy;288929 said:
I speak the vanila mix of Japanese and American English.

By checking his profile and other posts, I figured JerseyBoy-san is a Japanese guy who has been living in the USA for more than 10 years, so he must speak both Japanese and American English fluently.

I looked up my dictionaries for the expression "vanilla mix" but couldn't find what it really means. "vanilla" by itself means a special taste to ice cream, cakes, etc., and it's something sweet and tastey for me. So, maybe "speaking vanilla mix of two languages" means "well-balanced mix of them" or maybe it referes that he can speak those langauges very nicely and sweetly or something?

Oh, and when I did an image search for "vanilla mix" I got these. Does the expression have anything to do with those products?

よろしくお願いします。

PaulTB · 8 Jan 2007

"Vanilla" is often used metaphorically to mean "standard" or sometimes "boring" because it is the most common ice-cream flavour. I think he's just saying that "I speak Japanese and English, like you'd expect in an English site about the Japanese language."

Incidentally 'mix' is just because he speaks a _mix_ of two languages,
I don't think it's anything to do with 'vanilla mix'.

Kyoko_desu · 9 Jan 2007

Oh! "standard" or "boring"! Yeah if someone ordered a vanila ice cream at the サーティーワン here, we would probably wonder why he wants such an too-common/standard flavour. (サーティーワン is how we call Baskin Robins ice cream shop here, btw.)

Thank you very much, Pooru-san, now I know that JersyBoy-san can speak both English and Japanese like normal native speakers do.
ありがとうございました！

leonmarino · 9 Jan 2007

Hello!
Just wanted to say hi to y'all again! I won't be online as often as in the past, but I'll hop in and post from time to time.

ps: sorry for hi-jacking your thread Kyoko.

PaulTB · 9 Jan 2007

Kyoko_desu said:
Oh! "standard" or "boring"! Yeah if someone ordered a vanila ice cream at the サーティーワン here, we would probably wonder why he wants such an too-common/standard flavour. (サーティーワン is how we call Baskin Robins ice cream shop here, btw.)
Thank you very much, Pooru-san, now I know that JersyBoy-san can speak both English and Japanese like normal native speakers do.
ありがとうございました！

As being native speaking level in both languages is far from usual so you should take JersyBoy's use of 'vanilla' as having a native Japanese level of 謙遜.

Glenn · 10 Jan 2007

Being native speaking in both languages is far from unusual? I thought it was the other way around.

Kyoko_desu · 11 Jan 2007

I think I know why you two have two different ideas about being able to speak two languages.

Paul san is in the UK, which is in Europe, where lots of people speak more than two languages. On the other hand, Glenn-san is in the US and currently staying Japan, where not many people can speak two langauges.

Anyway, I think I understand what this word "vanilla" means now.
Paul-san and Glenn-san, thank you very much!

Kyoko_desu · 11 Jan 2007

leonmarino said:
Hello!
Just wanted to say hi to y'all again! I won't be online as often as in the past, but I'll hop in and post from time to time.

ps: sorry for hi-jacking your thread Kyoko.

Oops! I almost missed your post, leon!
I'm so happy to know that you didn't leave here. And hahaha! your hi-jacking is always welcome~!

PaulTB · 11 Jan 2007

Glenn said:
Being native speaking in both languages is far from unusual? I thought it was the other way around.

Er, I got stuck half way between

"unusual"
and
"far from usual"

Glenn · 12 Jan 2007

I figured that was probably the case. Funny that that happens when typing as well as in speech. Makes me think that typing is just a different form of speech (man, I hope that doesn't sound too obvious, 'cause it just did to me).

undrentide · 26 Feb 2007

My question is not about an expression used on this forum but from a book I'm reading now. I hope other members don't mind my posting it here - I think my question is not worthwhile to creat a new thread...

What I'm now reading is "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. It is a book about punctuation. Normally books on grammar are rather boring, but this one isn't. It is a very serious book about punctuation, yet it is hilarious!
The title comes from the pand joke, which is also about the punctuation problem.

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The pand produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, and leaves."

It's a great book, a "must read" for anyone who writes in English!

Now my question. I have to quote longish part from the chapter "Airs and Graces" which is about colon and semicolon.

Cecil Hartley, in his Principles of Punctuation: or, The Art of Pointing (1818), includes this little poem, which tells us the simple one-two-three of punctuation values.

The stops point out, with truth, the time of pause
A sentence doth require at ev'ry clause.
At ev'ry comma, stop while one you count;
At semicolon, two is the amount;
A colon doth require the time of three;
The period four, as learned men agree.

This system of sorting punctuation marks as if they were musical rests of ascending value has gone unquestioned for a long time, but do you know what I think? I think it's rubbish. Complete nonsense. Who counts to tow? Who counts to three? Imagine all those poor devils who have, abiding by this ridiculous rule, sat at desks for the past three centuries, tapping pencils and trying to work out whether "To err is human, tap, tap, to forgive devine" is superior to "To err is human, tap, tap, TAP, to forgive devine" - before bursting into tears because each version sounds as bad as the other. The idea of the semicolon as an imperceptible bit weightier than a comma, and the colon as a teensy bit lighter than a full stop, is a wrong-headed way of both characterising the colon and semicolon, and (especially) sorting them out. They are not like so many bags of sugar attached to the belt of a sentence to slow it down. Quite opposite.

What made me puzzled is the sentence in bold.
Why bags of sugar? It seems to be some kind of metaphor but exactly what?
What came to my mind when I first read it is the sand bags tied around the basket under the hot-air baloon. But they are bags of sand, not sugar.
Could someone explain what these bags of sugar are about?

leonmarino · 26 Feb 2007

undrentide said:
The title comes from the panda joke, which is also about the punctuation problem.

Bwahaha!! Great joke.

undrentide said:
Why bags of sugar? It seems to be some kind of metaphor but exactly what?

Well my best guess is he chose sugar as a metaphor because sugar is used to sweeten things up. In the same way as the Mary Poppins' song, "one spoon of sugar and the medicine goes down", something not as good can be made better by simply adding sugar. So it's actually two metaphors in one because indeed, like you say, bags of sand are used to slow hot air balloons down.

But, this is nothing but a guess from a non-native English speaker.

I think it's similar to the use of "cheesy". Cheese being used often on pizza's to make it taste better.. Even it is awful at times!!

undrentide · 27 Feb 2007

leonmarino said:
Bwahaha!! Great joke.

Hahaha, I like this kind of joke.

leonmarino said:
Well my best guess is he chose sugar as a metaphor because sugar is used to sweeten things up. In the same way as the Mary Poppins' song, "one spoon of sugar and the medicine goes down", something not as good can be made better by simply adding sugar. So it's actually two metaphors in one because indeed, like you say, bags of sand are used to slow hot air balloons down.

But, this is nothing but a guess from a non-native English speaker.

I think it's similar to the use of "cheesy". Cheese being used often on pizza's to make it taste better.. Even it is awful at times!!

Thank you for your comments, which really are convincing and look to be valid. Thank you!

I'm just curious what others feel when they read/hear this sentence, especially who are native speaker of English... it does not seem that I'm getting more replies, perhaps the title of this thread is in Japanese and that scares off the people?

doinkies · 27 Feb 2007

doinkies hasn't really heard that expression used here (I'm from the US). Since Lynne Truss is from the UK, and the book was originally published there, maybe that expression is more used in the UK.

Mikawa Ossan · 27 Feb 2007

Mostly I would just like to reitterate what leon and doinkies have already said.

I have no idea why sugar was specifically used, but then again, my image of a bag of sugar isn't very large. Perhaps a couple kilograms at most. Having such bags attached to your belt would certainly be a nuisance!

undrentide · 28 Feb 2007

Ah, thank you, doinkies chan and Mikawa Ossan!
So it is likely that "the bags of sugar" is not a fixed/common expression but rather Lynn Truss's metaphor or imagination, though there still is possibility of its being something very British.

Thank you again to all of you!

As a thank-you present, I quote the two sentences, which are highly entertaining. You can see small dots make such a big difference; it is really interesting.

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: withouther, man is nothing.

MrWabu · 1 Mar 2007

undrentide said:
though there still is possibility of its being something very British.

I can't recall I've ever heard of it before.

undrentide said:
A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

That's quite clever.

undrentide · 3 Mar 2007

Thank you, Mr.Wabu.
Then it should be just an expression Lynn Stuss randomly used - or a lively image because all those punctuation is so dear to her.

Glenn · 12 Mar 2007

That's crazy you're reading that book. I read it a while ago, and also found it entertaining. I especially liked the line that was something like "if I had a time machine, I'd go back and mother Gutenberg's babies." There's the possibility that that's way off, but I'm pretty sure it was along those lines (the book's a few thousand miles away so I can't check).

I also like "I've always wanted to know how to spell Connecticut."

chickie · 13 Mar 2007

I read that book some time ago!!!

Kirie_Maiden · 22 Mar 2007

I've not read the book yet, but it is supposed to be really funny and informative. Coming with stickers to put on bad punctuation that say, "The Panda says NO!"

BulletsFearTheBrave · 23 Mar 2007

funny. i've actually learned more about english grammer by taking foriegn language classes, than i ever did in my english classes... for example; gerund form... never even heard of it till last year when i started korean class. then i learned about it again in my japanese class.

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