Mukade said:
When I read the first post (WAYYY before this got so off-topic), I thought 'the reason you don't see so many sexy (or un-sexy, for that matter) Japanese actresses in the West is because there aren't enough that speak passable English such that they can appear in a Hollywood film.'
I mean, isn't this why Zhang Ziyi played the Japanese geisha in that terrible movie?
Actually, I think she played a
geiko because she is recognizable, not because she speaks passable English. (Of course, I may be wrong, but she couldn't speak a lick 5 years ago, and that didn't stop Chris Tucker from hitting on her in
Rush Hour 2.)
And "terrible movie"? Well, damn, I liked it. But all the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese students I tutor in English were all freaking out about it. I said it wasn't any different than foreign actors (usually English and Australians) playing Americans in Hollywood films. Aside from the fact that some of them overdo the "cowboy" accent, most Americans couldn't care less. ... Then again, we are a nation of immigrants anyway. We have Italians playing Jews, and Jews playing Irish, and Irish playing Italians in our movies.
Minty said:
Hmmm then the Chinese can demand to be called Huxianese or Zhonguanese then? It's true when addressing people you actually need to be quite careful.
My God, please, no! I have a hard enough time trying to decide if my students are either from Taiwan or Mainland China as it is.
Haneesh said:
I'm probably completly wrong when i say this but are there no sexy japanese girls?
I think the volume of people agreeing that you are wrong should be enough to convince you of the error of your ways. My voice (or keyboarding) need not reiterate what everyone else has said.
But there are beautiful women all over the world. There comes a time when sexy and hot aren't as impressive anymore, and beauty becomes more important. And in case you hadn't picked up on it, I'm implying that beauty and sexiness are two vastly different things, and the former is far superior to the latter, in my opinion.
yukio_michael said:
This thread was a bad idea.
You are wise to note this.
Mike Cash said:
I thought the word was well known, at least from the Churchill quote, "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put".
For being so Anglo-Saxon, the English academics were quick to adopt Latin grammatical styles and abandon their Germanic ancestral grammatical roots. In German, Old and Middle English, you can end a sentence with a preposition, avoiding ridiculous "grammatically correct" but ridiculously awkward sentence structure. By the way, you don't end a sentence with a preposition in Latin because Latin doesn't have them. So the English trying to impose Latin-style grammar on a Germanic language is late Renaissance arrogance.