You really are good at foreign languages

How often have you heard people say, "I never was any good with foreign languages!"  But any of us who read a lot or listen a lot, know lots of foreign words and phrases as part of our own language.

Consider the following:

Oui, non, savoir faire, coup d'état, menu, restaurant, merci beaucoup, la plume de ma tante, père, mère, soirée, bon jour, monsieur, madame, mademoiselle, garçon, parlez vous français

Si, gracias, señor, señora, señorita, taco, burrito, chili, sombrero, serape, fiesta, siesta, madre, padre, muchacho, muchacha, piñata, guerrilla, mesa

Ja, nein, Blitzkrieg, danke, sprechen sie Deutsch, guten morgen, auf Wiedersehen, angst

Da, nyet, troika, glasnost, perestroika, tsar, soviet, sputnik, vodka, tundra

Smörgåsbord, fjörd, tack, Viking, ski, lingon, orienteering, ombudsman, moped

Judo, karate, karaoke, sumo, sushi, tofu, miso, manga, sake, kimono, samurai, futon, tsunami

Si, no, italiano, spaghetti, opera, pasta, forte, piano, ciao, arrivederci, buon giorno, vino

I bet you know over 90% of these words and can identify each of the groups.

Interestingly, Apple's TextEdit only flagged five words as not in its dictionary; these were burrito, chili, serape, nyet, and fjörd.  TextEdit was happy when I spelled fjörd as fjord. In fact, TextEdit insisted on changing it as I typed.  Microsoft's Word is a bit fussier; it didn't recognize any of the words that contained diacritical marks, like in garçon, señor, and smörgåsbord.

See, you're also smarter than a computer.  You could recognize all the words.

Next time somebody says they have never been good at whatever, reply that they just haven't spent enough time and interest learning that whatever.

Ciao, amici miei!

How did I type Japanese?

You may have guessed, since I didn't write all of my Japanese message in Japanese, that I don't really speak Japanese.  You're right!  I know a few hundred words and a few grammar points.  Not really enough for a conversation or to order in a restaurant other than "nippon birru, kudasai!"  "Two beers, please!"

If you have a Mac, you can switch languages with a click of the mouse.

I was going to give you a long, possibly incorrect explanation, but I'll let your Mac give you a better one.

Go to the Finder and click-hold Help on the menu bar.

Type "foreign" next to "Search".

Click on "Typing in another language" and follow the directions.

Now, if you select Hiragana as the language to type, then type "nippon birru kudasai" you will get

日本ビッルください

You might have to start typing on a separate line.

BTW, if you are using TextEdit, you have to be careful when typing in English,  I typed "nippon birru kudasai" and it became "nippon bird kudasai".   Proofread!  Proofread!

どもありがとございます

Welcome and thank you to my Japanese subscriber.  I hope you can read my blog entries often.

住みません！私は日本がわかりません.  Wow!  I didn't expect my Mac to give me Kanji too!

See also "How did I type Japanese?"

Which teacher gets pay for performance for our granddaughter?

Our son, his wife, and their daughter Kayo visited Minnesota from Tokyo recently.  Kayo stayed with us a few days while her parents took some relief from her high energy.

I consider Kayo a normal almost three-year-old.  Lots of energy and lots of rest.  Eagerness to please and obstinate to do things her way.  Curious about almost everything from books with lots of words and pictures to nooks and crannies she shouldn't get into.

She can recite the English alphabet and my son says she knows most of the Japanese syllable chart (100+ syllables).  I do know she knows the horizontal vowel sounds, but she never did the vertical consonant sounds for us.  She can count to 20 in English and Japanese.  She recognizes words in books.  Of course, the key words for a page are bold and in a different color, but she points at the word and says it.  She can switch back and forth between English and Japanese, but she speaks mostly in Japanese because her playmates speak Japanese.

Her parents don't hold fast to the "rule" of each parent speaking his or her native language to the child, but her mother speaks mostly Japanese to her.

What kindergarten or elementary teacher who was paid for performance wouldn't love to have Kayo in his or her class?

If Kayo is so normal why does she have such extraordinary skills?  Simple, she has a stay-at-home mom who has her own specials skills.  Kayo's mom has ten years of experience in early childhood development.  Now  instead of helping a roomful of toddlers and pre-schoolers, she has only one student.  Class size does matter.

Now consider the effort made by a teacher with a class of thirty, many who may not even have seen a book before.  That teacher probably should be paid extra for even trying.

So, if we are to pay for performance, should stay-at-home parents get paid if they spend a lot of time stimulating their kids' minds?  It will never happen.

Can you believe a market prediction if the predictor can't write properly

U.S. Global Investors, a mutual fund company, had this under "Opportunity" in its latest weekly newsletter:

Governmental efforts to inject capital into the nation’s financial system could, in time, help to restore more normal lending conditions.

This is somewhat surprising in that U.S. Global Investors generally has a conservative slant. It looks like some conservatives think government can do some good besides fight wars in far off places.

On the other hand, this is the company that sent out New Year's greetings in many languages and, according to my son, had two errors in the Japanese greeting. I shouldn't complain too much, I switched two letters when I typed it in Japanese, which meant that two characters were absolutely wrong.

I meant to type

Akimashite Omedetto Gozaimasu

but I typed

Akimashite Omedetto Goazimasu

which gave

あきましておめでっとごあじます

My son said he, his wife, and her family had a good laugh over it. He wrote me that it should be

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu

which should be

あけましておめでとうございます

Now you are probably think I'm smart in Japanese. Well, I'm not. I may know a few hundred words, but I never had strong enough incentive to study it well. What is smart is my computer, a Mac. I just pull down from the menu a languare and type away. In the case of Japanese I type the Roman characters and the computer automagically converts them into Japanese characters.

A day of infamy

Today is the anniversary of the first internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry in 1942. The later Supreme Court ruling justifying the internment as a national security measure still stands. This same thinking has led to abuse of power by several succeeding presidents.

On the other hand, my German-born grandmother was never interned. If some movies are to be believed, Germans in America were more dangerous than Japanese. After all, they "looked like" everybody else.

"Please", a cross-cultural lesson in politeness

Many languages have a single word or phrase to add for politely asking someone to do a favor or even do something they should do without thinking. This phrase is also used in offering something to another, like, "please help yourself" or "please have this seat." In English, it is "please"; in German, "bitte"; in Swedish, "var så god"; in Italian, "prego", and in French, "s'il vous plait". In German, Swedish, and Italian, this phrase is also used for "you're welcome." In English, we may also say, "be so kind to..." or "if you please" or similar, but they are infrequent in daily discourse.

Japanese, to my untrained mind, has at least three common ways of saying "please". I first learned "kudasai" as being the equivalent of "please". However, if you are asking for a service, you might say, "onegai shimasu" (the "u" silent). Then I noticed that "dozo" was used for offering a service. For example, as a server put a plate in front of you, he or she would say, "dozo" (please have this).

Then I started recognizing ください　(kudasai) on signs. It was more or less like "Please don't litter" or "please stay back from train doors". That is, it is an instructional "please."

I found myself using "dozo" when I made way for someone else. For example, we set the train seats on the three across side to face each other as we were five adults. For more leg room, I moved across the aisle to an empty two-across seat. At a station, a couple got on and couldn't find an unoccupied two-across or even three-across seat, and so they sat in a three-across with a stranger. I got up, gestured toward the seats, and said, "Dozo." They gratefully accepted the seats and said "Thank you".

Sometimes, "Dozo" is said only with a gesture. For example, a flagman at a construction site would wave us on with a sweep of his hand towards his back.

This is by no means a paean on the politeness of Japanese society. It is a mixture of rudeness, unfeeling, ordinary politeness, and out-of-the-way politeness. Traffic is the perfect example of rudeness, and some women carry flashing buttons to warn gropers on the subway that they have been noticed. Like in many countries, the elevator protocol is to avoid eye contact. I've written about ordinary politeness above. We've had strangers go out of their way to find us station lockers.