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Feynman on Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 9 of 23 27 April 2011 at 8:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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This scares the hell out of me and is a major reason I don't dare to take on Japanese. Give me tones and thousands of characters in multiple variants. Give me declensions and conjugations, inflections and prepositional verbs. Give me archaic vocabulary and impossible slang. I'll take them all on gladly. But politeness levels? I'll run away scared. I've grown up with a very informal view of life. At home I wouldn't dream of calling someone "Sir" or "Mister" or "Ma'am" or using someone's last name, including the Prime Minister himself if I met him. I have no sense of these things, which means I'm really scared of being impolite in foreign company. It was sometimes a problem in China and in Japan I suspect I'd be petrified.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 10 of 23 27 April 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
While I don't want to renew the debate repeatedly aired on this forum about the difficulty of particular languages, Japanese is usually considered a contender for the title of "most difficult language". If Feynman made real headway with Portuguese but gave up with Japanese, it could merely reflect the relative difficulty of these languages for English speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| w1n73rmu7e Newbie United States Joined 5943 days ago 31 posts - 46 votes | Message 11 of 23 27 April 2011 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
For example, I find Japanese to be very easy. I don't mind the complex grammar or the nightmarish writing system, because I find those sorts of things easy to learn. But if I were to try to learn Chinese, I would be completely lost, as my ability to learn to say new sounds is very poor. So for me, Japanese is much easier than Chinese. But there are definitely a lot of people who are the exact opposite. Edited by w1n73rmu7e on 27 April 2011 at 2:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5348 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 12 of 23 27 April 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Seems to me the developer of QED and renormalization should be the last one to be bothered by apparent inconsistencies that nonetheless work very well in practice.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 23 27 April 2011 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Physicists are generally the last people one expects to take seemingly-needless complications well, much less when such complications are related to social formality levels. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6475 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 14 of 23 28 April 2011 at 7:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I had to smile when I saw this thread, because I was similarly intrigued when I read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!".
Although we can only speculate on what Feynman's actual experience was, and what particular thing he found difficult -- he himself was only going by memory years after the fact, I'm sure -- I do think he made the right choice in thinking that Japanese was not for him. Feynman often exhibited little patience for formality, a topic that comes up in various forms in his discussions. For example, he often mentioned a lesson he learned from his father, that a man in street clothing and a man in a uniform is still the same man. He talked about how he could talk with great physicists like Niels Bohr, and at first he was starstruck, but as soon as they actually discussed physics, Feynman would forget who he was talking to and always interject with things like, "No, you're crazy, what really happens is..." -- a tendency that could well get him in trouble if he carried it over to Japanese and didn't take care to express himself in the "proper" way. In other words, if the Japanese language didn't get to him, Japanese society probably would. I myself have similar issues -- but I find I become almost a different person when it comes to Japanese culture. I dunno why, I just find it easier to accept formalities when I view it in the context of Japanese culture than in the context of American culture. I'd probably still never make it in Japan, though... I'd still be too likely to do something socially horrific like tell off my boss. :P 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 15 of 23 28 April 2011 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It was probably as much a cultural as a linguistic problem for Feynman.
Years ago I saw a French film, Stupeur et tremblements, based on a reportedly true story of a French or Belgian woman who speaks Japanese and goes to work for a Tokyo firm. Despite knowing the language, she commits all sorts of cultural faux pas in terms of Japanese society and ends up being assigned as a toilet attendant in the office building. I have to say the film did not present Japanese society in a very flattering light, although I had trouble believing that the main character, who supposedly learned Japanese from living in the country as a child, would be as socially clueless as she was. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 23 28 April 2011 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
She left the country at 5, so it actually does make sense. She's Belgian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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