June 10, 2009
The Millionth Word
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comments:
- Joel Bernstein: I know right?
- Rick Neece: Being nice is a dainty way to put it.
- Rick Neece: Hey Cristopher? Who cried “uncle” first, at the end of your ten-year stand-off? To quote my...
- Michael Smith: Ours is the kitchen.
- Amy Mabli: That’s what happens when you give the dogs the bed.
- Deron Bauman: Sweet Jesus.
- Michael Smith: Don’t we all.
- Pam: I have a story coming out soon in a ‘little mag’, Chicago Quarterly Review. An old friend recently...
- Pam: And I thought, somedays, that my work was meaningless…
- Pam: I remember Eggleston at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple years ago. He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit...
- Christopher Walken: Hey Clusterflockers, Realize y’all are hurting. I’ve been a really close friend of my...
- Marco: This works pretty well in mobile, more so in iOS
- Michael Smith: It was not the intent of management to imply all sissies are “namby pamby”. Management was...
- Rick Neece: I take umbrage with the term “namby pamby.” Some sissies are fierce.
- Carole Corlew: Shelia. Happy no big deal day. I would start your very own post but this phone is in semi rebellion.
Considering that I usually hear that word in reference to product enhancements, such as rounded corners and bubble fonts, I have mixed emotions about this.
Rounded corners are for the birds (pigeons, specifically).
sigh.
The French are much more in control of what gets in and what’s left out of the dictionary. Then there are the Japanese, who use foreign words but spell them with a different character set to ensure the purity of the original language. Of course, they use Chinese characters to express their purely Japanese words, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it?
It is so so very Japanese. There. I said it.
Sou desu ne… Ah, sou sou sou. (the final “u” is dropped at the end as a whisper)
Translated as “ah yes, that’s how it is, isn’t it?”
As in, “ii tenki, desu ne?” “hai, sou desu ne.”
(“good weather, isn’t it?” “yes, it is, isn’t it?”)
(which in American English is more like “how are you, today?” “fine.”)
(the Japanese would never be so forward as to ask about one’s health)
To quote my favorite husband-author, “these Japanese are a people polite in the extreme”
Ahh, jozu desu ne.
The final ‘u’ is dropped at the end as a whisper.
Thank you.
I’ve doubted I’d sleep at all tonight, but I will repeat your words as I drift, and I will drift off into the arms of Morpheus.
Rick wrote a story for me once in which “he” and “his partner” were in bed, and “he” was listening to “his partner” practice Japanese in his sleep. The percussion of the language is quite lovely, in my estimation (both the English of the story and the Japanese of the dream).
“Sou desu neeeeee….” (emphasis on the “nay” at the end shows agreement and understanding at a root level; a spiritual connection)
watashi wa jozu ja arimasen.