The British, the English in particular, seem like the European equivalents of the Japanese. Indeed, the English are as fixated on The Code of Chivalry as the Japanese are on the Code of Bushido. Both the Japanese Islands and the British Isles are rainy places, each lived in by proud peoples, who like their tea; and have hatred of any and all forms of foreigners. I have always found the parallels to be quite fascinating to think about.
Absolutely. There are many interesting parallels.
Both island peoples have a strange Superiority/inferiority complex about the continent nearby.
The Brits say "the Wogs begin at Calais" (the inferior races start just across the English channel). But at the same time the Brits have always gotten much of their culture from the continent. The Japanese are similar but even more extreme in being both racist towards other Asians, but the same time being beholden to Chinese culture (borrowing Buddhism, Confucianism, writing system, much music and ceremonial dance, etc from China).
English has borrowed many words from French. Similarly Japanese borrows many words from Chinese, often reborrowing the same word centuries later after the Chinese word has evolved slightly. In English we have the word "cattle" meaning "cows",and the word "chattel" meaning "property"(both are essentially the same French word). There are similar sorts of multiple borrowings of the same word into Japanese from Chinese.
Last edited by naturalplastic on 16 Jun 2018, 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Carl Rogers, the father of Client-Centred therapy, commented on us Brits in a despairing moment about whether we could ever become good therapist in this approach.
He said "they have to be so damned polite with each other".
So it is interesting to hear others comment on our way of presenting ourselves to the world.
Keep it coming I say - it is eye opening.
another similarity I guess: "politeness".
However, having lived in the UK I have to say: comparing politeness between languages and cultures doesn't work.
A culture is a somewhat closed framework and something that sounds relatively polite to an outsider can still be a scathing insult -or fauxpas- to someone who understands the connotations.
oh yeah: regarding the UK being mixed and international: they did conquer the world and forced their comparatively simple language on everyone (It's also friendly to accents). The japanese only tried ti conquer china, again and again. and their language/writing system is stupid complicated and foreign accents make it hard to understand for native speakers..... that's why japan is 99% japan...
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I can read facial expressions. I did the test.
However, having lived in the UK I have to say: comparing politeness between languages and cultures doesn't work.
A culture is a somewhat closed framework and something that sounds relatively polite to an outsider can still be a scathing insult -or fauxpas- to someone who understands the connotations.
oh yeah: regarding the UK being mixed and international: they did conquer the world and forced their comparatively simple language on everyone (It's also friendly to accents). The japanese only tried ti conquer china, again and again. and their language/writing system is stupid complicated and foreign accents make it hard to understand for native speakers..... that's why japan is 99% japan...
Do you mean English is simple in comparison to Japaneses? Wouldn't it depend on which language you were familiar with already ie one with the same alphabet. English is the larger language.
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Both island peoples have a strange Superiority/inferiority complex about the continent nearby.
The Brits say "the Wogs begin at Calais" (the inferior races start just across the English channel). But at the same time the Brits have always gotten much of their culture from the continent. The Japanese are similar but even more extreme in being both racist towards other Asians, but the same time being beholden to Chinese culture (borrowing Buddhism, Confucianism, writing system, much music and ceremonial dance, etc from China).
English has borrowed many words from French. Similarly Japanese borrows many words from Chinese, often reborrowing the same word centuries later after the Chinese word has evolved slightly. In English we have the word "cattle" meaning "cows",and the word "chattel" meaning "property"(both are essentially the same French word). There are similar sorts of multiple borrowings of the same word into Japanese from Chinese.
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Any other fascinating parallels you'd care to share with us?
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Kraichgauer
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Any other fascinating parallels you'd care to share with us?
ALWAYS...blame the French!
Hey, I'm mostly German, so "blame the French" is pretty much second nature to me!
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
However, having lived in the UK I have to say: comparing politeness between languages and cultures doesn't work.
A culture is a somewhat closed framework and something that sounds relatively polite to an outsider can still be a scathing insult -or fauxpas- to someone who understands the connotations.
oh yeah: regarding the UK being mixed and international: they did conquer the world and forced their comparatively simple language on everyone (It's also friendly to accents). The japanese only tried ti conquer china, again and again. and their language/writing system is stupid complicated and foreign accents make it hard to understand for native speakers..... that's why japan is 99% japan...
Do you mean English is simple in comparison to Japaneses? Wouldn't it depend on which language you were familiar with already ie one with the same alphabet. English is the larger language.
japanese is painfully hard, due to them having borrowed chinese characters, and chinese vocabulary, at different times - meaning there is usually at least one japanese reading of a character, and at least one chinese- yet often there's more than one chinese reading, stemming from different times or regions of china.
That, in combination with a alphasyllabaric system that has a rather limited range of sounds and doesn't allow much in the way of clustering consonants.
then there's different vocabulary for different speakers - female, male - and different vocabulary depending on status - whether you're speaking down to someone or up.
hell, I once failed to order 4 cups of coffee because I used the wrong word for "4" ( there's three different words I know of)
even chinese is easier, it has one only one reading per character - yet chinese pronunciation is sooo hard.
yes, of course it makes a difference whether one starts with the same alphabet - but really, one should say: it makes a difference if one starts with an alphabet at all.
chinese ideograms were great across asia, because they allowed for a shared writing system that was independent of language used - but that only meant that people could roughly read what was written in the other language, using the same ideograms.
_________________
I can read facial expressions. I did the test.
However, having lived in the UK I have to say: comparing politeness between languages and cultures doesn't work.
A culture is a somewhat closed framework and something that sounds relatively polite to an outsider can still be a scathing insult -or fauxpas- to someone who understands the connotations.
oh yeah: regarding the UK being mixed and international: they did conquer the world and forced their comparatively simple language on everyone (It's also friendly to accents). The japanese only tried ti conquer china, again and again. and their language/writing system is stupid complicated and foreign accents make it hard to understand for native speakers..... that's why japan is 99% japan...
Do you mean English is simple in comparison to Japaneses? Wouldn't it depend on which language you were familiar with already ie one with the same alphabet. English is the larger language.
japanese is painfully hard, due to them having borrowed chinese characters, and chinese vocabulary, at different times - meaning there is usually at least one japanese reading of a character, and at least one chinese- yet often there's more than one chinese reading, stemming from different times or regions of china.
That, in combination with a alphasyllabaric system that has a rather limited range of sounds and doesn't allow much in the way of clustering consonants.
then there's different vocabulary for different speakers - female, male - and different vocabulary depending on status - whether you're speaking down to someone or up.
hell, I once failed to order 4 cups of coffee because I used the wrong word for "4" ( there's three different words I know of)
even chinese is easier, it has one only one reading per character - yet chinese pronunciation is sooo hard.
yes, of course it makes a difference whether one starts with the same alphabet - but really, one should say: it makes a difference if one starts with an alphabet at all.
chinese ideograms were great across asia, because they allowed for a shared writing system that was independent of language used - but that only meant that people could roughly read what was written in the other language, using the same ideograms.
_________________
climate change petition, please sign
Petition against Amazon selling 'make downs extinct' t-shirts. And other hate speech paraphernalia.