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Along with the general global worry I have one particular, somewhat related personal worry at the moment which isn’t going anywhere and will just have to play itself out over the time required; I suppose it’s the least I deserve. Otherwise, it’s spring and there are cats and I have (non-work-related) projects I’m excited about, life should be enjoyed when it can be.
Small language stuff. Xi-laoshi taught me 谷子店 in Chinese. 谷子 literally means “valley” or “grain,” but here it’s used for its sound value of guzi, which is phonetic for グーズ gūzu in Japanese, which in turn is phonetic for “goods” in English and in this case refers to fannish-type goods or what I think would be called merch…
Ear in Japanese is 耳, mimi. Worm, as in our pink wiggly friends on the sidewalk after rain, is ミミズ, mimizu. Therefore by all rights an earworm, as in the song, should be a mimimimizu (or, more efficiently written, 耳ズ), but unfortunately it’s just the English word transcribed. (Chinese apparently does use 耳虫 or 耳朵虫!)
I never remembered to say thanks for votes in the what-should-I-translate-next poll, here (if you still have an opinion or a question, feel free to let me know now as well!); in accordance with the majority vote, I’m working on Li Kotomi’s essays, but I may branch out into a novel or similar as well for added fun, since we’re hitting the dead time of the fiscal year. In passing Li introduced me to Selinker’s idea of interlanguage, which you’d think I would have come across before; I guess I did, just didn’t know there was a word for it. Reminds me, among many other examples, of Japanese-speaking teenagers learning Korean and sticking Korean verb endings on Japanese words to get by when they didn’t know the vocabulary (similarly, my frequent joke that if I don’t know a word in Chinese I can just use the Japanese word and add 子, cf 妻子，筷子，栗子 and so on), or the farmboys’ preferred use in English of Chinese duplication (我来试试, let me try try).
Latest farmboy words: 不灵(了), it won’t work, a wish won’t come true; 望梅止渴, to comfort oneself with illusions (literally, to quench thirst by thinking of plums); 冰美式, an iced Americano, exactly what the characters say; 珐琅锅, a ceramic pot a la Le Creuset; 抬杠, to argue for the sake of arguing; 举一反三, to infer many things from one thing; 香饽饽, very popular, delicious, the belle of the ball.
Music: Gabriella Liandu singing Speak Low and Bach via Cuba.
Writing and translation: As noted above, I’m working on Li Kotomi’s essays, but they go quite slowly because there’s a real need to think about each word, as she does. Also, she’s often writing about Japanese in Japanese, which is hard in the technical sense to translate—her childhood misunderstanding of the word 召し上がる, for instance, which relies on the characters used. Likewise, she writes “「中間言語」という硬い漢語に飽きたら「真ん中の言葉」と和語に言い換えてもいい,” for which I tried “We could also dismiss the intimidating Romance-language sound of ‘interlanguage’ and replace it with ‘the words in the middle,’” substituting Romance-language for 漢語 or words written/pronounced entirely in Chinese characters…is that a legal move on my part? Also there’s a place where she writes “不可能だと思っていた。思い込んでいた”—which I rendered as “I thought—I misconceived—that I could not,” and I wonder a little if she’s just playing with the variations of 思う in Japanese or also has the Chinese 以为, to think something wrongly, in the back of her head.
Translating/attempting some Chinese stuff for fun, not for public consumption; very difficult but still a fantastic way to acquire more vocabulary and phrasing.
v e r y s l o w l y with my original thing, mostly because until today I had a lot of work and my brain wasn’t up to it; determined to get back to 500 words a day. My timeline suggests that, in accordance with my usual screwed-up pacing, now (roughly halfway through the book lol) is when things actually start HAPPENING, which should be fun. I have about a million plot strands of various thicknesses going on, and theoretically I almost sort of kind of know how they all fit together, and I think it COULD be very good, but that’s a very large subjunctive.
Photos: Capybaras from the zookeeper school, also…what are they called…maras? I always think of them as Zen rabbits, for their habit of sitting still and staring off at the day after tomorrow as if meditating. Green-eyed monster (politely taking time off from cuddling to be photographed). Also more plum blossoms, camellias (or sazanka?), and an alley with a flower curtain. 
Be safe and well.
Small language stuff. Xi-laoshi taught me 谷子店 in Chinese. 谷子 literally means “valley” or “grain,” but here it’s used for its sound value of guzi, which is phonetic for グーズ gūzu in Japanese, which in turn is phonetic for “goods” in English and in this case refers to fannish-type goods or what I think would be called merch…
Ear in Japanese is 耳, mimi. Worm, as in our pink wiggly friends on the sidewalk after rain, is ミミズ, mimizu. Therefore by all rights an earworm, as in the song, should be a mimimimizu (or, more efficiently written, 耳ズ), but unfortunately it’s just the English word transcribed. (Chinese apparently does use 耳虫 or 耳朵虫!)
I never remembered to say thanks for votes in the what-should-I-translate-next poll, here (if you still have an opinion or a question, feel free to let me know now as well!); in accordance with the majority vote, I’m working on Li Kotomi’s essays, but I may branch out into a novel or similar as well for added fun, since we’re hitting the dead time of the fiscal year. In passing Li introduced me to Selinker’s idea of interlanguage, which you’d think I would have come across before; I guess I did, just didn’t know there was a word for it. Reminds me, among many other examples, of Japanese-speaking teenagers learning Korean and sticking Korean verb endings on Japanese words to get by when they didn’t know the vocabulary (similarly, my frequent joke that if I don’t know a word in Chinese I can just use the Japanese word and add 子, cf 妻子，筷子，栗子 and so on), or the farmboys’ preferred use in English of Chinese duplication (我来试试, let me try try).
Latest farmboy words: 不灵(了), it won’t work, a wish won’t come true; 望梅止渴, to comfort oneself with illusions (literally, to quench thirst by thinking of plums); 冰美式, an iced Americano, exactly what the characters say; 珐琅锅, a ceramic pot a la Le Creuset; 抬杠, to argue for the sake of arguing; 举一反三, to infer many things from one thing; 香饽饽, very popular, delicious, the belle of the ball.
Music: Gabriella Liandu singing Speak Low and Bach via Cuba.
Writing and translation: As noted above, I’m working on Li Kotomi’s essays, but they go quite slowly because there’s a real need to think about each word, as she does. Also, she’s often writing about Japanese in Japanese, which is hard in the technical sense to translate—her childhood misunderstanding of the word 召し上がる, for instance, which relies on the characters used. Likewise, she writes “「中間言語」という硬い漢語に飽きたら「真ん中の言葉」と和語に言い換えてもいい,” for which I tried “We could also dismiss the intimidating Romance-language sound of ‘interlanguage’ and replace it with ‘the words in the middle,’” substituting Romance-language for 漢語 or words written/pronounced entirely in Chinese characters…is that a legal move on my part? Also there’s a place where she writes “不可能だと思っていた。思い込んでいた”—which I rendered as “I thought—I misconceived—that I could not,” and I wonder a little if she’s just playing with the variations of 思う in Japanese or also has the Chinese 以为, to think something wrongly, in the back of her head.
Translating/attempting some Chinese stuff for fun, not for public consumption; very difficult but still a fantastic way to acquire more vocabulary and phrasing.
v e r y s l o w l y with my original thing, mostly because until today I had a lot of work and my brain wasn’t up to it; determined to get back to 500 words a day. My timeline suggests that, in accordance with my usual screwed-up pacing, now (roughly halfway through the book lol) is when things actually start HAPPENING, which should be fun. I have about a million plot strands of various thicknesses going on, and theoretically I almost sort of kind of know how they all fit together, and I think it COULD be very good, but that’s a very large subjunctive.
Photos: Capybaras from the zookeeper school, also…what are they called…maras? I always think of them as Zen rabbits, for their habit of sitting still and staring off at the day after tomorrow as if meditating. Green-eyed monster (politely taking time off from cuddling to be photographed). Also more plum blossoms, camellias (or sazanka?), and an alley with a flower curtain.
Be safe and well.
