烦死了，啊我死了，还没死了
Mar. 28th, 2022 12:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi・Thank you very much indeed, anonymous benefactor (恩人？) who promptly followed up on my grumbling in the previous post by gifting me a paid account both here and at guardian_learning! Such a kind thing to do. Please let me know how to pay you back? Likewise if anyone is in need of a paid account but finding it hard to afford, or knows someone who is, drop me a line so I can do some paying forward. No time limit in either case.
・Still health-related gloomy, still (knock wood) in the tiresome rather than serious category. That aside, reminding myself to appreciate ordinary uneventful daily life... .
・For comfort, have Take 6 singing "Gold Mine". (I was going to say this is probably the only specifically Christian piece of music you'll see me post, but I forgot about, like, requiems and cantatas and so on and so forth. You know what I mean. For what it's worth, my atheist-Jew father absolutely adored this song...)
・Rereading the Mass-Observation wartime diaries, which deserve their own post sometime soon, both for funny and for painfully topical/relatable (see: pandemic, Ukraine, etc. etc.). “...Later in the day the depression wore off, but after 6 o’clock I asked a [nurse] what the news was; she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s too depressing.’” (Edward Stebbing, April 10, 1941) “There are the twin dragons, ‘too tired’ and ‘no time.’” (Edith Oakley, September 21, 1943)
・Random slightly silly Chinese question: You add 还 to good things to make them a bit less good, so 好 is good and 还好 is okay. So how do we translate 还OK?
・Just to confuse my Japanese/Chinese brain entirely, the Japanese novel I was reading included the word 那辺, with a pronunciation gloss of “nahen” and meaning “where.” Miura Shion, don’t do this to me.
・Watching bits of the spring high school baseball tournament and thinking about the various baseball players whose names suggest that they’re fulfilling lifelong expectations. The onetime Hanshin Tigers star closer, Fujikawa Kyuji, is named 球児 , kid who plays baseball. There’s a kid this year called Suzuki Rui, whose first name, 塁, means “base” as in first-second-third. The Yakult Swallows used to have a center fielder called Manaka Mitsuru, whose family name, 真中, means “dead center.” Another of this year’s high school kids actually goes him one better: he’s a center fielder whose family name is just 中, center, only it’s pronounced Atari, which is the word for a hit...
・I have some other (slightly less silly) language stuff to post about, and I’m still thinking about the post on translation I’ve had in mind for ages; sometime soon.
・Photos (now that I have all this wonderful paid-account photo capacity!) This year’s first cherry blossoms. Some not!lilies-of-the-valley, and some pretty blue starflowers (that’s not their name, I don’t know their name), and some flowers which are not actually flowers. A city canal, a real tree and a graffiti tree, and a vending machine which does not sell drinks.
Be safe and well.
・Still health-related gloomy, still (knock wood) in the tiresome rather than serious category. That aside, reminding myself to appreciate ordinary uneventful daily life... .
・For comfort, have Take 6 singing "Gold Mine". (I was going to say this is probably the only specifically Christian piece of music you'll see me post, but I forgot about, like, requiems and cantatas and so on and so forth. You know what I mean. For what it's worth, my atheist-Jew father absolutely adored this song...)
・Rereading the Mass-Observation wartime diaries, which deserve their own post sometime soon, both for funny and for painfully topical/relatable (see: pandemic, Ukraine, etc. etc.). “...Later in the day the depression wore off, but after 6 o’clock I asked a [nurse] what the news was; she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s too depressing.’” (Edward Stebbing, April 10, 1941) “There are the twin dragons, ‘too tired’ and ‘no time.’” (Edith Oakley, September 21, 1943)
・Random slightly silly Chinese question: You add 还 to good things to make them a bit less good, so 好 is good and 还好 is okay. So how do we translate 还OK?
・Just to confuse my Japanese/Chinese brain entirely, the Japanese novel I was reading included the word 那辺, with a pronunciation gloss of “nahen” and meaning “where.” Miura Shion, don’t do this to me.
・Watching bits of the spring high school baseball tournament and thinking about the various baseball players whose names suggest that they’re fulfilling lifelong expectations. The onetime Hanshin Tigers star closer, Fujikawa Kyuji, is named 球児 , kid who plays baseball. There’s a kid this year called Suzuki Rui, whose first name, 塁, means “base” as in first-second-third. The Yakult Swallows used to have a center fielder called Manaka Mitsuru, whose family name, 真中, means “dead center.” Another of this year’s high school kids actually goes him one better: he’s a center fielder whose family name is just 中, center, only it’s pronounced Atari, which is the word for a hit...
・I have some other (slightly less silly) language stuff to post about, and I’m still thinking about the post on translation I’ve had in mind for ages; sometime soon.
・Photos (now that I have all this wonderful paid-account photo capacity!) This year’s first cherry blossoms. Some not!lilies-of-the-valley, and some pretty blue starflowers (that’s not their name, I don’t know their name), and some flowers which are not actually flowers. A city canal, a real tree and a graffiti tree, and a vending machine which does not sell drinks.
Be safe and well.
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Date: 2022-03-27 04:27 pm (UTC)How many 还 do we add to get to "bad, actually" xD
I wondered what those would be and the photo did not disappoint, but...what are they!
(I kinda miss spring, we don't get it over here. On the bright side, everything is always in bloom?)
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:17 pm (UTC)How many 还 do we add to get to "bad, actually" xD
lolol ;)
but...what are they!
chestnut_pod says, Pieris japonica/Japanese andromeda! New to me but now I know.
Edited: sorry! Posted before I remembered to say, I'd gladly send you our spring if you could take the whole summer along with it...
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Date: 2022-03-29 11:13 pm (UTC)New to me too, thanks!
I ABSOLUTELY WOULD. Send me all your hot weather always xD
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Date: 2022-03-31 09:46 am (UTC)It's a deal. (I wish...)
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Date: 2022-03-27 04:54 pm (UTC)With regards to names and expectations, Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida, and I'm told (I still haven't read her book yet) that learning about naiads as a kid inspired her!
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:18 pm (UTC)My pleasure!
Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida, and I'm told (I still haven't read her book yet) that learning about naiads as a kid inspired her!
Oh my gosh, that is delightful!
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Date: 2022-03-27 05:53 pm (UTC)I hope the health thing gets sorted.
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:19 pm (UTC)Yes! I think that's the third volume. Mr B Charles is sort of an awful person, but as you say, impressively true to himself. They're such a great read altogether.
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Date: 2022-03-27 10:04 pm (UTC)Re: paying it forward. Dreamwidth has a way to "gift random user." You can also see the accounts in your circle (including communities) that don't have paid accounts or whose paid accounts have expired/will expire soon.
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:20 pm (UTC)I did not know any of that! Thank you so much, will see what I can do.
<3 <3 <3
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Date: 2022-03-27 10:11 pm (UTC)Random slightly silly Chinese question: You add 还 to good things to make them a bit less good, so 好 is good and 还好 is okay. So how do we translate 还OK?
Good question! "ok, I guess"?
The cherry blossoms are gorgeous!
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:20 pm (UTC)"ok, I guess" sounds delightfully grudging, just about right!
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Date: 2022-03-27 11:42 pm (UTC)oh no, this is too relatable (especially when a third dragon *coughZ1Lcough* eats up what time you do have that should not have gone to anything fanwork-related...
... what does the vending machine sell?
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:21 pm (UTC)how did I not think of this, lol. Too true. On the other hand, to quote the man himself, it's worth it...
The vending machine sells bottles of dashi, which is...um...flavored broth for cooking? You use it as a stew base and stuff like that. Out of the photo there's a little English notice saying something like "This is not juice!"
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Date: 2022-03-29 12:27 am (UTC)Oh no, making it worse (I swear I have a conditioned response to that phrase now, in both English and Mandarin)! Not that you're wrong...
Huh, broth vending machines. Wouldn't have thought of that, but why not?
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Date: 2022-03-29 08:32 am (UTC)Same same.
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Date: 2022-03-28 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 12:58 am (UTC)正经答案：还OK=Not bad
What I feel like saying instead: just Great, with exaggerated air quotes (incorrect answer because of sarcasm, but very much mood right now)
那辺…哪边…我没事我很好🥲
だし自販機ってまじかよwww
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:27 pm (UTC)这个答案还不错呢：）
那辺…哪边…我没事我很好
对吧？！ It's not like you couldn't say どこ or 何処 or...
だし自販機ってまじかよwww
マジやわふふふ。
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Date: 2022-03-28 01:16 am (UTC)ETA: the bells are a Pieris species of some kind.
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 05:42 pm (UTC)I'd never heard that song before, but I love the harmonies. A capella is cool.
还OK
LOL. Middling? Slightly less good than okay? ;) It wouldn't have occurred to me to grade ok against hao - they're both "good" for me. But then my language brain has always worked more on meaning clouds than on specific separate meanings. (Probably not a good thing for a translator, oops. Good thing I don't do that professionally. ;))
whose names suggest that they’re fulfilling lifelong expectations
Oi. This feels like a specifically Japanese (and hm... maybe also Chinese, or maybe more generally Asian? I have no idea) thing to saddle your kid with? Although from the Chinese names I've seen, there are also those with grandiose natural imagery (like Chen Minghao, or Bai Haotian). If I lived in a society where you give your kids meaningful/prophetic names, that's the way I'd go. :D
I love the cherry blossoms. <3
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Date: 2022-03-28 11:33 pm (UTC)Take 6 has a lot of great gospel songs but I think this is the best.
But then my language brain has always worked more on meaning clouds than on specific separate meanings.
Maybe not good for a translator but probably a more efficient way to gain understanding in general...and so interesting the way we all approach these things differently! I get too caught up in the little distinctions.
Although from the Chinese names I've seen, there are also those with grandiose natural imagery (like Chen Minghao, or Bai Haotian). If I lived in a society where you give your kids meaningful/prophetic names, that's the way I'd go.
Those are nice! (Or maybe I'm just prejudiced positively for the people/characters lol.) I don't know--with regard to the baseball names, I think it's just harder to give your kid a sports-related name in English at least, there aren't so many plausible ones. And we do have virtue names like Hope (ahem) and flower names and so on. (Maybe not so much in German as in other European languages? Definitely never run across a kid named Hoffnung...).
<3
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Date: 2022-03-31 05:58 am (UTC)It is! I used to drive my classmates crazy whenever they asked me vocab questions and I'd give them five answers for every word. It works for me, but confuses everyone else, apparently. :D
Maybe not so much in German as in other European languages?
Actually, I had to think long and hard and the only thing I came up with was Rosa - and that's not even the flower, just the color.
I have never in my life encountered names that are actual German words, let alone met people with names like that. There are names that have meaning in other languages, like Gerhard (old Germanic, "wielder of the spear") or Nikolaus (Greek, "leader of the people"), things like that. But they don't have meaning in German per se.
It's just not a thing that's done in German at all.
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Date: 2022-03-31 09:50 am (UTC)I like it! Wish it were possible to identify how our brains work this way.
Actually, I had to think long and hard and the only thing I came up with was Rosa - and that's not even the flower, just the color.
That's really interesting. My name is a virtue name so I've looked up how to say it in a bunch of languages, and certainly it's not a name in either German or French. I wonder if countries with stricter naming rules are inclined to forbid these things to avoid confusion...
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Date: 2022-04-03 03:31 am (UTC)I love how in the first two pics, the similar backgrounds are variously water and sky. Lovely juxtaposition. :-)
and some flowers which are not actually flowers.
Hee! <3
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Date: 2022-04-04 11:32 pm (UTC)Nice catch! Same sky reflected in the water. <3 🌸