flemmings | (no subject)

This may make it into my review of the latest Motoni Modoru (it's called Dog Style and I'm sure she knows what that means in English and doesn't care) and then again it may not, but I gotta say- the woman's dialogue shaves points off my IQ in units of ten. Not always- Tantei Aoneko and Rika are both straightforward enough- but when the manga deals with present-day /ordinary/ males, I flounder forever trying to get my bearings in her subject-less argot.

In evidence of which: I spent fifteen minutes last night reading and rereading the first three pages of DS trying to figure out just who was related to who, and coming up only with there being two people called Kashiwa who were brothers of the narrator, older and younger respectively, and the narrator has a thing for one of his brothers but I couldn't tell which, nor could I figure out why these guys would have the same first name. As I say, dumb. After a quarter hour of 'have you seen Kashiwa?' 'nope but if you mean my older brother he's up on the roof with his best friend' I finally twig: ani and otouto don't invariably mean *my* ani and otouto. So: there are two brothers whose last name is Kashiwa and this school distinguishes them rather as British schools do, Molesworth 1 and Molesworth 2, or Harrington Primus and Harrington Secundus, or Kashiwa ani and Kashiwa otouto. Just FYI.

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Trying to translate slang is one of the best arguments against slang I have ever met.

It's not even slang so much as the bare-bones grammar that drives me batty. Everything in ellipses; rarely a topic let alone a subject; and of course that concentration of syllables at the end of the sentence that means 'he said' or 'someone said' and that suddenly puts everything in front of it into indirect speech. These guys know what they're talking about, no need why you should. Argh.

To be fair, I remember seeing a magazine intended for Japanese students of English that gave them, unedited, the elliptic conversation of a bunch of American kids: "And Jim is like, yeah, you know." "Yeah, and you know how- like how, when you're with him, he's just so-- ya know how he is?" "Yeah, I know."

True. People can be so inconsiderate in their everyday conversation! :)

Ah, so it wasn't just me and my bad Japanese. Somewhat comforting -_-

It looks so obvious now, but the other night it was a midnight black obscurity. I think it's too western to concern oneself with who and where and what. Just jump into the story and the details will manifest themselves eventually. Or not.