![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
I finish the Two Whiners arc of 12 Kingdoms, all happy with order restored blah blah blah. And observe with slight cultural amusement Youko's first revolutionary decree, that people will stop kowtowing to the King and address her on their feet. Because the Japanese are shockingly free-and-easy in their manners, as we all know.
Yes I know, it's a continuum, not a dichotomy. I'm attempting to explain to someone that iie by itself in Japanese sounds blunt and rude without a sentence to follow it, and reflect that in the English I speak No by itself sounds blunt and rude without a sentence to follow it or at least an interrogative lift to the voice that performs the same function: but I'm not sure if that's true in the English she speaks.
As the Brooklynite at my dorm shocked me by handing a paper to the dorm super with one hand while leaning against the doorframe. 'Maybe you don't use two hands but jeez, stand up straight, huh? Is *that* what they teach you at Mitsubishi?'
Yes I know, it's a continuum, not a dichotomy. I'm attempting to explain to someone that iie by itself in Japanese sounds blunt and rude without a sentence to follow it, and reflect that in the English I speak No by itself sounds blunt and rude without a sentence to follow it or at least an interrogative lift to the voice that performs the same function: but I'm not sure if that's true in the English she speaks.
As the Brooklynite at my dorm shocked me by handing a paper to the dorm super with one hand while leaning against the doorframe. 'Maybe you don't use two hands but jeez, stand up straight, huh? Is *that* what they teach you at Mitsubishi?'