15/10/09 21:05:52.16 mMl5QKi2.net
How many native English speakers are watching this thread, I wonder?
180:臭い米国人
15/10/09 23:14:24.06 9AO3aaMz!.net
>>176
No problem.
>>177
I've heard several of these before, but for some I can't quite explain their meaning, so it's been a while.
However these ones I remember well:
bloke = fellow, person
gobsmacked = surprised
knackered = tired
sod off = piss off/ fuck off
the bee's knees = this is actually used in American English a lot too, it means something that's wonderful or excellent or the best of something.
>>179
I try to read it every morning. Dreas seems to reply a lot too, so at least two.
181:777
15/10/10 07:01:18.61 poHnWBzM.net
>>167
>However about the Romeo and Juliet thing, I don't think you, or anyone else
>for that matter, really needs to understand the particular works of older authors
>-- like Shakespeare for English or 夏目漱石 for Japanese -- in order to use the language well.
Maybe so.
However, some knowledge about his works seems to be common one among educated native English speakers.
For example, the following phrases are frequently quoted in novels, movies, TV shows, etc.
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Get thee to a nunnery.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
What's in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet.
If music be the food of love, play on.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
182:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/10 19:27:07.54 nUg7aVGm.net
>>181
I just wanted to produce a parody of the Shakespearean phrases
presented by 777. No offense to anybody. Just an innocent joke.
(1) To be, or not to be: that is the question.
---> 渡米 oder not 渡米: das ist ein Problem.
["渡米" (tobei) means "go to America."]
(2) There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
---> There is more money to be hidden in a tax haven on the earth, Whore-ration,
Than are dreamt of in your economics.
(3) Get thee to a nunnery.
---> Forget it with Sean Connery.
(4) All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
---> All the world's a cage, and all the men and women merely prisoners.
(5) Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
---> Row me there, row me there! Wherefore dost thou not row me there?
(6) What's in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet.
---> What's in a game? A rise in scores in any game
doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
(7) If music be the food of love, play on.
---> If a Muse be a fool for love-making, play around.
(8) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
---> Shall I condemn thee to summon the Devil?
183:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/10 23:26:07.66 fkZfuu3H!.net
>>176
DREAS REPRESENT, WHOOP WHOOP
>>177
When I said that there was a difference in vernacular, this is what I meant. Those would all be understood, but would also seem bizzare or out of place.
184:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/10 23:28:05.34 fkZfuu3H!.net
>>183
This was supposed to respond to 180, but the reply system is screwing me over a little
185:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/11 12:19:49.94 C7j/S9Gs.net
"Pensees" by Blaise Pascal
SECTION XI THE PROPHECIES
692
When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard
the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself,
and, as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing
who has put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of
him at death, and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified,
like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert
island, and should awake without knowing where he is, and without
means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how people in a condition so
wretched do not fall into despair. I see other persons around me of
a like nature. I ask them if they are better informed than I am. They
tell me that they are not. And thereupon these wretched and lost
beings, having looked around them, and seen some pleasing objects,
have given and attached themselves to them. For my own part, I have
not been able to attach myself to them, and, considering how strongly
it appears that there is something else than what I see, I have
examined whether this God has not left some sign of Himself.
I see many contradictory religions, and consequently all false save
one. Each wants to be believed on its own authority, and threatens
unbelievers. I do not therefore believe them. Every one can say this;
every one can call himself a prophet. But I see that Christian
religion wherein prophecies are fulfilled; and that is what every
one cannot do.
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.gutenberg.org)
186:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/11 12:26:05.24 C7j/S9Gs.net
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman --
a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back,
a dangerous trembling and halting.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" (Also Sprach Zarathustra)
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.gutenberg.org)
187:777
15/10/11 13:27:33.66 4/4FNa2d.net
>>167
Speaking of 夏目漱石, I recently read most(perhaps 80%) of his novels.
To be honest, I was not impressed.
The only novel I found mildly interesting is "坊ちゃん".
I guess either I'm blind or he is overrated.
188:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/11 13:52:33.23 C7j/S9Gs.net
>>187
Yes, maybe he's overrated. Perhaps many people think Soseki Natsume
must be a great writer because he's frequently quoted and that all
school textbooks quote him.
As for me, I don't care what textbooks or the rest of the public
say about Soseki Natsume. I don't know whether he is one of the most
artistically talented writers or not. But I still like him because of
the gentleness and love that his style evokes. He is gentle and loving
to his readers. That's what matters. And I think that's why he's
loved by his readers. He soothes the injured feelings of people.
And I don't think many of his readers even care whether he's actually
talented or not.
189:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/11 14:01:52.09 C7j/S9Gs.net
>>187
Probably you don't feel impressed by Soseki Natsume because you don't
find his plots intriguing enough. Well, Soseki's novels are not the
kind of works in which to seek plot. Soseki is interesting to read
in terms of style. That's what matters, I think.
Basically, when I read literature, including Soseki, Shakespeare, and
E. Bronte, I don't care about the plots they offer. All I care about
is their styles: the beauty, rhythm, and musicality of their language.
If you are seeking plot, then I suggest you stick to John Grisham
and other contemporary best-selling novelists instead of reading
Soseki or other classics. Classics are in general boring in plot,
I guess.
190:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/11 21:08:27.60 6+xuOewo.net
Crime Poo and Bakae
191:臭い米国人
15/10/11 21:14:23.50 ZOSgUW2Z!.net
>>187
Like I was saying before, I don't think natives need to know the particular works of the authors academia consider "greats".
But like you pointed out in >>181 there are expressions from these "greats" that are used in common parlance.
I suspect that 夏目漱石 has influenced Japanese in the same way with several expressions,
but I can't really remember any at this moment.
Also, I rather like 芥川龍之介 better.
192:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/11 21:28:37.41 C7j/S9Gs.net
--- A bit of nonsense ---
In this world there are just you and me
In the after-life we will just play Frisbee
Because everybody there is very, very wealthy
We won't have to suffer any more beggary
You won't have to bring any dowry
Occasionally we'll be able to afford some foolery
Who is watching us from beyond the sky?
God? Buddha? A huge scientist looking into his telescope?
Is the scientist sending us a gift of lullaby?
Or is he trying to deprive us of our hope?
Who in the world is that woman standing by?
Is she by any chance also a misanthrope?
Why do the two of them never cease to sigh?
Do they not at all know how to cope?
Why do they refuse to say to us "Hi"?
They are considering destroying us
They have been bringing about a variety of ills
About which we humans have to make much fuss
Such as many an economic crisis that disables us from paying our bills
And politicians have to be preoccupied with numerous problems to discuss
With shadows of despair over people whom such a crisis kills
193:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/12 19:47:48.61 i7/NMF0m.net
--- A nymph came dancing from Heaven ---
Once came a blonde nymph came dancing from Heaven
Sitting down beside me, she smiled a mischievous smile
Eternally captivating me as if with something finely woven
Never did I dream this was the beginning of something vile
Twinkling eyes had she, with their magnetic allure
Maddeningly soft and gentle was her voice
Singing like a sensitive canary, offering me a powerful cure
For my stubborn numerous diseases that had left me no choice
A picture beyond description was the slender fairy
So heavenly splendid and brilliant was her beauty
It even gave me a constant feeling of misery
For I knew that divine appearances never last and were a rarity
Never could I believe or dream the goddess was real
So ephemeral and unrealistic did she seem
Nor did her glorious looks manage to heal
My morbidly low and destructive self-esteem
Always did I believe her to be nothing but a hologram
Never did I turn my eyes away from her features so fair
Had I look away even for a second to talk with my neighbor Sam
Sure was I to lose my eternal idol, who would vanish into thin air
So desperately profound and pathological was my passion
Could I not help weeping and sobbing, missing her
Five minutes after having to leave her at the end of the day's session
I just had to, had to, and had to see her, never able to get sober
194:777
15/10/13 09:04:28.55 mBwiH3o1.net
>>167
>This is coming from a person who did a thesis on 日本語の書き言葉の歴史、
As you know the Japanese writing system greatly changed just after the World War 2.
They not only simplified Kanji（新字体）and reduced the number of Kanji（当用漢字）,
but also changed the use of hiragana(新かな使い).
I think the main motivation of this "reform" is a desire to abolish Kanji and make the Japanese writing system into phonogramatic one.
The idea was not new. Since the Meiji Restoration, some(or many) people began to think that Japanese language is inferior to Western ones, which I think is bovine feces.
The idea was reinforced by the complete defeat of Japan by the US in WW2.
195:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/13 11:19:24.32 iI3Ekz4+.net
One scene from "Crime and Punishment"
[Context: After hearing from Svidrigailov how her brother Raskolnikov confessed
to Sonya the prostitute that he was the murderer, Dunya wants to leave
but Svidrigailov refuses to let her go. Desperate, Dunya pulls out
a revolver.]
Dunya raised the revolver and, deathly pale, her white lower lip
trembling, her large black eyes flashing like fire, looked at him (Svidrigailov), having
made up her mind, calculating, and waiting for the first movement
from his side. He had never yet seen her so beautiful. The fire that
flashed from her eyes as she raised the revolver seemed to burn him,
and his heart was wrung with pain. He took a step, and a shot rang
out. The bullet grazed his hair and struck the wall behind him, He
stopped and laughed softly:
"The wasp has stung! She aims straight at the head.... What's this?
Blood?" He took out a handkerchief to wipe away the blood that was
flowing in a thin trickle from his right temple;
(Fyodor Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment," pp.495-496,
translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky,
1992, Everyman's Library)
196:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/13 15:03:13.49 GJi7zGg8.net
"Crime and Punishment"
Sonya following Ralsolnikov even to the ends of the earth
As he [= Raskolnikov] bowed down the second time in the Haymarket,
turning to the left, he had seen Sonya [= the prostitute: standing
about fifty steps away. She was hiding from him behind one of the
wooden stalls in the square, with meant that she had accompanied him
throughout his sorrowful procession! Raskolnikov felt and understood
in that moment, once and for all, that ★Sonya was now with him forever
and would follow him even to the ends of the earth★, wherever his fate
took him. His whole hearth turned over inside him... but -- here he
was at the fatal place....
Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment," Part 6, Chapter 8;
translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky,
Everyman's Library, p.526
197:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/13 15:22:54.73 GJi7zGg8.net
"Crime and Punishment"
Near the end of the novel, Raskolnikov the prisoner sees nomadic yurts
on the steppe. Then Sonya comes.
*******************
There, on the boundless, sun-bathed steppe, ●nomadic yurts● could be
seen, like barely visible black specks. There was freedom, there a
different people lived, quite unlike those here, there ★time itself
seemed to stop★, as if the centuries of Abraham and his flocks had not
passed. Raskolnikov sat and stared fixedly, not tearing his eyes
away; his thought turned to reverie, to contemplation; he was not
thinking of anything, but some anguish troubled and tormented him.
Suddenly ★Sonya★ was beside him. She came up almost inaudibly and
sat down next to him. It was still very early; the morning chill had
not softened yet. She was wearing her poor old wrap and the green shawl.
Her face still bore signs of illness; it had become thinner, paler,
more pinched. She smiled to him amiably and joyfully, but gave him
her hand as timidly as ever.
"Crime and Punishment," Epilogue, translated by Pevear and
Volokhonsky; Everyman's Library, p.549
198:臭い米国人
15/10/13 23:08:19.18 q9eAJzQs!.net
>>194
Yes I know. I think that the only way Japanese could ever hope to leave 漢字 would be to use old 仮名.
Since the language has a very restricted range of sounds, there's no way it can possibly use modern kana or latin letters beyond very specific cases.
199:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/14 00:39:08.38 tqZPRE9S.net
I have a question to native English speakers here.
The question is about this expression, "well received."
If something is well received, I guess this usually means it has received a favorable reception.
But if the subject of the sentence is "the attached quote," then could it mean it was received
safe and sound via Internet as an attached file? I actually see this sentence somewhere on the net
and wasn't sure what it meant. Could it be used to notify the sender of the quote
that the recipient of the quote surely get the quote?
Do you think the person who write "well received" to mean he/she received it safe and sound is a non-native English speaker?
200:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/14 08:10:21.88 C01TBTYq.net
>>199
I'm not a native speaker but I just wanted to quote a passage I had
happened to find on the Internet that I thought might be similar
to what you often see.
******** QUOTE ********
Someone suggests that we take turns quoting the best maxims about
love that we know.
One of my girlfriends volunteers to go first: "This is one from
Shakespeare," she says with a touch of pride. "Love all, trust a few."
★The quote is well received.★ Everyone toasts.
URLﾘﾝｸ(books.google.co.jp)
201:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/14 11:44:49.80 tqZPRE9S.net
>>200
Thanks for taking your time and reply.
The meaning of "quote" is different from that of in the sentence.
Quote in 199 means the amount of money you have to pay when you buy something.
202:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/14 11:57:03.33 tqZPRE9S.net
According to dictionaries "well-received" means getting a good reaction from people.
but what I saw was without a hyphen. And the quote here means an amount of money you
would pay.
203:Dreas
15/10/14 12:46:33.53 4jJH1rZX!.net
>>199
Still need this answered?
204:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/14 12:47:09.47 tqZPRE9S.net
And sorry for the lack of the context. I know >>200 is almost as fluent as
a native English speaker. I think I know his handle name although for some reason
he's been anonymous recently.
205:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/14 12:49:15.11 tqZPRE9S.net
>>203
Of course.
206:777
15/10/14 21:15:57.32 r+VSkO9A.net
>>198
Since Kanji has been a vital part of the Japanese language,
I think if it had been abolished, it would have caused a tremendous damage to the language.
Fortunately it is very unlikely that Kanji would be abolished in the foreseeable future.
However, I think the aforementioned "reform" of the writing system inflicted,
metaphorically speaking, scars on the face of an exquisite Japanese lady.
207:臭い米国人
15/10/15 00:44:20.06 sEYwRrhV!.net
>>199
Yeah it sounds like he isn't a native if "well received" is used that way.
>>206
How do you feel about kanji that was falling out of favor because of its perceived difficulty being used again
because of IMEs? For example 鬱。
208:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 07:10:50.88 +QZ0A2TG.net
Reading the posts by the two of you (臭い米国人 and 777) from aside,
I'd like to state here that I've always loved kanji but I've also
been keenly aware of its great disadvantages as well.
At the age of seven, in the first days at elementary school, when
I learned the very first kanji characters, I was thrilled. I fell
so much in love with kanji that I just couldn't help practicing
how to write each kanji until I learned it completely. Not only
would I practice pronouncing each kanji, realizing its meaning,
but also I would keep writing it in my notebook and on any scrap of
paper that I happened to find at hand. While walking or in bed,
I was still thinking of all the kanji characters that I had learned
at school on the day and practicing writing them in space by using
my finger as a pencil and using space as a piece of paper. It was
about this way that I spent many more years after that. I could not
help studying closely and memorizing every single kanji that I
happened to meet. By the time I reached 18 or 20, as I recall, I am
sure that I was one of the students who had learned the most
kanji characters. I was that much in love with kanji.
But then again, I've also been keenly aware of the disadvantages
of kanji -- at least for Japanese people. Why? For Chinese, kanji
may be all right. Because the Chinese language has what they call
四声 (shisei), or the four word intonations, so to speak. For example,
the pronunciation "ma" has, in Mandarin Chinese, four word intonations:
ma1 (a high pitch maintained), ma2 (from low to high), ma3 (very low,
with its pitch slightly rising), ma4 (from high to low). Here, I'm
using these strange marks (ma1, ma2, etc.) because the standard
notation of the four word intonations in its special codes may get
garbled here. (to be continued)
209:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 07:16:13.37 +QZ0A2TG.net
[ Continued from >>208 ]
Anyway, what I wanted to say was that in Chinese, because of its
four different intonations for each kanji of Mandarin Chinese (and as
many as six intonations for each kanji of Cantonese), they can easily
tell each word (or kanji) from another by merely hearing it pronounced.
The ancient Chinese which we Japanese imported in the sixth or seventh
century should have been that way too.
The Japanese language, on the other hand, would have had no such
word intonation system. With a very few exceptions, none of the
Japanese words is distinguishable from another if their phonemes
(or the word forms, so to speak) are the same. For example, in
Japanese, 詩, 死, 師, 誌, 氏, 市, 士, 四, and so on are pronounced
basically in exactly the same way. But in Chinese, they are pronounced
at least in four different ways thanks to the four different word
intonations (or tones). Chinese, therefore, should be well off in using
kanji (or Chinese characters), while Japanese have a hard time at least
when they have to understand each word simply by hearing it pronounced.
(to be continued)
210:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 07:18:51.56 +QZ0A2TG.net
continued from >>209
You might say, "But can't you tell which kanji another person is referring to
by considering the context?" Oh, yes, of course, we can -- in some contexts
anyway. But there are surely many situations where we can't. Take this example:
"しについてのこうさつ" (shi ni tsuiteno kosatsu). When it is pronounced by a
professional Japanese announcer, you can easily understand that they mean,
"shi についての考察" (a study on "shi"). But even that professional announcer,
who is a professional at pronouncing Japanese, can't make you understand
whether they are referring to "死" or "詩." In that context, we have to
consider these two possible phrases: 詩についての考察 (a study on poetry) and
死についての考察 (a study on death). Therefore, when we try to make
the listener understand what specifically referring to, they are
compelled to show a panel on which that particular phrase is written
or saying "shi についての考察、つまり死ぬことについての考察" or
"shi についての考察、つまり詩歌（しいか）についての考察."
This is a great disadvantage that the culture of kanji has
for us Japanese.
211:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 07:46:20.39 +QZ0A2TG.net
>>210 (towards the end)
CORRIGENDA:
they are
compelled to show a panel on which that particular phrase is written
or 【to say】 "shi についての考察、つまり死ぬことについての考察" or
"shi についての考察、つまり詩歌（しいか）についての考察."
>>208 (where I forgot to mention the meaning of each of these
words: ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4)
(1) ma1 (or the word "ma" with its tone maintained at a high pitch)
This word is written this way: 媽 (which means "mother")
(2) ma2 (or the word "ma" with its tone rising quickly)
This word is written this way: 麻 (which means "to be numb")
(3) ma3 (or the word "ma" with its tone at a very low pitch,
slightly going down and then slowly going up)
This word is written this way: 馬 (which means "horse")
(4) ma4 (or the word "ma" with its tone going down quickly)
This word is written this way: 罵 (to scold)
212:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 07:46:51.80 +QZ0A2TG.net
Continued from >>211
This way, even though these four words or Chinese characters are
pronounced in exactly the same way if we don't consider their
respective word intonations (or tones), they mean four distinct
different things. These four words were introduced into Japanese
with their tones not considered. It is there that a linguistic
catastrophe, so to speak, occurred.
While in Chinese, the four words were used comfortably without
confusion, in Japanese we have a hard time telling one from another.
Hence, the confusion we have in telling "死についての考察" (a study on death)
and "詩についての考察" (a study on death)), which I mentioned at >>210.
And these are just two examples out of the millions of devastating
confusions that we Japanese encounter every single day in our
linguistic activities.
213:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 08:20:49.40 +QZ0A2TG.net
I encourage those of you who read Japanese to google some information
by using the keywords: 同音異義語 (どうおんいぎご) and 混乱 (こんらん).
You will see how Japanese and Koreans are having a hard time
telling one word from another because their languages have no
such tone system as Chinese that identifies each word simply with
the tone (or word intonation) of each word.
Read this article:
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.a)ｓｙura2.com/12/asia14/msg/711.html
(please replace the "ｓｙ" with the half-width "sy".)
This article reports the linguistic confusion experienced by
contemporary Koreans during the 44 years with no use of Chinese
characters. As you may already know, Koreans has officially limited
its use of Chinese characters since 1946, while North Korea and
Vietnam completely abolished their use of Chinese characters.
Anyway, the report says that due to the limited use of Chinese
characters, there is a large gap in communication between the older
generations used to using them and the younger generations who are not.
Just like in Japanese, the Korean language has no such tone system
as Chinese. Therefore, just like Japanese, Koreans can't tell one
word from another if the words are not written in Chinese characters.
There are consequently many cases where, when they are written in
Hangul (or Korean alphabet) or just pronounced without indicating
in which Chinese characters the specific word or words being referred
to are supposed to be written, Koreans can't tell what exactly the
speaker is referring to.
214:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 08:21:27.72 +QZ0A2TG.net
Continued from >>213
That is a very sad situation. Japanese often can't tell one word from another
just by hearing them pronounced. They need the aid of Chinese characters
actually written and indicated to them if they have to understand
them. Young Koreans, on the other hand, don't know many Chinese
characters, so that they can't tell one word from another either by
hearing them pronounced or by reading the Chinese characters in which
they are supposed to written, because they don't know the characters.
I don't know what is going on in Vietnam or North Korea. But, given
that they totally abolished their use of Chinese characters several decades
ago, they must be having a hard time. Most probably the only way out
for them would have been to give up using words derived from Chinese,
or to accompany each such Chinese-derived word or string of words
with an affix or other additional information to help identify each
such phrase.
215:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/15 12:05:01.13 6bpwcXGg.net
>>207
Thanks for the reply. Good to know what a native English speaker thinks about it.
216:777
15/10/15 16:47:20.19 /scuJxPE.net
>>207
That's a good thing.
Those who restricted the number of kanji used in the media, schools, etc. were thoughtless.
Can you imagine the government of the US restricting the number of English words used in the media?
217:臭い米国人
15/10/15 23:09:48.22 j0ERImsM!.net
>>214
I looked into Vietnamese before several years ago. What they use is a modified version of the Latin Alphabet.
The marks above letters indicate the tone changes, because Vietnamese is tonal just like Chinese.
So it's actually not too bad for them.
But Korean I have no idea about, and I don't care to know. I know that sounds bad, but I don't like the language.
>>216
Well, it was the US who ordered Japan to create a 漢字表 that was less than 2000 characters post WW2.
And honestly the government doesn't restrict it, of course, but each news company does restrict their use of vocabulary.
The American news is written such that people who finished Middle-School can understand it.
It's only select publications that will use vocabulary higher than that, such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
218:777
15/10/16 09:17:29.07 DRO5EuoI.net
>>217
>it was the US who ordered Japan to create a 漢字表 that was less than 2000 characters post WW2.
I didn't know this, but I know that they did advocate the romanization of
the Japanese script. It's obvious that they thought, because of kanji, only the elite
could understand written Japanese. However, the lieracy rate of prewar Japan was very high,
much higher than that of the US or the UK.
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.nipponnosekaiichi.com)
>And honestly the government doesn't restrict it, of course, but each news company
>does restrict their use of vocabulary.
You know that there's a big difference between an authoritarian control over the vocabulary and
individual voluntary ones.
By the way, thanks to the modern technology, you can look up a dictionary by just
clicking or touching the screen of a PC, a tablet, or a smart phone.
A situation somewhat similar to that of IMEs.
219:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/16 22:05:17.55 CO0PT0if!.net
don't let the thread expire!
220:Dreas
15/10/16 22:11:11.77 CO0PT0if!.net
I'm back! I'll have some free time over the weekend to do things with people, so if you need me, now's the time
>>199
>>205
"But if the subject of the sentence is "the attached quote," then could it mean it was received
safe and sound via Internet as an attached file? I actually see this sentence somewhere on the net
and wasn't sure what it meant. Could it be used to notify the sender of the quote
that the recipient of the quote surely get the quote?
Do you think the person who write "well received" to mean he/she received it safe and sound is a non-native English speaker? "
In American English "well-received" means people like it- so if someone were to say, "the anime was well-received" he means
people enjoyed it, and it got good reviews. In terms of using it for "it was received safe", anyone who uses it in that was is
almost certainly a non-native speaker. I've never heard that used once in my entire life, not from anyone. You could say something like
"I've received the package" but saying "the package was well-received" implies that when the mailman delivered the package to you, you started
cheering and jumping with joy.
221:Dreas
15/10/16 22:20:46.65 CO0PT0if!.net
And I just want to make it said that anyone who implies that the US government restricts the vocabulary of newspapers, magazines excreta is talking utter babbling nonsense.
I would clarify, but simply put, such a scenario simply does not exist.
Furthermore, English does not typically need a large vocabulary, it's a language of "do you get what I mean?"
..Which is not to say of course the sheer number of English vocabulary isn't huge, and growing every day, but the vernacular is consistent not because people are dumb but because you generally don't need to say something like
"A digression that was ephemeral, unscrupulous and caused all those participant to astringe"
When you could just say "The conversation was tense."
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
222:Dreas
15/10/16 22:34:42.40 CO0PT0if!.net
>>218
The real reason the US wanted Japan to start using a romanticized script was that they (correctly) identified that a lack of communication was going to create more wars.
I understand there's a lot of culture behind Kanji, but I do genuinely believe that the world needs a consistent language.
I've seen some users on this website protest and say things like "how come you want to force English on Japan but won't even revise your own language to be more accessive" but that logic isn't true.
If someone were to propose a law that would revise the English alphabet to be more logical I would vote for it every time it appeared.
223:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/16 22:46:51.85 CO0PT0if!.net
did the site just fuckin break?
224:臭い米国人
15/10/17 00:27:01.89 YBCuVHwY!.net
>>218
Romanization of the Japanese language has been advocated since 蘭学者 during 鎖国。
If I remember correctly, one of the MEXT meetings around 1900 for the reform of kana
almost had a passing vote to drop kana entirely for Romanization.
Yes I understand there's a difference, but still if its large enough does it
matter if the restriction is from a government or a corporation?
Anything can be an authority. But I digress.
225:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/17 00:51:41.33 lWGv4IPg!.net
>MEXT meetings around 1900 for the reform of kana
almost had a passing vote to drop kana entirely for Romanization.
That would have been a good decision. The US really missed out in not modernizing it's language when it declared independence from Britain.
226:777
15/10/17 19:19:35.75 7SU26Bw6.net
>>222
>The real reason the US wanted Japan to start using a romanticized script was that
>they (correctly) identified that a lack of communication was going to create more wars.
I think even if the Japanese writing system was romanized, most Americans wouldn't learn Japanese.
What about Germany? German is romanized of course, but the war occurred
between Germany and the Allies.
In any case, Japan has never fought a war since after the WW2 though it has not abolished Kanji.
>I understand there's a lot of culture behind Kanji, but I do genuinely believe that
>the world needs a consistent language.
So you think the romanization will be an improvement of the Japanese langauage.
I think the opposite is true for several reasons.
Maybe I will explain them later.
For now, it might suffice to make the following observation.
There's a saying in English: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I don't think the Japanese writing system has a serious problem.
It's not perfect, but it works.
So far it has worked pretty good in spite of the bad "reform"
as Japan's track record shows;
Japan's economy is the third largest in the world, though its population is
only 10% of China's and 30% of the US's.
It has top-class science and technology.
It has never fought a war since after the WW2.
On the BBC Country Rating Poll conducted in 2013, Japan's rate of positive influence in the world
was the fourth.
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.worldpublicopinion.org)
227:777
15/10/17 19:21:33.90 7SU26Bw6.net
>>224
Are you in favor of abolishing Kanji?
228:臭い米国人
15/10/17 22:32:06.79 YBCuVHwY!.net
>>227
Good heavens no. It's the reason I began studying Japanese in the first place.
I could have went with Chinese of course, but I didn't like the idea of tones.
I know there's debate on whether Japanese is or not, I think there is, but not nearly as many
tones as Chinese.
Of course I'm talking broadly when using Chinese, Mandarin is of course standard.
However all languages in China, that I know of, are tonal.
229:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/18 07:45:24.20 X8NNd9XH!.net
I'll be back to contribute pretty soon. I've been hunting and doing pest control around my house.
Also, TIL, hollow points are murderous, holy shit
230:777
15/10/18 09:45:10.19 v7/gzW0R.net
>>228
I think the simplified Chinese characters are awful.
They are so simplified that I cannot recognize the corresponding original characters.
I wonder if most Chinese people understand the original Chinese characters.
Surely the simplified characters are easier to write by hand, but when you use a PC,
writing the original characters is equally easy.
231:臭い米国人
15/10/18 23:26:49.80 4LfWP3m1!.net
>>230
Hong Kong still uses the traditional characters.
But I am pretty sure that the Chinese who are raised using simplified
cannot make heads or tails of traditional.
I had one Chinese friend who said she could not, but that's not indicative
of it being a problem with all Chinese.
232:777
15/10/19 10:35:10.69 R53GbX12.net
>>231
As you probably know, not only Hong Kong, but Taiwanese also use the traditional characters.
The simplified characters hinders communication among them.
It also hinders the understanding of the classical Chinese literature.
The following is a passage from The Analects of Confucius which was written about 2,500 years ago.
URLﾘﾝｸ(en.wikipedia.org)
I guess most educated Japanese understand the gist of it with the help of 書き下し.
URLﾘﾝｸ(en.wikipedia.org)
【原文】
子貢問政。子曰。足食。足兵。民信之矣。
子貢曰。必不得已而去。於斯三者何先。
曰。去兵。子貢曰。必不得已而去。於斯二者何先。
曰。去食。自古皆有死。民無信不立。
【書き下し】
子貢、政を問う。子曰く、食を足らし、兵を足らし、民之を信ず。
子貢曰く、必ず已むを得ずして去らば、斯の三者に於いて何をか先にせん。
曰く、兵を去らん。子貢曰く、必ず已むを得ずして去らば、斯の二者に於いて何をか先にせん。
曰く、食を去らん。古より皆な死有り、民、信無くんば立たず。
233:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/19 13:25:36.53 WimFmcAt.net
>>232
[English translation]
The Analects, Book XII, 7
Tzu-kung asked about government. The Master said, Sufficient food,
sufficient weapons, and the confidence of the common people.
Tzu-kung said, Suppose you had no choice but to dispense with one
of these three, which would you forgo? The Master said, Weapons.
Tzu-kung said, Suppose you were forced to dispense with one of the
two that were left, which would you forgo? The Master said, Food.
For from of old death has been the lot of all men; but a people
that no longer trusts its rulers is lost indeed.
(Translated by Arthur Waley, Everyman's Library, p.155)
234:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/19 18:09:46.55 WimFmcAt.net
"Shooting an Elephant"
by George Orwell
The whole text is accessible here:
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.online-literature.com)
This is an essay published in 1936. It's very short: about seven
pages long in paperback format. Although that short, it seems
to be very well-known. There's even a full-length Wikipedia article
on that single short essay alone too.
I read it twice. Two years ago and last night. I like it. Just like
other writings of his, this essay is written in very concise, plain
English and yet in punchy, emotion-rich style, offering much food for
thought, mainly in political, and maybe in philosophical terms as well.
He is said to have been over-serious and seems to have had a
very hard life. Just reading his very short biography of
one to two pages must be enough to impress you. Here I don't mean
to say I agree totally to whatever he says. Frankly, my dear, I don't
care a d**m whether he was right or wrong in his political thought.
But I do take much interest in the life of anyone who devoted their
entire life to a cause, whatever their beliefs might have been.
Besides, his writing style, his plain English is a good example to
follow for a learner of English like myself.
235:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/20 03:53:18.30 Dh22xy1R!.net
>>226
"I think even if the Japanese writing system was romanized, most Americans wouldn't learn Japanese.
What about Germany? German is romanized of course, but the war occurred
between Germany and the Allies. "
Completely untrue. This is wrong on multiple levels. Time has shown that closely-related languages are always the ones most learned.
Take any statistic you will and you will find that the most common secondary languages are Spanish, german and french- not only
because there are many immigrants from the countries where those languages are spoken
but also because those languages are wonderfully simple. You want to know what major language is the least spoken in america? Japanese.
You want to know why? Because it is the single most difficult language to learn. Chinese then korean are distant seconds.
This is why I say that your second point is also wrong. "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
From what have I just told you, is japanese not broken? Is english not broken as well?
This is the dawn of the internet- the single most important invention since the printing press. The internet is a near-permanent,
wealth of infinite information.
Arguably up to 70% is written in english.
If we want the internet to be a permanent, practical resource, languages should be adapted to fit its function.
Standard romaji would make Japanese-english crossover infinitely more easy.
And of course an edited english alphabet is also necessary. English isn't as broken as Japanese- but it is very close.
236:777
15/10/20 13:33:21.47 /j2qbgIs.net
>>235
>You want to know what major language is the least spoken in america? Japanese.
>You want to know why? Because it is the single most difficult language to learn.
>Chinese then korean are distant seconds.
According to the following list of top foreign languages studied in the US schools,
Japanese and Italian are almost of the same rank.
The rank of Chinese is slightly lower than that of Japanese.
The rank of Korean is almost at the bottom even though the Korean writing system
uses the Korean alphabet called Hangul.
URLﾘﾝｸ(en.wikipedia.org)
237:臭い米国人
15/10/20 23:18:19.77 Gq+nVK8B!.net
Marketability and ease of language are how the language cirriculae are decided in America.
For example, Japanese was very popular in the 80s and early 90s because of your booming economy.
As a result there are plenty of Japanese learning materials in English from that time period.
As for now, the Chinese market is booming, so now many High Schools and Colleges are offering Mandarin
learning materials.
German and French are still around simply because of the large number of settlers from countries that speak those languages.
Spanish is considered the easiest, and of course so many Mexicunts come here and refuse to learn English.
So it will not go away any time soon.
At least that's my assumption.
238:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/21 02:40:24.69 kt9oAJrZ!.net
>>236
in school use =/= actual use or ease of use.
I can ask various teachers in the high schools that surround me to teach me some Italian and they can because of it's use by immigrants;
if I asked them to teach me Japanese though? Not a chance.
>>237
This is partially correct but there is the impact of difficulty.
I could learn basic german in a week. I could learn Italian from the nice old lady down the street;
I could learn all necessary for those languages free and out of school. If I wanted to learn japanese though?
I would have to spend several years and thousands of dollars in resources and tutoring to be any level of acceptable.
And I would stay away from use of racial slurs, that doesn't exactly help your argument and Mexicans are some of the most rapid learners of english there are,
and also make up a considerable portion of the american military academies. Don't believe the stereotypes!
239:777
15/10/21 12:38:01.62 v8a14i5t.net
>>238
According to the following site, Chinese, Japanese and Korean seem to be at about
the same level of difficulty for native English speakers in learning these languages.
Note that the Korean writing system does not use Kanji at all.
Which language is easiest to learn: Chinese, Japanese, or Korean?
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.quora.com)
The following site compares Japanese and Korean.
Which is harder? Japanese or Korean?
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.guidetojapanese.org)
A user of the site says the Korean writing system has a problem that
the Japanese writing system does not have.
>Vocabulary wise, I think Korean also presents a problem – Kanji might be more
>difficult to learn, but I’d argue that they also make words easier to distinguish
>from one another after you put in the effort to learn Kanji. With Korean, it seems
>that a lot of the words seem very similar, so it seems almost impossible
>(for me at the very least) to learn vocabulary by reading, because there’s no Kanji,
>Korean words are not easily distinguishable from one another from their shapes.
I think a similar problem would arise if the Japanese writing system was romanized.
Here comes the saying again; if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
240:臭い米国人
15/10/21 23:04:40.40 e6dctE11!.net
>>238
Yes I noted that ease of language is another factor. With the advent of the internet it is very cheap to learn foreign languages, even for some esoteric languages.
Look up Moses McCormick for an example of what I mean. Of course I'm not a native of any of the languages he has studied, but there is means to getting
materials that were only two decades ago restricted to the ivory towers of academia.
I hadn't noticed I wrote that insult while proof-reading my post, my bad. Yes there are stereotypes, and yes there are exceptions. However, when personal
experience has involved growing up around groups who fit the stereotype, it's hard to persuade somebody to think differently. In this case, yes I am referring
to myself. But I am not going to get into my personal history over this.
The references that are cited when talking about difficulty are usually from the Foreign Service Institute's rankings.
Here is a PDF, but it's hosted on the NSA website, for those of you who are paranoid about that:
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.nsa.gov)
241:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/22 00:08:49.95 L+5dNSLi!.net
>>239
You're not refuting my main point- that if it "ain't broke don't fix it"
you've only shown that yes, they all all "broke".
I had already said that Korean, Chinese and Japanese are the hardest, Japanese is the hardest period.
Allow me to make a point of this- these languages are difficult because they
A. Use symbols, and a great deal of them
B. can be interpreted (to a certain extent)
C. Are not closely linked with other languages; this is most pronounced in Japanese and least pronounced in Korean
Chinese, while having the greatest number of characters, is probably the easiest of the trio to learn because it is so structural;
Chinese grammar can be learned in a day.
For this same reason is why Chinese works near perfect in machine translation with other Euro-american languages; plug in a sentence in chinese
and the machine will spit out a near-perfect equal in english or vice versa.
Korean is harder because its grammar is a bit more complicated however korean was modernized (well, as modern as the 15th century can be) and has a comparatively
puny amount of common Hangul symbols. This helps ease of access greatly. Korean can be used in machine translation with some effort.
Japanese is the hardest because it has a high number of Kanji (I would argue 2020 to read a wiki page) and a high number of Hiragana and katakana (adding up to around 100)
Technically you could write everything in Hirigana (which would be a good idea in theory) but good luck reading that. (cont in a bit)
242:777
15/10/22 09:27:51.60 oawe4yGu.net
>>241
>You're not refuting my main point- that if it "ain't broke don't fix it"
>you've only shown that yes, they all all "broke".
What exactly do you mean by "Japanese is broke"?
Are you saying that Japanese is an uncivilized defect-ridden language
(hence it should be reformed) because it is difficult for native English speakers to learn?
Since when did English become the paragon of human languages?
243:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/22 13:10:32.32 Ba21153+.net
Poor little Willy is crying so sore,
A sad little boy is he,
For he's broken his little sister's neck
And he'll have no jam for tea.
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes
by Harry Graham (poet, 1874-1936)
To read other poems by him, click here:
URLﾘﾝｸ(en.wikiquote.org)(poet)
244:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/22 14:07:00.59 Ba21153+.net
ROMEO, on seeing Juliet for the first time:
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear,
●Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.●
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight,
For ●I ne'er saw true beauty till this night●.
Romeo and Juliet 5.1.43-52
245:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/22 14:35:36.59 Ba21153+.net
>>244
>>Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
Romeo and Juliet, 1.5.46
Notes for this line in Arden Shakespeare Third Series:
This continues the image of Juliet as an ornament too precious to
be worn, of such worth that all earth cannot afford her, reinforcing
the idea of an ethereal presence not best suited to the sublunary
world of *use* and the deterioration of beauty.
246:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/22 20:08:35.59 mpPcWLOz.net
Thirst for knowledge too intense for use, for earth too dear
Hunger for beauty and nobility unbearably elevated,
maddeningly enhanced for this cesspool of a world
Whenever I feel ready to immerse myself in the world of language and literature
demonic voices of utility terrify me, saying it's all useless
Whenever I am intensely impressed by the heavenly beauty of art
the monotonous, mechanical reality and practicality drags me back into the usual spitoon
Constantly irritated by electronics, television, the Internet, motorization,
and the screeching cries of babies and infants,
together with the insane noises of meaninglessly babbling
middle-aged women and half-illegally reckless motorcycle riders
I am doomed to work, work, and work, enduring all this monotony
in this catastrophic country, in this entirely meaningless universe
When will the Supreme Being pardon me and let me vanish into thin air,
back to my good old quietude where the quintessential beauty
of total, absolute nothingness prevails?
247:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/22 20:32:33.78 o4UbNtOu.net
Watching his clock tick, tack, tick, tack all the time,
He did nothing else
He was too busy to do anything in the world
He was jobless, staying in his patient's room,
taken care of by his nurses and psychiatrists
He was too noble to do anything in this cesspool of a world
All he did was to watch and listen for the tick-tack of his clock
Every single second was much too dear to him
He was constantly terribly busy
Trying desperately to live with the keenest awareness of the moment
Yes, he was busy
Yes, he was really busy
He didn't even have time for sex, for reading, for listening to music,
for small talk, for anything at all
He was by far the busiest person constantly aware of
the significance of his being at this corner of the universe
Awareness was his profession
Feeling this nothingness was his profession
248:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 10:56:47.89 /3FIqI4l.net
★ A hilarious website ★
Just a glance at this thread was enough to make me laugh an awful lot.
ITT: Thou shall'st talk like Shakespeare
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.ultimate-guitar.com)
249:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 13:17:55.86 mxnE5tpT.net
Romeo and Juliet 2.2
ROMEO [Comes forward]
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious:
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.
250:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 14:10:03.86 mxnE5tpT.net
Romeo and Juliet 2.2
[JULIET aloft.]
ROMEO:
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses, I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET: Ay me.
251:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 14:37:45.66 mxnE5tpT.net
ROMEO:
She speaks.
O speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
Romeo and Juliet 2.2
252:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 20:47:11.58 9TFTdxyJ.net
Romeo and Juliet 2.2.38
JULIET
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face or any other part
Belonging to a man. O be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
ROMEO
I take thee at thy word.
Call me but love and I'll be new baptized.
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
JULIET
What man art thou that thus bescreened in night
So stumblest on my counsel?
253:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 21:44:00.69 o4yDcqq0.net
Romeo and Juliet 2.253
ROMEO
By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am.
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
JULIET
My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words
Of thy tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound.
Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?
ROMEO
Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
JULIET
How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
And the place death, considering who thou art,
If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
ROMEO
With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love attempt;
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
JULIET
If they do see thee, they will murder thee.
254:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/23 21:49:45.72 o4yDcqq0.net
Romeo and Juliet 2.2.71
ROMEO
Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity.
JULIET
I would not for the world they saw thee here.
ROMEO
I have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes,
An but thou love me, let them find me here.
My life were better ended by their hate
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.
JULIET
By whose direction found'st thou out this place?
ROMEO
By love, that first did prompt me to enquire.
He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.
I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,
I should adventure for such merchandise.
255:Dreas
15/10/24 00:09:54.16 RdNmMplw!.net
Ack, college is a mess.
I'd sign up with the military as I could, I don't really fear death, but I do think my health issues would keep me out.
What'd you guys do for your college? How do your respective countries handle college and the military?
256:古閑双
15/10/24 02:19:32.57 OjUDwJE+.net
URLﾘﾝｸ(livedoor.blogimg.jp)
習主席の屈辱、英議会演説で拍手は一度も起こらず
URLﾘﾝｸ(netouyonews.net)
URLﾘﾝｸ(netouyonews.net)
26: 名無しさん＠おーぷん 2015/10/22(木)12:51:26 ID:Cic
さっきデイリーメール見たら
奥さんの化粧がはげはげの写真載ってたｗ
ほんと英国人は悪趣味だよ
URLﾘﾝｸ(livedoor.blogimg.jp)
257:Dreas
15/10/24 05:15:48.99 RdNmMplw!.net
>242
Uncivilized has no part in this. "Civilized" is such an emotional word, you can brand anything "uncivilized"
Here's the real problem- it's impractical. It's impractical for the people who learn it as a first language because it's so unbelievably complicated.
Not only this but it is also only, and crucially spoken in one country. These flaws brand it unacceptable.
Right now one of the most spoken languages on earth is English- and the one most spoken on the internet (this is very important) is also english, by an incredible majority.
Don't think I am so foolish that I think English is the best because I am american and a patriotic idiot. I am not so foolish.
I said it before, and I will say it again, that English is in desperate need of a revision. It is an an absolute mess. Just an incredibly widespread mess.
It is acceptably logical and perfectly practical, if that makes sense.
If we were to ignore practicality and just go with the most logical, functional language I would choose an artificial language every time, like for example Esperanto.
Though even that could use some editing.
258:baka gaijin
15/10/24 05:42:43.83 prJa95Xp!.net
lol why is someone dumping shakespeare?
259:777
15/10/24 10:07:24.55 cfZtvZBe.net
>>257
>It's impractical for the people who learn it as a first language
>because it's so unbelievably complicated.
If it's so much complicated, why the literacy rate of Japan is over 99%?
I think you have two misconceptions about the Japanese language.
1) Because of Kanji, Japanese vocabulary is *far* more difficult to learn than
learning English vocabulary.
2) Japanese is more difficult to learn for native English speakers than, say, Spanish
because Japanese is *intrinsically* more complicated than Spanish.
First, I'll explain quickly why I think 1) is wrong.
If you learn the very basics of Kanji(as shown here
URLﾘﾝｸ(kanjialive.com)
), which can be learned for one day,
I think learning a kanji character, say, 快(which means "comfortable") is not very difficult
compared to learning, say, a German word "Gemütlich" which also means "comfortable".
Many Japanese words are made by combinations of two or three kanji characters.
For example, 難民, which means "refugees", where 難 means "difficulty" and 民 means "people".
It's pretty easy to guess the meaning of 難民 once you know the meanings of 難 and 民.
Just because the English writing system uses only 26 characters does not mean
it's easier to acquire English vocabulary than Japanese one.
Secondly, Spanish is easy to learn for native English speakers because English and Spanish
belong to the same language family called the Indo-European languages.
URLﾘﾝｸ(en.wikipedia.org)
260:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/24 18:20:56.46 jJf64dtE.net
HIGH WAVING HEATHER
By Emily Bronte
High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars
All down the mountain sides wild forests lending
One mighty voice to the lift giving wind
Rivers their bands in the jubilee rending
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending
Wider and deeper their waters extending
Leaving a desolate desert behind
Shining and lowering and swelling and dying
Changing forever from midnight to noon
Roaring like thunder like soft music sighing
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying
Lightning bright flashes the deep gloom defying
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon
For a vigorous, fantastic recitation of this poem, click here:
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.youtube.com)
261:臭い米国人
15/10/24 22:35:51.63 immxonyQ!.net
>>257
Where does Chinese fit into this?
Also, the most logical language would obviously be communicating via propositional logic.
>>258
Because he is an advanced learner of English and posts it for discussion.
262:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/25 07:19:32.25 9eiecwwm.net
>>260
Literary critics say that Emily Bronte was a great poet. If I remember
correctly, Virginia Woolf went so far as to say that, even if Bronte's
novel "Wuthering Heights" may fall out of people's mind some day,
her poems will survive.
My English still irritatingly far from perfect, I unfortunately
can't seem to appreciate the beauty of all of her poems. But I do
think I understand the intense vigor of this particular poem
"High Waving Heather." The punchy recitation on YouTube is a great
help in savoring her powerful rhythm.
Note the numerous repetition of the "--ing" verb form (the present
participle), which effectively depicts the velocity and intensity
of the stormy blasts. In moonlit midnight, Emily would have often
gone out of her cozy house, which would have been separated from
any other nearby hamlet or neighbor dwelling in Yorkshire, into
the vast heather-covered field. She never got married, never
left her birthplace except for some very short periods, and
died at 30. Most of her family members died very young, say,
around the age she died herself. Her mother, her sister Charlotte
Bronte the author, and her brother all died young. Her clergyman
father was the only one who survived and lived long. (to be continued)
263:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/25 07:20:06.92 9eiecwwm.net
[continued]
Emily was mannish. She was really intense, passionate. She loved dogs
much better than she did people. She was so passionate that there was
even a time when she struggled with a fierce dog and got much wounded.
She would have fought the dog with her bare hands.
Her novel and her poems seem to have much in common. Reading her poems
gives me a deeper understanding of her worldview and personality,
which should have given birth to her quintessential novel.
Both her novel and poetry are intense, vigorous, beyond the norms of
ordinary people. (I'm babbling a lot about her literature, but I'm
not yet much versed in her literature. I know my limitations in
my English ability and my understanding of any kind of literature
in English.)
264:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/25 07:38:54.04 9eiecwwm.net
>>260
>>Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending
>>Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars
Back to the poem "High Waving Heather." Note the above two lines.
The stormy blasts blow wildly through the heather under the moonlit
sky with the stars shining, with the moonlight, starlight, and the sight
of the heather mysteriously blended together. The storm intensely
blows away the people's spirit from their "dungeon" of little bodies,
breaking their "fetters" and "bars."
This image of man's being imprisoned in a "dungeon," restrained by
the "fetters" and "bars" seem to be repeated many times in much of
her literature. I have noted it in several of her poems. Her soul
would have been so intense and passionate that it would not have
been satisfied with this particular mode of life in this monotonous
universe. That is why she craved eternity, which she believed existed
after her death. Here, she never was weak. She was not the kind of
person who hated life because she was too weak to survive in this
harsh world. On the contrary, she was much too intelligent, strong,
and powerful for this mediocre mode of living. She was quite beyond
all norms of humanity. That is why she could not help longing for
the quietude of the eternal world of death.
265:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/26 21:25:14.12 IN2Fhe8g.net
★ good-bad books, good-bad times ★
Reading some essays by George Orwell, I found him using the word
"good-bad" at least on several occasions. I'd never met the word.
I find it interesting and funny. I don't know how widely it is used.
Let me quote the definition of the word and the quotations containing
it from the OED.
*******************
★good-bad★ adj. designating something which is simultaneously
good and bad, esp. that is generally bad or inferior, but has
redeeming characteristics, or is a particularly good example of
an inferior thing; (also) relating to both good and bad.
(1) 1852 tr. R. de Maistre in Dublin Rev. Dec. 390
There is nothing so dangerous as ●good bad● books, that is to say,
bad books written by excellent men deceived.
(2) 1899 Chambers's Jrnl. 23 Sept. 674/1
Smugglers in the ●good-bad● old times pursued what they euphemistically
called the ‘fair trade’.
(3) 1933 A. Thirkell High Rising ii. 41
‘●Good bad● books?’ ‘Yes. Not very good books,..but good of a
second-rate kind.’
(4) 1949 M. Mead Male & Female xvii. 346
A frequent theme of modern movies is the ‘●good-bad●’ girl.
(5) 2003 R. Feasey in M. Jancovich et al. Defining Cult Movies xi. 173
They do not reject or invert standards of good and bad taste,
but rather distinguish between the ‘●good bad●’ movie and the bad movie
which is simply bad.
========================
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2014).
266:臭い米国人
15/10/27 02:35:44.82 SbXow/Fn!.net
>>264
I'm a native and I don't understand poems, so I'd say it's nothing to worry about. However I feel you won't accept that, since you want to know how to read poems.
Maybe you could find an English board where they discuss poetry?
>>265
We don't really use good-bad as far as I know. Instead what I hear is "X is so bad it's good" which has a meaning most similar to example 5.
Otherwise from what I can recall is just using words like "mediocre" and "okay" to describe something which has a meaning similar to example 3.
1 is fine as it is, because it explains what it means by good-bad, but 2 and 4 would probably be written completely different.
267:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/27 06:57:01.84 wW/kcFZc.net
>>266
Thanks, 臭い米国人, for both of your valuable inputs.
As for the poem, yes, you're right. If I do want to discuss it seriously
with someone or ask somebody serious questions about it, I know
there are other websites designed for those purposes. I also know
that the best way is to join a course organized by Oxford University
for part-time online students for a fee. Here in this thread, I have
been writing these things without expecting responses from others.
Yes, of course, I'd appreciate some, but I know I can't force them
to respond to me. In the future I may take the university course.
As for the word "good-bad," I had had a vague feeling that it was
no longer used, at least not widely. George Orwell was using the word
in the 1930s and the '40s. I suspect the word was more prevalent
in Britain than today. Or perhaps he was using the word while well
aware that it was rarely used. Despite that, just a look at the word
is, I think, enough to let the readers know what the author means.
I also know that huge numbers of words that the OED picks up are archaic,
rare, total jargon, or otherwise of little importance, at least to
the general public. But I do take interest in the fact that at some
point during the long history of English there have been a period
when a certain word was used widely or at least by one famous author,
although it looks very rare or totally meaningless to us today.
268:臭い米国人
15/10/27 23:18:29.43 SbXow/Fn!.net
>>267
I understand completely what you're saying. There's something very thrilling about learning the etymology of a word, and knowing words that were once used but aren't any more.
It amazes me that sometimes you can use these words in current time, and although it will sound funny to hear, it can be understood what it means by context.
As in your "good-bad" example. I guess the thrill to me in learning about old words and phrases is that even though they're not used today, and the language as a whole could be used completely differently,
the fact that these words can still be understood by advanced speakers means the language hasn't changed as much as we think it has.
269:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/28 12:17:05.54 DJQxk81Q.net
● Said no one ever ●
In a thread for Japanese learners of English here on 2-channel,
one Japanese asked what this phrase means. I was positive it was
some kind of typo or that some words are missing at the end of
the phrase.
I was wrong. I googled it half unconsciously. Lo and behold, it's
a popular phrase that seems to be widely circulating on social media.
****************
“Said no one ever” is an off-the-rack punchline designed to fall
at the end of a deliberately absurd statement, inverting the meaning
of what came before it and advertising the user as someone who is
both clever and playful, as well as inside the tent with the rest of
the cool kids.
The phrase is used as the punchline in a recent TV commercial for
Carnival Cruise Lines, in an attempt to persuade millennials to
take more sea-based vacations. Cruise ships are awesome
●said no one ever●, anyway my point is it’s time to stop using it.
Before the joke expired, use of “●said no one ever●” was just the
evolution of sticking “not” on the end of a sentence, that childish
craze of the late 1990s which was itself an extension of the
playground game of bending double with laughter whenever someone
said something and yelling “It’s opposites day!” in their face.
URLﾘﾝｸ(www.theguardian.com)
270:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/30 17:50:40.38 j+R67D2X.net
LEAR
When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
(King Lear 4.6.177)
GLOUCESTER
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
(King Lear 4.1.38)
271:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/30 18:24:52.74 j+R67D2X.net
Les Pensees, Blaise Pascal
133 DIVERSION
Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have
decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. (169)
136 The only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking
of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind
off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy,
like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short by what is
called diversion. (139)
272:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/10/30 18:33:47.30 j+R67D2X.net
198
When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the
whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light,
as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put
him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies,
incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man
transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes
up quite lost and with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so
wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people
around me, made like myself, I ask them if they are any better
informed than I, and they say they are not. Then these lost and
wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to
which they become addicted and attached. For my part I have never
been able to form such attachments, and considering how very
likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see,
I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself. (693)
Les Pensees, translated by A. J. Krailsheimer, 1966
(Penguin Books, p.59)
273:Dreas
15/10/31 00:02:57.25 DRhMljMm!.net
>>261
>Where does Chinese fit into this?
Chinese is, as I said before, wonderfully simplistic in it's grammar. However the number of characters,
and the inability to interpret foreign words, prevents it from being any degree of practical
>Also, the most logical language would obviously be communicating via propositional logic.
this is true. Maybe someday we'll have that tech. But not today.
274:Dreas
15/10/31 00:06:26.29 DRhMljMm!.net
>>259
This simply isn't true. German is easier to learn because you can import words from other languages, and uses the basic Latin alphabet,
Which somewhere around 3 BILLION people use in their languages, either as first language or second.
Are you seriously arguing that it's easier to learn 10,000+ complicated symbols than 26 letters?
You're simply not being realistic.
275:777
15/10/31 17:45:39.65 t44tZnKz.net
>>274
>This simply isn't true.
What exactly do you mean by "this"?
>Which somewhere around 3 BILLION people use in their languages,
What is your point in saying that?
>Are you seriously arguing that it's easier to learn 10,000+ complicated symbols than 26 letters?
You don't seem to know what you are talking about.
First, only about 2,000(not 10,000) Kanji characters are taught in schools in Japan.
Newspapers are written using only those characters with a small number of exceptions
like place names.
Secondly, Kanji characters are ideograms, not phonograms like the Latin alphabet.
Each Kanji character has a meaning while a Latin alphabet letter does not.
In other words, a Kanji character can be viewed as a *word*.
So it's absurd to compare the number of Kanji and the number of the Latin alphabet.
276:777
15/11/02 10:11:13.13 +7IMwy8L.net
Suppose you are not sure whether a person called Leslie Smith is male or female.
Do you think the following phrase is natural?
I guess Leslie Smith did *their* best.
277:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/02 21:21:07.75 RQp5p6if.net
Virginia Woolf "To the Lighthouse"
'Yes, of course, if it's fine to-morrow,' said Mrs. Ramsay. 'But you'll
have to be up with the lark,' she added. (snip)
'But,' said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window,
'it won't be fine.'
●Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have
gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then,
James would have seized it.● Such were the extremes of emotion that
Mr. Ramsay excited in his children's breasts by his mere presence;
standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one,
grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning
his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times
better in every way than he was (James thought), but also with some
secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgment.
(Everyman's Library, pp.1-2)
278:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/02 21:35:32.15 RQp5p6if.net
Virginia Woolf "To the Lighthouse" (2)
James kept dreading the moment when he [= his father] would look up and
speak sharply to him about something or other. Why were they lagging
about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that.
And if he did, James thought, then ●I shall take a knife and strike
him to the heart.●
He had always kept ★this old symbol of taking a knife and striking
his father to the heart★. Only now, as he grew older, and sat staring
at his father in an impotent rage, 【it was not him, that old man
reading, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing that descended
on him - without his knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden
black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard,
that struck and struck at you】 (he could feel the beak on his bare
legs, where it had struck when he was a child) and then made off,
and there he was again, an old man, very sad, reading his book. That
he would kill, that he would strike to the heart.
(Everyman's Library, p.209)
279:臭い米国人
15/11/03 00:04:40.37 hECzMjU4!.net
>>276
Yes that's perfectly natural. Just don't buy into the bullshit of new pronouns idiots are trying to use like "xir/xe" and what not.
No matter what you might hear from another English speaker, if you don't know the gender you would use a form of "they".
It's also used when trying to be official on occasion.
280:777
15/11/03 15:46:38.45 Lw90uJis.net
>>279
>if you don't know the gender you would use a form of "they".
Thanks. I had suspected that a majority of native English speakers might have
the same opinion as yours, If this is true, I guess English grammar has almost
changed about the use of "they".
As you probably know, most people would have said "I guess Leslie Smith did *his* best"
before about 1980. Before the feminism movement started in the 1960s, "he" had been
universally used as a gender-neutral pronoun.
I know that the singular "they" has been used since Chaucer's time.
But as far as I know, it has been used only for a non-specific indefinite person like "nobody",
"everyone", "someone", etc. Since such a pronoun is semantically plural,
I think referring to it as "they" is not unnatural.
However, I think referring to a specific definite person(like Leslie Smith) whose gender is unknown
as "they" is quite a new phenomenon.
281:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/04 21:49:34.98 g7F24hrL.net
To the Lighthouse 1.17 (Mr. Bankes' monologue in the presence of
his old friend, Mrs. Ramsay, at a dinner party with her big family)
It would have hurt her [= Mrs. Ramsay] if he [= Mr. Bankes] had refused
to come. But it was not worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought
that if he had been alone dinner would have been almost over now; he
would have been free to work, Yes, he thought, it is ●a terrible waste
of time●. [snip] How trifling it all is, how boring it all is, he
thought, compared with the other thing - work. [snip] What a waste of
time it all was to be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of my oldest
friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at this moment
her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty meant nothing
to him; [snip] He wished only to be alone and to take up that book.
[snip] He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit
by her side and feel nothing for her. ●The truth was that he did not
enjoy family life.● It was in this sort of state that one asked
oneself, ★What does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one
take all these pains for the human race to go on?★ Is it so very
desirable? Are we attractive as a species? [snip] Foolish questions,
vain questions, questions one never asked if one was occupied, Is
human life this? Is human life that? One never had time to think
about it.
Everyman's Library, pp.101-102
282:臭い米国人
15/11/05 00:08:20.85 EIy4AsSz!.net
>>280
I haven't studied about the history of using pronouns when unsure of gender. That does make sense though,
as anecodotally I have noticed many technical books switching more to defaulting as "her" as it became later in the 90s and now the new millenia.
I'm probably being a curmudgeon, but the choice of "he/her" should be the author's, not society's.
283:臭い米国人
15/11/05 00:14:50.31 EIy4AsSz!.net
Double post, but...
>>281
What is meant by these [snip]s? If it's omission, just end the previous sentence with ellepses (...) after the punctuation mark.
Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time... How trifling it all is...
What does one live for?...Are we attractive as a species?...
Just as long as it's only used sparingly.
284:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/05 06:57:27.62 +QNNM5l7.net
>>283
Oh, I had seen - if I remember correctly - some people use a [snip] or
a <snip> in the middle of a quoted passage to mean an ellipsis designed
to shorten the quotation. And I had assumed it was standard usage of
English. I was wrong, huh? Thank you for telling me.
>>Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time...
How trifling it all is...
Yes, that notation looks like a good idea, but I fear readers might
then wonder whether the ellipses were made by the original author
of the passage or by me (the quoter).
If I remember correctly again, some quoters use the following notation:
(1) Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time [...]
How trifling it all is [...]
--- Here, the quoter means the ellipses are made by
the quoter, not by the original author.
(2) Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time...
How trifling it all is...
--- Here, the quoter means the ellipses are made by
the original author of the passage.
Am I right about (1) and (2) above, I wonder?
285:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/05 07:58:48.06 GAt1bas5.net
After writing >>284, I scanned a couple of collections of literary
commentaries containing lots of quotations. There I've found that
some authors write as in (1), that is, three periods in brackets,
while others write just three periods, as in (2). In both cases, the
authors are quoting passages of literary works, while omitting some words
in the middle of each quotation. They don't seem to be making
distinctions between omissions made by the original author and
those by the quoter.
In Japan, on the other hand, the general convention seems to be
that they use the word 中略 (churyaku) to mean that the omission or
ellipsis is being made by the quoter, not by the original author of
the passage. Then, when there occurs three dots like this
いや・・・ちょっと待ってくれ
then it means that it is not the quoter but the original author
of the passage that is making the omission.
286:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/05 08:06:23.94 GAt1bas5.net
continued from >>285
Therefore, suppose you are reading a literary commentary and you come across
a passage like this:
「いや・・・ちょっと待ってくれ」と恵三は言った。彼の表情は（中略）少し堅かった。
Then, the reader can clearly understand that the three dots (・・・)
mean that the omission or ellipsis is made by the original author
of the novel. Then the subsequent 中略 (churyaku) means that the
quoter is omitting some words that the original author wrote.
287:臭い米国人
15/11/06 00:09:57.61 G5WusNc2!.net
>>284
I don't recall seeing a <snip> like that before. So if it's used, it must surely be new.
It's always been the way I stated, or the way you pointed out with [...]. Very rarely there will be "TEXT OMITTED" as well.
The last one is a very special case, and it has a sense of being used only in documents where clarity is the utmost importance, such as legal documents.
I can't describe it beyond that , as I don't use it personally.
I did not know about 中略、so thanks for explaining that!
288:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/06 06:22:39.58 +N7C4I47.net
>>287
Oh, thank you, 臭い米国人, for the input. Keep in touch.
289:777
15/11/07 07:52:24.52 0VQzOm1q.net
>>282
Here is a passage from a novel called "Rogue in Space" by Fredric Brown.
【CALL HIM by no name, for he had no name. He did not know the meaning of name, or of
any other word. He had no language, for he had never come into contact with any other
living being in the billions of light-years of space that he had traversed from the far
rim of the galaxy, in the billions of years that it had taken him to make that journey.
For all he knew or had ever known he was the only living being in the universe.
He had not been born, for there was no other like him. He was a piece of rock a little
over a mile in diameter, floating free in space. There are myriads of such small worlds
but they are dead rock, inanimate matter. He was aware, and an entity. An accidental
combination of atoms into molecules had made him a living being. To our present knowledge
such an accident has happened only twice in infinity and eternity; the other such event
took place in the primeval ooze of Earth, where carbon atoms formed sentient life that
multiplied and evolved.】
(To be continued)
290:777
15/11/07 07:53:53.50 0VQzOm1q.net
>>282
(Continued)
Since it was written in 1957, the thing is referred to as "he".
In the present【Political Correctness 】world, perhaps it should be written as folows?
【CALL THEM by no name, for they had no name. They did not know the meaning of name, or of
any other word. They had no language, for they had never come into contact with any other
living being in the billions of light-years of space that they had traversed from the far
rim of the galaxy, in the billions of years that it had taken them to make that journey.
For all they knew or had ever known they was the only living being in the universe.
They had not been born, for there was no other like them. They were a piece of rock a little
over a mile in diameter, floating free in space. There are myriads of such small worlds
but they are dead rock, inanimate matter. They were aware, and an entity. An accidental
combination of atoms into molecules had made them a living being. To our present knowledge
such an accident has happened only twice in infinity and eternity; the other such event
took place in the primeval ooze of Earth, where carbon atoms formed sentient life that
multiplied and evolved.】
291:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/07 18:53:36.29 2suz8qdn.net
>>1 yes
292:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/07 20:03:48.04 TxVD6qUu.net
The Castaway
by William Cowper (1731-1800)
Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.
No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.
Not long beneath the whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.
He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind. (to be continued)
293:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/07 20:14:50.65 TxVD6qUu.net
[Continued]
Some succour yet they could afford;
And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate'er they gave, should visit more.
Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
Deserted, and his friends so nigh.
He long survives, who lives and hour
In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cried -- Adieu!
At length, his transient respite past,
His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank. [to be continued on Part 3]
294:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
15/11/07 20:15:20.43 TxVD6qUu.net
[Part 3]
No poet wept him: but the page
Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalize the dead.
I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.
No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he. [End of poem]