19/07/28 17:15:04.65 hGd57ZrS0.net
By the way, what do you do for a living? Or would you prefer
to keep it a secret? If so, I'll understand. I'm just curious because
such a great writer in English is very, very rare among the Japanese
native speakers, so I just wanted to ask.
I mean, everything about you
is mysterious. I just want to know anything and everything about you.
Of course, if you don't want to talk about anything other than
substantial issues such as those about life and society and
other serious social or philosophical matters, then I'll follow suit.
29:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/28 19:03:34.53 sjTcQfZ50.net
wait, why we have this thread if it's not for practice purpose? If you just wanna talk in english, you can go to any english forums on internet, or even those 大使館 category of 5ch.
30:81
19/07/28 20:40:09.11 Wllclrp30.net
I've finished some of the tasks.
>>27
That's a good idea. I'll go back to anonymous state, too.
(Someone gave a message here. Maybe I'll put my nickname when appropriate.)
>>28
I write computer programs and that's how I make a living. I'm not making much
money, but I'm living with my father and I don't spend much money. (My mother
already past away from a disease.)
I don't use English for my work. But I hope I can use it for my work in the
future.
As for my writing ability in English, I don't attribute it to my English
skills. My English skills are not high and no different from those of others. I
wouldn't pass Eiken first grade if I took it. But when I write something in
Japanese, people say I'm a good writer. But writing has never been my thing. To
me, to express myself in a written format requires lots of mental energy and
concentration and it's very tiring. And I'm not good at expressing myself
verbally either. I like thinking. (More precisely contemplating.) I just wait
for something to come to me and I just try to express it out. Possibly it might
be a bit like carving a statue out of a piece of wood. You just try to see a
statue hidden in it and release it. (I'm exaggerating too much, sorry. I'm not
that great in any sense.) I just want to express out what I have in my mind.
Maybe you are doing the same thing.
Due to my poor English skills, it's not always very easy for me to express
myself in English. Often times I don't know how to say what I want to say. I
want to improve my English skills, and I believe it will give me a sense of
freedom more. (My thinking is limited by my language ability, and I want to
improve it not only for my future work but also for myself.)
31:81
19/07/28 20:40:34.74 Wllclrp30.net
I should have first replied to your previous message, which included a mention
to my overseas experiences and relationships with English speaking people,
before giving you a partial response to your last message. Your comment
intrigued me and I did so.
Even thought I have never been abroad except for a few days of stay, and I've
never had a long-term, or short-term as well, relationship with a native
English speaker, I had some relations with some non-native English speaking
friends. (I still have some.) I mostly just talked to them on Skype. I had some
occasions to see some of them in person and spend time with them. But overall,
the amount of time I have spent with or talk to them is not big. However, if
you have someone in your mind who you talk to in English, it will help you a
lot to improve your English. In that sense it has helped me a lot, I think.
32:81
19/07/28 20:40:51.06 Wllclrp30.net
Going back to the previous topic of my writing ability, actually this is
virtually my first time trying to communicate with someone in English in a
written format. I wanted to start writing in English and I was trying to find a
good place to do so when I asked a question in the previous thread. I switched
to writing in English, and to my surprise, I found myself being able to express
myself kind of well in English in writing without ever having practiced writing
in English. My speaking in English is poorer than my writing even with all the
time I have had conversations with people. (Maybe it means speaking is harder
than writing. Maybe my writing ability in Japanese and my practice of speaking
English helped me.)
I started learning English by myself when I was around your age when you went
to Iraq. You are older than me and I believe it wasn't easy to acquire English
ability when you were young. Nowadays we have the internet and YouTube and
stuff. Learning languages must have become a lot easier than before especially
English. You must have had a good command of English back when you went to
Iraq. This fact alone makes me admire you.
Going to France with your wife to study French. How wonderful it is!
I want to write more, but it's already become long. I'll stop here for now.
33:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/28 20:49:04.77 Wllclrp30.net
>>29
I haven't been able to find any English forum where you can talk about just
anything. Most English forums are very topic based and you can't write just
about anything.
If you happen to know any good forum, I'd appreciate it if you share it with me.
I took a look at some boards in the 大使館 category in 5ch. But they seem to
be very depopulated. We have some threads here where people can talk in
English, so I believe this thread is not against the rules here.
34:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/28 21:09:15.96 hGd57ZrS0.net
Wow, the better I get to know you, the more impressed I get.
Truly you're amazing. So your experiences abroad are quite limited
(only few days) and you haven't had such long-term relations
with English speakers either. And these interactions with me
(which started only several days ago) are the first time you've
ever communicated with anyone by writing in English!?
And you're a computer programmer and you've never used
English at work, huh!?
You must be a genius! But maybe you're the kind of guy that
wishes no one would congratulate and praise you this way.
(I've met some people who're that way.)
As for me, ever since I was 12, I've been totally absorbed in the
study of English (together with other foreign languages) and
the cultures of different countries (together with a bit of knowledge
about their histories, arts, politics, economics, and things like that).
I went to college as a major of English (English linguistics and literature).
At 22 I graduated and became a high school teacher of English. Two years
later I went almost insane and quit the job and, after a half-year hiatus,
I got admitted to a Japanese construction company (what is called
a general contractor). There I worked for almost four years.
Out of those four years of employment, I stayed in Iraq (an Arab-speaking
country) for two and a half years. There I was working with 50 Japanese,
50 Chinese, and 50 Arabs.
35:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/28 21:09:28.46 hGd57ZrS0.net
Together with a lot of boring tasks, I was supposed to be a Japanese-English
translator as well. Since my listening comprehension ability at that time
(when I was 26 to 28) was not yet high enough, I was a lousy interpreter.
(Besides, my tendency to get nervous when in contact with anyone,
whether Japanese or foreign) was a huge handicap for me when it comes to
trying to become a good interpreter.
On the other hand, I proved to be a rather good translator of commercial and
technical documents. I had always been, and I still am, a great lover of
language and reading books. Whenever I read and write anything in any language,
I have always displayed a rather high proficiency.
When I turned 29, I quit the job at the Japanese company and got married and
went to France with my ex and stayed there for 18 months. I studied French
desperately. I studied, studied, studied, studied like someone who has really gone insane.
I had always hungered for knowledge, and those 18 months were really precious to me.
They were my hard-earned days for quenching my thirst for knowledge.
36:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/28 21:21:46.03 hGd57ZrS0.net
When in Iraq, as I said before, I was working with lots of Chinese and
Arabs. So I lost no time in tackling their respective languages.
I studied Arabic and Chinese every single day, using cassette tapes and
course books and dictionaries. At night I studied those languages
(together with French) and during the day I tried to communicate
solely in their respective languages. I quickly learned to speak
rather well, which surprised all my colleages, whether Japanese or foreign,
and that amazed me as well. It's not that I'm smart. It's just that
I love knowledge and I had always been hungry for knowledge,
having been born as a son of parents who left school at age 15 or even 14.
Even when they were 12 or 13, they were too busy trying to help their
parents try to earn their living, so much so that they didn't have
enough time to attend school regularly. They had to skip school very, very often.
Naturally my parents didn't have the means to understand my thirst for knowledge.
They did know somewhat what it is to be hungry for knowledge, but
they were not as intensely, maddeningly in love with learning as I have been.
Add to this, they had to quit school at their tender ages, so that
attending college was a luxury. So, wishing to go on to graduate school or
even abroad for study was a crime.
So, all my life, at least until I was 40 or 45, I had always been suffering
from this intense sense of Original Sin because, although I was a sort of
a son born in a family of proletarians, I was knowledge-oriented.
In my formative years, the times were those of labor movement and
Mao Zedong and Pol Pot the Cambodian and Lenin and Stalin.
The vehement streams of the times made me feel as if I was fundamentally
sinful because I was hungry for knowledge and beauty and, deep in my heart,
I had this terrible urge to pursue beauty and knowledge.
37:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/29 02:36:23.79 sYPlYS3n0.net
>>33
makes sense. I too noticed that the internet across the sea doesn't seem to do chit chat on forums. I think people do that on actual chat and chat apps. So maybe you can try some discord channels?
And holy shit this guy had quite a life. I'm starting to feel ashamed in comparison for I pretty much accquired my english through watching tmnt on youtube, playing steam games and reading about memes.
38:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/29 06:12:40.64 95eegx8V0.net
>>37
I didn't know what "tmnt" stood for. I googled it and found it's for
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." And you played those games and
things like that and you've learned to write English that well already,
huh? Impressive. You guys are all great.
I don't know who you are yet, but you're quite welcome here.
I hope lots of other guys will pitch in.
39:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/29 06:33:53.59 95eegx8V0.net
For the past seven months I've been into the life and music of
Karen Carpenter, the lead singer of the musical group Carpenters.
She died in 1983 of complications stemming from anorexia nervosa
and she's been famous, or rather, infamous, for that.
But her music has always been popular all over the world.
There are numerous fans in Japan as well.
As one of her recent fans, I've been watching innumerable
videos on YouTube where she performs. I've been seeing
documentaries and interviews on her life as well.
Not only that, I've been reading several books on her. Of all the
books on her life and music that I've read so far, by far the greatest
is this:
Randy L. Schmidt, "Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter," 2010
It's a book containing 300 of real text, with 50 pages of notes and appendices.
Has anyone here read it? Or is anyone into Carpenters music or Karen's life at all?
The more I listen to her, the more I get to appreciate her music and persona.
The more I try to delve into her life, the more mesmerized I feel.
She's just fantastic in every way. And that's why I've been trying to
translate and analyze about 120 of her songs on my YouTube channel.
I hope I'll get to do her remaining songs (perhaps 50 of them) in the near future.
I want to analyze her life in a series of my videos as well.
40:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 07:20:29.63 9IXCsdk/0.net
I have been setting up my laptop PC. I bought the PC a while ago and I quit the
setup in the middle. I finally transferred to the new PC. What a tiring and
complicated task... I must make it simpler.
>>39
You have been working on such a big project. I checked the book you mentioned
at Amazon. It seems to have lots of positive reviews.
Carpenters is one of the musicians I have been wanting to start listening to,
but I'm not used to listen to Western songs -- actually I don't listen to music
in general much, whether Western or Japanese. I'm a single processor person and
my mind is almost always occupied by something from activities I'm having --
and when I tried to start listening to Carpenters some years ago, maybe it was
10 years ago or so, I thought it was a bit too early for me to start listening
to Western songs with lyrics. My brain didn't seem to process English sounds
very well and I got kind of annoyed. Perhaps my brain treated English sounds as
noise rather than meaningful sound. Or it might be just that I got frustrated
because I couldn't catch the lyrics. (I don't listen to Japanese songs either.
I think I'm more inclined to English songs in terms of my taste, but in terms
of my knowledge of them I know next to nothing about English songs.)
Recently I found myself started enjoying listening to instrumental music, which
wasn't the case before. Possibly, through my study of English, my brain got
used to listening to certain kinds of sounds. Maybe now I can enjoy listening
to Western music. That's what I have been thinking and hoping lately. I think
Carpenters is a good start.
41:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 07:24:30.53 9IXCsdk/0.net
Come to think of why I don't listen to music much, maybe it has something to do
with my childhood. I wasn't given many things, and music was one of the things
I didn't have when I was a child. I was very poor at music in general when I
was in school. But recently, for some reason, I have a positive thinking and I
actually started practicing piano some days ago. I want to see how far I can go
with music. This is my first musical instrument I have practiced.
I missed lots of chances to reply to, or talk about, what you have written.
Hopefully I can start talking about some of them, one by one. I'm not going to
hurry about it.
42:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 08:11:30.75 9IXCsdk/0.net
By the way, I have been writing my posts somewhere else and copying it to a 5ch
browser. This board has a limitation on the number of letters each line can
contain, and it's tiring to insert line breaks manually. (Also it's not very
easy to make the post look tidy by inserting line breaks manually.)
I'm using a Linux command, fold, to insert line breaks. With -s option, "fold
-s" will do the job. I created a front end interface and I'm using it instead
of using the command directly.
I wanted to edit, rather I actually edited, the very last paragraph of my
previous post, but I accidentally put the original writing to the command and
as a result my edit was lost.
This is only a tiny thing, but this place isn't a very perfect place for
writing English.
(In addition to that, the 5ch browser I'm using doesn't have the functionality
of spell checking. My front-end tool has it. The tool is a web app and web
browser offers it by default.)
Also, I don't know how posts here look to other people. This is how it looks on
my screen. (Just in case. Please be careful when you upload screenshots. It may
contain personal information.)
URLﾘﾝｸ(dotup.org)
And this is how it looks on my web browser.
URLﾘﾝｸ(dotup.org)
They didn't look great by default and I changed the settings. That it doesn't
look fine by default is another minus point here. It's not very newbies
friendly.
But again they are tiny things and overall I'm more or less satisfied.
43:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 09:56:59.63 j0maqqb80.net
>>40
So you've been having a hell of a time struggling with your new PC,
huh? Seeing that even you a computer-savvy guy has to
have such a hard time with it, I can imagine how it would affect
someone else. As a complete idiot with computers, I wouldn't even
dare to touch any such thing even for a split second.
As far as Western songs, even when limited to songs in English,
I've always been having a hard time struggling with them.I
It's always been my impression that songs and poems in English
are by far the hardest to understand (and appreciate) of all forms
of creation in English. English songs, especially pop and rock songs,
such as those performed by such ubiquitous singers as Carpenters,
Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Lady Gaga, are definitely
far harder to appreciate than newspaper and magazine articles,
novels, movies, and TV dramas.
44:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 10:03:02.88 j0maqqb80.net
>>40
But Japanese learners of English seem to be misled into believing that
somehow English pop and rock songs are easier to tackle than
novels, nonfiction, movies and things like that just because the former are
far shorter and heard everywhere and seem to be known to everyone,
including Japanese people.
They therefore casually start trying to understand
and even translate Englsh songs they happen to like and display their product
in their blogs and elsewhere. The problem is that most of all those atttempts are
a sheer failure, if I may put it that way. Obviously they haven't even read through a single
full-length novel in English, and yet they naively believe they know English well enough to
be able to understand and translate the songs correctly enough.
But that's just ludicrous. As for me, only until recently, say, until several years ago,
I had never even dared to tackle English songs although by that time I had read
hundreds of long novels and nonfiction books in English and watched a total of perhaps
thousands of TV dramas and movies in English without the help of subtitles in Japanese.
These several years, especially for the past seven months or so, however, during which time
I have been working on trying to translate, analyze, and explain each and every word, phrase,
and sentence and all grammatical issues contained in the lyrics to my porential YouTubers,
I have come to understand the language and appreciate the profundities of the English songs
that I happen to be working on. In the process, I have to consult numerous sources, including
Internet websites and the OED and other large dictionaries.
45:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 16:38:58.40 9IXCsdk/0.net
Yes, I'm quite familiar with using PCs, yet I always struggle to set up my
environment. It's not only about the OS, but also about all the application
programs I use. I doubt normal people enjoy the same extent of freedom and
control with using PCs as I have with them. I'm not familiar with maintenance
works with a car. I need to consult experts whenever I encounter a problem with
my car, and I just pay money they ask to have the problem fixed. I don't want
to depend on people and me having little independence when it comes to cars is
frustrating.
You can enjoy all sorts of things if you can use a PC. But it's also time
consuming to get familiar with using a PC. You can change the settings to make
it fit your needs, but it's endless. You need to find a good balance.
I like the sense that I have when I get familiar with something, whether a
skill or a knowledge. I feel as if I have more power and freedom. But it can be
a sort of liability when you want to bring it to a new environment.
I want to make my life simpler, and I want to find better ways with my PC.
46:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 16:59:50.43 9IXCsdk/0.net
I've encountered some times people recommending using English songs for new
learners to learn English. Maybe it's a good idea, for they might get familiar
with English sounds, but I've never thought of the difficulty in understanding
English lyrics. There are some things that are counter intuitive. New learners
of English often think that normal conversations among neighbors and friends
are easier than English used in news programs. But I think conversations among
people, especially among teenagers can be very hard to understand.
It's good that I didn't dare to try to tackle English lyrics in my early stages
of learning English. I may have been discouraged by the difficulty of
understanding it.
47:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 17:35:49.52 j0maqqb80.net
>>46
Yes, it was a very good thing that you didn't tackle English songs or poems
in your earlier stages of English study. English songs and poems are
really hard for adult nonnatives, at least for Asians and other peoples
whose native languages are far from English and other Indo-European languages because:
(1) Poems and songs use "poetic license," that is, poets and songwriters sacrifice
logic and naturalness of phrasing in order to put the need for rhyming and rhythm first.
An ideal poem or song would be one written with logical correctness and natural phrasing
and yet with beautiful rhyming and rhythm. But that's not always easy. Poets and songwriters
often have to resort to unnatural phrasing, by using expressions and words never used in
everyday conversation or business world or anywhere else. They also sometimes have to
break some grammatical rules. That is precisely why English native speakers on English-study
forums keep asserting to us nonnnative learners of English that it's not a good idea to learn
correct English by reading or trying to understand poems or songs.
(to be continued)
48:名無しさん＠英語勉強中
19/07/31 17:36:07.65 j0maqqb80.net
(continued)
(2) Poems and songs are written with extreme succinctness. Songs, in particular, are typically
written in lengths short enough for people to finish singing within five or even three minutes.
But still, they are required to convey a lot of profound, complex feeling or idea or both.
Ideas and feelings required to be expressed in such songs are very often -- or even at all times --
even more complex than the same length of text in a novel or nonfiction or newspaper article or other
fact-based writing. Poets and songwriters therefore typically have to make intellectual and intuitional
acrobats to express any one idea or feeling, trying to condense a tremendously heavy feeling or idea
in an extremely small number of words, which are nevertheless supposed to be written in a language
that should at least on the surface sound as if easy enough to be understood by teenagers.
They should never sound like a pholosophical work or an academic paper. And, most important of all,
these pieces of writing must definitely be artistically beautiful, even reaching the point where they
make the readers and listeners cry.
That is, I think, poems and songs are far, far more difficult not only to write but also to appreciate.
No wonder I had never managed to appreciate any poem or song fully, whether in Japanese or English,
untill only several years ago, even though by then I had read numerous novels, nonfiction books,
and even some books on philosophy, psychology, and other areas.