cat /proc/claus

Japanese are often dissed about the way that they butcher foreign words. “Garaigo” is a term for foreign words “re-written” in the japanese phonetic system (which is simple, with 5 vowels and few consonantal sounds).

However, people from other places are often guilty of the very same crime - using foreign words without regards for their actual reading.

Case in point, I’m playing D&D with my thurdays role-playing group. I was first playing with a dwarvish berserker who charged his way to his own death. Then I started a young, brash fighter type. The name of the dwarf was “Banta” - which is pronounced more or less as バンタ, but none of the other players (most of them native english speakers), could get the name right. I heard bunta, bento, beitar, lots of variations - and things just got worse after I wrote the name down.

I named my next character “Chatorix” (from Chatotorix, the Brazilian translation name of Assurancetourix, the bard from Asterix comics). And he’s already been called “Chatrix” and “Chatris”

I certainly won’t let english speakers bash japanese’s accent unpunished next time

I am sometimes asked to proofread papers in english written by folks in my laboratory. Today was no different. I actually enjoy doing this kind of work, but that is not what I want to talk about.

Today, while proof-reading another paper, it came to me that one of the mistakes I see most often is the incorrect usage of “a/an” and “the”. There are people with varying degrees of proficiency in english in my lab, but regardless of that, this is the most common mistake (at least the one I remember seeing most).

Also, it seems to me that more often than not, the problem is an extra “the”, where none was needed, or a “the” instead of an “a/an”. I don’t usually see a lacking “the” (they do exist, however).

I wonder why.

The past two weeks I was in a trip to the US. It’s a bit strange going to the US as a tourist, when you have a very active online life on western websites. At the same time, nothing is really unexpected, AND you see many surprises here and there.

One of the things that caught me by surprise in the US trip was the “tipping” culture. There, you are supposed to add 15% to 20% of the value of a service as “tips” to your server. This is often paid in restaurants, taxi rides, services, et cetera. The servers, in turn, are expected to earn the larger part of their income as tips, to the point where their “official” income is reduced according to the ammount of tips they receive.

While tipping is not compulsory in paper, in practice you HAVE to do it. I had a friend being insulted by a cab driver because he didn’t tip him, and I heard a story of a guy who was kicked out of a nightclub for not tipping the waitress. My girlfriend’s friends, who were working there in their summer holidays, told me that in their restaurants the servers were reluctant to take tables where foreigners were seated, knowing that many of them didn’t know about the U.S. tipping culture.

I personally didn’t like it one bit. Tipping, in my mind, was a way to thank someone for a job well done. You would pay a little more than requested as to say “here, you deserve it”. However, as it becomes required, it loses that meaning. Actually, it becomes even worse, since you give that money you’re not theoretically “required” to give… or else.

Also, as Juliana puts it, it is a way for employers to show artifically lower prices, by skimping on the payment of their employees. They shift the struggle for higher earnings from employees expecting rises from their employers, to employees
expecting higher tips from their customers. They tried to do that in Brazil once, some years ago. Restaurants started asking a fixed 10% gratuity in their bills. People started complaining, and it was decided that this was a technique for artificially rising the stated prices, and now most don’t do this anymore, or, if they do, it is clearly stated that the “10%” is optional.

Well, all I know is that I felt ankward adding the tips every time I went out to eat anything in the US. Together with the “invisible taxes” (sales taxes are almost never added to the listed prices in the US, another (minor) gripe of mine during that trip), the real price of eating out was usually about 30% more expensive than the listed price.

This news from the Asahi shinbun, kinda blew my mind. Apparently, an year ago a girl commited Suicide in Hokkaido due to extreme bullying in school. The point, here, is that the girl was 6 years old.

Yes, it is some horrible news, yes it is shocking. Yup, that’s a pity. But this is not what I wanted to talk about.

I always had this idea that the concept of death was one that developed later in one’s mental development. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but children up to a certain age were not supposed to be able to understand the concept of death because they lacked some abstracts constructs needed for this concept.

I wish I had paid more attention to my Piaget now.

So I wonder how this 6 year old could have killed herself - maybe she was mimicking something she saw in the adult world? Maybe I’m wrong about the age when the concept of death develops?

Any insights?

Ah, BTW, sorry, but the news link above is only in japanese. I tried googling for an english link without success.

Recently my mother posted about hurting people without noticing. This week, I did just that thing. An action that I thought would be a minor offence became the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Whee. Way to start the week.