Japanese Language

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Anonymous

1:41 AM

Hmm. Kanjidic gives 秦 as "Manchu dynasty", but it is actually Qin

Anonymous

Manchu = Qing, which is not the same

Anonymous

(well, that might be a loose use of an equals sign, but hopefully it was clear anyway--i think Qing vs Qin might have been the source of the confusion)

Andrew Grimm

2:51 AM

I was trying to google about 夢川 , but it turns out to be fictional. No wonder it was so difficult!

taylor

3:38 AM

@silvermaple I'm starting to wonder why a company hiring for part time would ask for 3 references, "business" references in fact

its a job at a department store

a burger flipping job

and i need 3 references

i hope this isnt in fact a trend

arbitrary standards for hiring people

i needed two references and a police check, in addition to two interviews, to do some volunteer work at a retirement home

and it was a supervised role

i wonder what the precursors are to caste based societies

Anonymous

@taylor HR people are basically ridiculous

Anonymous

I know that's probably not true of everyone. But, well

Anonymous

I have yet to find a counterexample, so I don't feel too bad about generalizing.

taylor

4:08 AM

if you're self employed and the you terminate that for a regular company job, are you firing yourself or quitting

jkerian

5:01 AM

@taylor Not sure where you are, but a bad employee at a retirement home can be a major problem (and scandal).

@taylor "reallocating resources" :)

cypher

5:54 AM

@ento I updated the localization script and fixed a couple of the bugs which have appeared since I wrote it (like the dynamic dates/times not being updated and some jQuery version conflicts) and added some missing translations etc today. so hopefully it should work a bit better now

11 hours later…

taylor

4:27 PM

►

3 hours later…

gibbon

7:27 PM

So a friend finally forced me to use my Japanese for the sake of practice.. gist.github.com/3969574

That's it, I'm done.

taylor

what is that

ive never seen that before

jkerian

@taylor what is what?

gist? read the right hand side of gist.github.com

taylor

yeah i did, doesnt make sense

oh well

nice 日本語 though lolz

gibbon

@taylor You paste your text, and you share it as a link.

..rather than pasting a big ugly log in here.

taylor

顔がいい means your handsome?

oh cute

なるほどですね。

gibbon

7:41 PM

頭がいい? It means smart, no?

taylor

ah i missed the kanji

jkerian

@gibbon yes

taylor

okay so you are a smart cute 外人

わかります！ i think

jkerian

The confusing one is スマート... which is a comment on appearance, not brains :)

taylor

makes sense in a japanglish way

gibbon

7:44 PM

@taylor uhm yeah, the cute part was about my retarded Japanese of course.. which is what I found funny.

Finally trying then boom, shot down!

Dunno maybe missed some context but didn't want to make it too long :p

taylor

well u didnt try very hard

u said 知りません

u gotta say something like やっべ～っぞ　こっりゃわからへんな～

gibbon

Translation?

taylor

"oh fuck. i dont understand this shit"

gibbon

(Something tells me it's gibberish but I thought I'd ask)

taylor

lolz

well prolly not that vulgar

but its got color

わからへん is kansaiben too

very conspicuously kansai

if you going for a low profile, it might be best to avoid kansaibenn

1 hour later…

jkerian

9:04 PM

@taylor If you're going for a low profile, it might be best to avoid being a gaijin in Japan

gibbon

Or be this guy.. i.imgur.com/DbsOD.jpg

Day 43.. They have accepted me as one of their own..

taylor

i never thought of just wearing a yukata

maybe the yukata with one of those fake samurai wigs

i think you could pull this off if you are passing out tissues in front of a train station

i wonder how those tissue ad hand outs got started

its pretty convenient though, u can prolly live your whole life in tokyo never buying tissues

just hit the train stations every month or so and stock up

jkerian

9:28 PM

@taylor It always amused me when I would be handed the tissues advertising for the English language schools

taylor

9:49 PM

japan might well have the highest tissues per capita in the world

fascinating

taylor

10:04 PM

i wonder, if you let T be the time the tissues are all used up and the plastic wrapping with the ad on it thrown away, what the distribution would be of T

i imagine that would be useful because it would tell how long it stays around in someones purse or handbag and consequently how many times the user could have viewed the ad and been reminded

i guess if you assume if the time between tissue usages are exponential(k) then T would be gamma(1,1/nk)

just need to figure out how many times per hour on average a tissue is used

ill have to ask my japanese friends

gibbon

10:22 PM

You're an odd fellow.

Good night now.

taylor

im finishing off a bottle of wine from last nights party lolz

i prolly shouldnt be on the internets right now lolz

jkerian

drunk and online? head over to reddit... you'll fit right in :)