March 31st, 2009
Abuse the local language or abuse the international language?
This article details the travails of Fred as he suffers through a Canadian woman abusing the Japanese language and discusses how Westerners abuse Japanese, Japanese abuse English, and people like to announce the languages they can speak.
Fred and I were nursing our drinks the other night in a crowded place in Yokohama. We were there for a less than stimulating meeting, and Fred was having a good moan, which is the term he uses instead of complaining. Fred may have picked up this Briticism, or perhaps even a Commonwealth expression, in the U.K. or somewhere else, but he really seemed to like using it. Perhaps it is human nature to be attracted to new words and new languages, and love using them. If the words are not too pretentious and are comprehensible, what is the harm?