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So here's the deal, I have to give a little seminar on unnatural English. You know the stuff that is grammatically OK but no one back home uses in natural conversation. e.g "what is your hobby" or when replying to a question whether they know another person or not "first time". Or "my name is Kenji, My hobbies are sleeping and watching movies, finish"

I have a list but am curious if you guys can throw a few more my way.

cheers

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"What is the purpose of your visit to Japan?" etc or the more typically "What is your purpose in Japan?". My stock answer used to be "I'm here to teach you English", which is a fairly boring, yet partially true answer. These days I tend to correct them and let them know they sound like immigration/customs officials."What are you doing in Japan" and so on sound a little more natural.

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For me, there are 3 main subcategories of "unnatural English".

 

1. Plain old grammar and vocabulary mistakes.

EXAMPLE:

"Regarding your proposed, here is an answer. Please review the followings."

 

2. No particular grammar or vocabulary item is blatantly wrong except perhaps for the run-on sentence problem, but and everything is in reverse order, in the passive voice, and, well, vague and confusing.

EXAMPLE:

"This was a company secretariat which was established under the guidance of Informative Life Principles, being held in agreement with notions of the exchange of information of low and high rate of volume which is done through various processes of communication in the office that are understood to be used in common among various groups in which the principles, or the guidance of Information, as it has been taught by various networks..." etc. etc.

 

3. An expression in stiff but standard English of an utterance or concept uncharacteristic of a native speaker.

EXAMPLE:

"Smokin' Clean" and your hobby example above.

 

Now, why doesn't someone start a thread to point out all the stupid Japanese mistakes that non-native speakers make?

 

That would be a better use of my time, because I'm pretty sure I sound worse to them than they do to me.

 

\:D

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What is your impression of chopsticks?

 

That kind of unanswerably questions gets me worked up quite quickly.

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Not quite on topic, but the chopsticks thing above reminded me of recent annoyances ... benign questions and the utterance of the obvious...

 

Did you get a haircut? (common after 'summer cut' removes 95% of mop)

 

Ah, Mark ya... (when walking back to desk after lizard draining ceremony)

 

Ah, coffee ya... (uttered on return from coffee machine)

 

(not to mention the ubiquitous surprise at gaijin using chopsticks...)

 

Honestly, I just don't know how to respond to these, and have to remember not to chisel away at the confidence of innocent young Japanese girls with brutal sarcasm.

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Do you like Japan?

 

How do you like Japan compared to your own country?

 

"Ah, Japanese camera. Japanese video. Japanese tv." (Getting some kind of strong feeling of Japan pride on seeing a video from my home - almost ignoring my family/house/town, etc)

 

Foreigner don't like natto.

 

etc

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agreed with the 'do you like japan?' comment.

 

not on topic, however, cos i am usually asked in japanese.

 

i always feel bad saying no, but i also feel bad lying. so i hate this stupid inane question.

 

i read somewhere there is something cultural about the acceptability of 'fishing for praise' in japan. but can't remeber the specifics.

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When you say no, do they look at you as if to say "what the **** you doin' here then?"

 

?

 

I dislike the "questions" that are presented as statements. ie. "You don't use chopsticks in the US (do you.)"

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 Quote:
Originally posted by miteyak:
not to mention the ubiquitous surprise at gaijin using chopsticks...
Happens when you go to a chinese restaurant as well.

There I am, eating from a little bowl with chopsticks and the owners says "You use chopsticks very well"
So hard not to be sarcastic and say "Yes, I've been eating chinese and japanese food for 40 odd years, so I'd hope I'd get the hango of it by now"

Oh, and I prefer Japanese chopsticks to Chinese.
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 Quote:
Originally posted by dale#1:
I dislike the "questions" that are presented as statements. ie. "You don't use chopsticks in the US (do you.)"
YES!! Here here!

So often I am confronted with people who have already formed their opinion, which is usually designed to suit the biases* that they are most comfortable with. They think that they are posing a question yet what they are doing is making a statement. I always quite simply just agree with them. Let them think what they want.

The classic for me used to be:

“you don’t like speaking Japanese do you”. This to me translated roughly into “I want you to not like speaking Japanese as it suits the ignorant and biased image of you that I feel most comfortable with”. I would always oblige people with their right to what they want and agree with their statement, regardless of how inaccurate it was. Thus it became commonly believed that I hated learning and speaking Japanese. If anyone actually bothered to ask they might have found a very different state of affairs. Strange thing is this statement usually came from other western people who would have no idea of my earnest beginner involvement in using Japanese (I attempt to use Japanese in private with people I am comfortable with and who are, surprise surprise, Japanese).

I am getting heaps off my chest today ;\)

* the biase which people were most comfortable approaching me with was that I was just another culturally blind loud mouthed ignorant finance industry expat. Quite often I would (be required to) act out this role, but it was a very inaccurate perception of me at any level deeper than my skin. None the less, people see nothing more than that which they want to see. I do accept some of the blame though, having been a loud mouthed goose on the internet for the better part of the last 18 months.
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I found that people seemed to be either shocked or a bit put off when I disagreed with these kind of statements as well. It was kind of like a strained silence. Weird.

 

I was only there for a short time though, so lots of stuff was weird. But this was definitely one of the weirder communication things going on.

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I think I must be too niave/trusting of people, because generally I see their questions as inquisitive ignorance, rather than an attempt at telling me the way it is.

 

Like the other day...

 

Busy washing out two flasks in the company kitchen, soaking them first in hot water, then washing, then rinsing. A japanese lady watching incredulously, marvelled at my level of assimulation, and couldn't believe I could've picked up the art of japanese plate washing in my mere eight years in Japan.

 

Despite having sincerely pissed me off with her assertion, the poor lass was actually trying to give me a compliment, and her stunned silence at my rebuke (I merely explained that dishwashing was, rather surprisingly, also practised in many western countries) was more due to her embarrassment.

 

Sheer pig-ignorance!

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Do you have dish-washing in your country then? eek.gif How about seasons?

 

In my student world, they just piled up. It was only when I got to Japan that Japanese culture taught me about the art. lol.gif

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You get a lot of stuff from people thinking in Japanese.

 

"I live in Yokohama City" as opposed to "I live in Yokohama".

 

"My family is four persons" as opposed to "There's four of us" or "I've got a brother" and using "elder" and "younger" when there is only one brother or sister.

 

Referring to "days off", like Sat/Sun as "my holidays".

 

There's also lots of cultural stuff like people asking "Do you have (a) drivers licence?" I think you'd normally say "Can you drive (a car)?" or maybe "Have you passed the test?"

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I have to be honest and say that I don’t find any of these questions un-natural at all in terms of English. I suppose that has something to do with the fact that from a literary/grammar perspective I am often considered to be a Neanderthal (I have actually been called that!! lol.gif ).

 

I can see that some examples are not perfectly structured English sentences, but I wouldn’t even flinch if I heard them from a Japanese person in fact I doubt that I would even notice.

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"Be sure to remove the water sufficiently from kitchen rubbish before throwing it away".

 

There are lots of words like "juubun ni", "shikkari to", "kakujitsu ni", all indicative of earnest Japanese zeal in things big and small that are simply redundant in English speaking countries where we're used to cutting corners in everything.

 

"Do you hope I will rub your shoulders?"

"Let's go with me!"

"Hello, I'm Kimura"

"Today I am diarrhea"

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