From:	Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Re: Japanese Language (Words for those who know none)
Date:	Sat, 29 Aug 1998 21:09:53 -0700

On Sat, 29 Aug 1998, Avenger wrote:

> For localised character colour I don't feel that it was harmful, very
> few people would attempt to construct a conversation out of what was
> posted, plus there was (IMO) insufficient capability within that list to
> construct a conversation. It was intended to allow "slippage" into the
> language. For the list (a japanese speaking character, like German,
> French whatever) might slip into a phrase, term, comment before
> returning to Americanese. That was the intention of my post. Also,
> with the list stored in the logs, I don't have to worry about losing it
> on my drive, which has been occurring recently.

I can understand.

> I apologise for any offence you feel has been caused to anyone who has
> studied or does speak the language, that was not the intention of the
> post.

I'm not offended. I didn't indend for that to be the tone of my reply.
It was more a cautionary note to those writers who would look at the list
and think "okay, I have (or will have) a Japanese character, let's have
them say some stuff in Japanese" only to piece together some things or
slip in some words or phrases and have them come out poorly to anyone who
actually knows the language. Like a big tough sammie sounding like a
little girl, or a fixer speaking defferentially to a runner, etc. I know
they are only a few of us who know much Japanese on the list, but, well,
to put it frankly, it is very easy to sound like a Neanderthal if you
don't know what you are doing in Japanese. I suppose that may also be the
case for several other languages, but I go with what I know.

The main reason why I went into an explanation on honorifics, is because
the way you refer to people is an integral part of any society. I thought
it would be helpful for people who want to have a Japanese character who
sticks with the Japanese honorific system as a manarism, to know enough to
try to do it correctly under most circumstances they would see in an STk
post. As I said, I don't mind multicultural flavor, however, when
attempting to describe someone from another culture, it requires the
writer to take some extra effort to make sure they are doing it correctly,
and not falling into sterotypes or characturatures of the culture that
only exist within our own.

> Unfortunately, unlike German, French, Italian, Spanish, it is
> harder to construct even small sentences and comments in Japanese, and
> where Shadowrun has such a heavy Far East influence running through it's
> veins it's perhaps unfortunate that some of the useful little ditties
> can't or aren't used. I was hoping, by the use of constructed sentences
> (parables/whatever) at the end of the post, that people would get a feel
> for the difficulty in using this language, keeping things simple for
> their characters rather than attempting to construct an entire
> conversation.

No, I wasn't supposing that there were many who were going to try and
reverse-engineer Japanese, but I figured I should say something before
anybody tried. It is more or less a matter of respect for that other
culture that I think people should be careful in writing for a character
from another culture. I can see how the parables are interesting, and
could be useful for dropping at an appropriate time on rare occasions,
but, to mix metaphors, one doesn't want to come off sounding like a
fortune cookie. ^_^

> In the majority of cases for this sort of usage the only
> references previously available are from Hollywood interpretation, which
> is questionable at best.

Uh...yeah. Well, as an example there, I had heard that for Dances with
Wolves, they had gotten a woman to write the dialog for the actor/members
of the tribe of American Indians in the movie. When the film played
before an audience of the real tribe, they cracked up laughing, because,
you guessed it, the big tough braves were speaking with the intonation and
speach patterns that were used by women. Whoops.

On the other hand, I found the "CitySpeak" that they whipped up for
_BladeRunner_ to be interesting, in that it mixed English, Japanese,
Spanish, and several other languages into a unique patois. Since it had
no basis in a real culture, they could get away with any linguistic
variations that they wanted. They tried to put some of that into SR
"future slang" but I am a little dubious of FASA's efforts.

> Anyway, as I said, no offence was intended, it was simply an offering of
> some useful words and a few constructed phrases, with (I had hoped)
> sufficient information concerning male/female differences, that people
> would appreciate prolonged or extended use might be inadvisable.

Well, I would also be wary of setting of a rant like we had last time
someone used--egad!--Latin. So I think it should be said that anybody
who wants to break into Japanese, Spanish, or any other language for that
matter, should a) try to do a good job of it, and b) if anything of
importance is said, they should provide a translation either within the
post or in PlotD.

--My two yen

Jeff