Dr Wes Robertson
@ScriptingJapan
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Chair of Languages & Cultures @Macquarie_Uni @LanguagesMQ . #Japanese sociolinguist & @Brutalinguist co-host. #日本語 の文字や #メタル や翻訳を研究する社会言語学者. He/Him.
Joined October 2019
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New 📌: I'm a sociolinguist of Japanese, and I produce Japanese learning materials, slang reviews & a dictionary, and general articles here:
I have a podcast on metal:
And you can help keep things ad-free:
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Not every meme idea I come up with is good, but no one can say that they aren't all ideas.
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Happy to announce that I've completed my
#Japanese
slang dictionary, summarizing all of the words I've covered so far in my monthly reviews.
Hope people find this to be a useful resource. It is live at the link below:
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Hepburn romanization style of Japanese likely to become official standard of romaji spelling and replace kunrei style recommended by Cabinet
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I've studied Japanese for over a decade. In doing so, I've learned ancient wisdom through the language.
New ways of being, in words that cannot be translated, but are deeply intertwined with a unique culture. One we can all learn from.
A thread.
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Tired of cringe "Japanese is hard lol" memes so I'm creating my own overly positive cringe "Japanese is great" memes to be the change I want to see in the world.
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Looks like it's time to repost this meme I made last year
Genuinely curious here:
What's the deal with salad in Japan just being a bowl of shredded cabbage?
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I usually ignore this discourse but this was particularly silly. Before you critique a localisation you should at least know about the command form, abusive 2PPs, and the passive voice. 「お前... てくれ！」 is not "you should", 「思われる」 is not a normal "I think".
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今はナン時？
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After exhaustive research, I am happy to present the kanji alignment chart
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One of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my entire life was microwave tea. It truly was a 茶レンジ
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There's no formal "error" here but this sentence is so funny to me.
Shibuya City would like to ask tourists not to celebrate Halloween around Shibuya Station from October 27th to 31st.
During this period, drinking on the streets near Shibuya Station will be prohibited by local ordinance between 6 PM - 5 AM.
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░M░Y░F░R░E░E░T░E░X░T░B░O░O░K░S░I░N░B░I░O
A lot of people ask for good resources for studying Japanese so I’ll share the resources I have personally used! Because Japanese language education is my area of research, I’d also really like to hear about what has helped you as well. 🧵
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Me reading academic literature in Japanese: Wow I'm so good at this language I've dedicated my life to.
Me reading Japanese Twitter threads: lol I have no idea what this means I'm a fraud
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Listen kids, I know doing taxes isn't fun, but don't give your SSN to the anime waifu.
Ok, video games have peaked.
There's a visual novel coming out that supposedly actually prepares your 2022 US federal tax return through romancing an anime girl.
I.... man, this is a lot.
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You know that terrible meme you liked about how hard Asian languages are? The one that made you feel distaste for the very thing you're trying to get skilled in, and thereby damaging your progress? Well they can make fun of your language too.
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Teaching Japanese in 2022 is so hard. You try to introduce basic stuff like これは私のリンゴです and someone suddenly asks about a cat-samurai manga where they say こりゃ俺様の林檎でこざニャンる instead and by the time you unpack everything there's three days till the midterm
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Before eating a meal, Japanese people say いた？だきます which means "Did it exist? Well then I will hug it.", a statement reflecting the long tradition of animism and respect which pervades the culture.
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Me when I'm watching a Korean show with English subtitles and I suddenly identify a word because its a Chinese-based loan that remains 95% homophonous with a Japanese equivalent
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Been practicing my kanji with Adam recently but he's really critical and it's killing my motivation
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Japan actually just has one person it in. Everyone you see when you go there are just manifestations of a singular entity that has existed unchanged for all time. Their name is Mina. Or, if you are being polite, which Japanese of course always are always no matter what, Minasan.
it’s pretty weird being in japan and seeing incredible public transit, safe streets, high speed rail, and almost zero gun violence
and then remembering that the US has almost double the GDP/capita. our bad outcomes (like 8 year shorter life spans) are entirely a policy choice
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A paper plate is a Western serving vessel made of paper - paper means "paper", plate means "plate". But it's also a way of thinking about the impermanence of objects, a way of questioning the norms of the day-to-day of the kitchen.
A donabe is a Japanese cooking vessel made of clay — do means “clay,” nabe means “pot.” But it’s also a way of thinking about cooking, a way of finding joy in the day-to-day of the kitchen.
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I'm going to commit the traditional Japanese notion of seppuku
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The best kanji are kanji where they just slapped the same kanji on three times. 蟲, 森, 轟, all genius. Fantastic design, no notes.
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I'm on my knees here begging. Ya'll gotta understand that there's a difference between sending a 3 year old to buy groceries with an entire film crew dedicated to keeping the child safe and the normal expectations for what a 3 year old can/should do on their own in Japan.
In the west: “He’s just a child, of course he throws things at strangers!”
In Japan: “You’re 3 now. Old enough to go to the store and buy me some groceries. By yourself.”
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This image goes viral every year or so with some comments about how "wacky" or "crazy" Japanese is. It's a funny sentence, for sure, but there's nothing bizarre here.
First let's just check out what's going on, and how the five sentences work:
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When I did my first homestay in Japan, I brought out a gift for my host parents and did the whole つまらないものですが thing and they laughed in my face.
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Share the worst Japanese learning meme you've ever seen I'll start
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Schrodinger's kanji is where a character exists simultaneously in two possible readings until an act of reading that may or may not occur.
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I refuse to believe humanity is inherently evil because I live in a world where people take the time to make yuzu baths for capybaras.
Another Capybara Hot Spring in Japan:
NHK has shared footage from Himeji Central Park zoo, which has prepared a yuzu bath for its capybara enclosure. We can see three recently-born baby capybaras enjoying the warm water.
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Japanese media showing a lame white guy using Boku instead of Watashi is a huge step forward for my people. Glad to see our kind get such progressive representation.
The newest game in the Yakuza series, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, has a side mission where a Japanese culture otaku asks you to appear on his TV show about Japanese tourists visiting Hawaii. [It's like a parody of the Japanese TV show "YOUは何しに日本へ."]
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"I put the Japanese into Google Translate and there's a difference to the English" is not an own
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I love the "Japan has one culture" take. It's just amazing. Multiple civil wars, a massive number of dialects and subcultures, and the concept of a single Japanese language and/or way of writing is less than 200 years old, but it's all one single united entity. Great stuff.
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Your first burrito after a long time is a おひさしびりート
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Losing my mind here
Before eating a meal, Japanese people say いた？だきます which means "Did it exist? Well then I will hug it.", a statement reflecting the long tradition of animism and respect which pervades the culture.
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Fantasy is when all the weapon names are written in long strings of kanji.
Sci-fi is when all the weapon names are written in long strings of katakana.
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Japanese has a lot of homophones. One trick I recommend for memorizing them is to take a whole bunch and force them - no matter how awkwardly - into a single sentence. The stupider and less practical the sentence is the better, as you're more likely to get it stuck in your brain.
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Amazing comic here about Japan's "ore-ore-sagi ("mom it's me") scam which plays on the wide variety of first-person pronouns in Japanese. Did my best job to translate/explain it below.
Personally, I love 拙者.
拙者が拙宅でお作りした拙劣な拙訳はどうでしたか。拙かったでしょう。
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Wake up babe new way of writing 魔法 just dropped
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For anyone else struggling with
#Japanese
"causative/passive/causative passive" here are draft pages on that topic from the textbook I'm writing. I have done ZERO editing, so forgive any typos, awkward phrasing, etc. I know they aren't perfect yet.
Let's start with the passive:
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Kurosawa uses かしら at :20, if anyone needs an example to counter the "only women use this" nonsense
Legendary Japanese filmmaker AKIRA KUROSAWA with some great advice for writers everywhere.
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Ever wonder what the rest of kanji look like? Got a program to help fill out the surrounding space for me with the power of AI. Here's what some simple kanji look like with AI showing us what could have been. Incredible stuff.
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I love lots of memes about Japanese but stuff like this is awful, beyond just that these all have distinct translations in English too. When the point or "humor" is just "lol hard language" it feels like the intent is just discouragement, which is the last thing learners need.
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Are you or someone you know looking to learn
#Japanese
? The free introductory textbook I created has now been updated with improved explanations, a few typo fixes, and the workbook answer key integrated into the main document. Check it out here:
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I'm 1/2 done, so I'm going to announce something I've told literally no one but my wife: I'm writing an intermediate
#Japanese
textbook. This will cover the content of books like Genki II + a bit more, and builds directly off my introductory ones. I will also release it for free.
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If you ask Reddit why Japanese words normally written in kanji/hiragana sometimes appear in katakana, these are the explanations you are likely to get, and the likelihood of you getting each one.
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you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me
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LOL Reddit is accusing me of misformation what a day I've made it to the big leagues
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Apparently some people think this thread is serious? It is not. This is a joke. Please, please understand that this is a joke. Satire is a dead scene I will never do a satire again.
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Maybe, just maybe, if you're screenshotting pornography to create a "weird Japan" clickbait article, it's time to step away from the computer and accept that YOU'RE the one who is weird.
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An intermediate guide to the passive, causative, and causative-passive in
#Japanese
(1/2)
This guide assumes mastery of plain form, ～て（いる） forms, and giving verbs. I do not recommend it otherwise, as you may get confused using the forms here before learning the others.
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If they ever make a JLPT N-0 the reading section should just be the menu from a soba restaurant.
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Hey, remember the guides to the
#Japanese
passive/causative/causative passive, keigo, and "impolite" forms I posted as JPEGs a while back? Well you can download them all now a PDFs from my blog. Hopefully this helps until the full textbook comes out.
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Japanese has so many words for insulting people and speaking roughly that you can write a 348 page dictionary on it.
It's often said that there are no swear words in Japanese. But while profanities may be rare, taboos - and banned words - abound. Discover the history of Kotobagari, the self-censoring to taboo words, in our video below.
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Japan is considering forbidding the use of all vehicles, but as a test they are starting with just one. It's a ミニバン.
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Nice argument, but I've already depicted you as a horse and a deer.
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Friendly reminder that Japanese has a counter specifically for pairs of chopsticks (膳、ぜん）, so if you just want one chopstick you can theoretically say お箸を0.5膳ください and no one can stop you.
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Sometimes it feels like the entire Japanese economy would fall apart without Irasutoya. The spiked operating costs in image licensing alone would tank the stock market.
Researchers at Kyushu University have turned an old elementary school into a bug farm. They say that rhinoceros beetles can be ground up into a powder that is rich in protein and vitamin D, which can then be used as feed on chicken farms.
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Do you like learning about the Japanese writing system? Wow, me too! If you are looking to unpack the crazy history behind it, there are two key authors you should know: 今野真二（こんのしんじ）and 笹原宏之（ささはらひろゆき）.
Here's a brief introduction to their books:
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5) Ano sa, daremo tsukawanai kotoba de nihonjin no tayousei o keshite, nihon no bunka o hitotsu ni kukuru no o honma ni yamete kurenai?
I find this strange phrase impossible to translate, but hear it so often it must be full of meaning. A reminder there is always more to learn.
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Four quick guides to
#Japanese
grammar forms you absolutely shouldn't use (but might need to know).
Re-upload due to the embarrassing number of typos on the prior ones.
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I need to not read any Reddit comments about Japan or Japanese. Just saw an "expert" claiming は was the equivalent of "is/am/are" with like 500+ upvotes.
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As someone who has dedicated their life to better understanding the Japanese writing system, I am drawing upon my years of knowledge to objectively declare this as boring.
BREAKING: Japan’s kanji character of the year is 税 (“zei”), which means taxes, according to the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation’s annual poll of the Japanese public.
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Who translated 恐れ入ります as "I am afraid"? Who did this? I just want to talk, don't worry, just a little talk...
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The ancient and untranslatable Japanese art of viewing a hero as heroic, and finding villians to be villianous.
it's a cultural difference thing. In Japan, not being in the code, being on the fringes of society and rebelling is extremely frowned upon, it brings dishonor on the family, that's why Japanese readers hate villains
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There are two wolves inside you; the one that wins is the one you feed.
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This is a great localisation of キャンプっぽいご飯, I would have never come up with it.
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I got directly tagged to talk about this article, so I'm going to talk about it. It's nonsense, don't read it or give the author clicks to reward his orientalism please - but I think I should explain why it's nonsense so here we go: 🧵
@ScriptingJapan
I thought of you when a friend forwarded this article from his friend, and asked me if there was any truth to it. Feels like a stretch to me, but not my field.
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