If you don’t vent, you explode. No one wants you to explode all over their face… probably.
Here’s another quick post. There’s a short 2 page article over at CS Monitor that you should read. This article shows a good insight as to how tatemae (建前) can create problems. I’ll let you read.
Finished? Good. Did you see what happened? No one said anything to him until they just couldn’t take it anymore. Of course, it was funny the first couple times, but it didn’t stay funny. Telling someone that they made a mistake shouldn’t cause any problems anyways. Why do you need to be scared to tell the truth when someone is going to the trouble of asking you if they’re right or not?
There’s only trouble if you refrain from correcting. Such a thing will only cause a snowball effect (which happened in the article) until you just can’t take it anymore. Talking and being more open stops big arguments, divorces, feuds, and stuff like what happened in the article from happening. I’m not saying that all of these situations only occur because of the lack of communication, but not talking can only cause problems, like making it hard to learn Japanese correctly.
Luckily, I’m learning a lot of my Japanese from GTO. I’ll sound like perverted, rogue teacher instead of a women.
Well, I came here to post that same link (thank you reddit), but it looks like I was too late. Chase, you can speak all the girly-man Japanese you want, just don’t become an otaku.
This article rang so true with me! My husband is Japanese and we live in Australia. Even though i studied Japanese formally at university for 3 years, i’m still trying to talk more like a native, than a textbook!
Even though we live together, and i practice speaking Japanese all the time, he never corrects me. Until…we go out and i make a boo-boo, only then he says to me “you shouldn’t say that, it’s too rude” then i usually sigh and give him the silent treatment. Of course it wouldn’t have hurt him to *tell* me that i was wrong or tell me the right way of saying it. It was cute at home…but when we go out, that’s another ball game altogether.
UGH! Bloody Japanese and their tatemae!
haha.. GTO… be careful. A lot of show are not really using standard Tokyo-ben. So if you keep changing your speech pattern between tokyo-ben and like osaka-ben, you will sound like a fool .___.
So, how are you dealing with the Slim Shady Aftermath and bankruptcy of NOVA? I hate to say it, but, well you know… Does this mean our fallen soldier will be returning a little bit sooner?