Beginner Bass Lesson #1 (Your Very First Lesson)

Japanese to English can be as high as 60% longer :slight_smile:

(spoken Japanese, at least in Tokyo, omits most words that can be inferred from context. Literally translating English to Japanese sounds really stiff and verbose.)

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Especially with Kanji I guess?

With European languages it shouldn’t be too much of an issue though - the translator can figure something out to keep the word count down :wink:

Actually (although this may be something for another thread) I’ve always wondered what typewriters look like for Kanji. They must be pretty huge. Also who thinks of new kanji characters if a new word (like Internet or covid) comes up? Mind boggles eh?

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Ahh, kanji. Don’t get me started.

New words aren’t really a problem, usually those are either constructed conceptually from kanji or are katakana (Japan has four writing systems used simultaneously, Kanji is only one of them). Kanji are idiomatic word fragments, not whole words (unless they can be represented as a single idiom). So “novel coronavirus” is " 新型コロナウイルス" (kanji ‘shin gata’ - ‘new type’, katakana ‘ko ro na u i ru su’ - ‘corona virus’), or just " コロナ" (katakana ‘ko ro na’).

The problem with Kanji is you need to memorize 2100 of them to be literate. There’s something like 20000 total. Chinese is even worse.

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Aha - so there’s no need to think of a new character design for every new word? I guess that’s more a problem for China…

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Yeah - for example, “bicycle” is three kanji, “自転車” - ‘jitensha’; “self turning vehicle”.

I think Chinese does the same but I am not sure.

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The other part about the omitted words is a big thing too though. Context is king. If you meet a friend at lunchtime and want to ask them to lunch, a typical conversation in Japanese might be literally translated like this:

A: Stomach empty?
B: Sushi eat (want)?
A: Yes! Go?
B: Go!

You can say that with about that many words (only a few more) even (relatively) formally :slight_smile:

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Mandarin or Cantonese? There really is no language “Chinese”. It’s all very complicated

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excellent point (though simplified chinese is a single writing system, no? or is that only used for Mandarin?)

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Cantonese uses simplified. Mandarin the more traditional

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Ahh, got it. Japanese kanji are the traditional characters as well.

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@JoshFossgreen This was a great video! I wish I had seen it when I was starting out 18 months ago. Didn’t understand quite how to hold my bass:

I was very confused. I can see clearly now, but back then, I had no idea how to hold it.

…looks like I was trying to strangle the thing. I had my legs open wide with the bass on the right leg. with the bass close to my body. I just couldn’t understand…

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@Barney. Hello Barney, thank you for your support. As I might have written and as it probably never reached because I keep forgetting to @ my recipients, Josh speaking French with an English accent would be absolutely great. I remember Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy national success on French TV in the 50’s, exchanging phrases in French with a true New York twang. It actually opened my ears to the language. French is so mute. I don’t understand why foreigners like it so much! I’m trying to dub Josh’s voice on one of his lessons. I’ll send Josh a demo when it’s ready It’s just about as difficult to understand as Maj7 5th sharp :slight_smile:

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