What's your preferred language?

Pics are too big for forum, so links instead…

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You appear to have been captioned as Perl :)

I’m worried now! I use C# at work and I shudder to think how that will be interpreted around here … I am a 水瓶座 though!

私は日本語が下手です :(

My mind boggles. Perhaps if I understood Japanese some meaning would emerge. In the era when I was born there were things called flower fairies, which were the current expression of twee sentimentality. Perhaps Rick can tell us if that is what kawai means? The danger with such personalizations of programming languages (or of insurance companies or of toilet brushes or . . . ) is that it opens the gates for personalizations of a different kind, say with cartoon characters (Java as Marge Simpson), celebrated actresses (Erlang as Greta Garbo), and so on ad nauseam. What puzzles me in this instance is whether any rationale was used in the association of language with picture. I am fumbling in the dark here. Age thing – sorry!

Yes, kawai means cute, and often in a twee way, though not always. Understanding the Japanese language barely helps. Understanding the Japanese mind is a lifelong mission! ;)

Understanding the Japanese mind is a lifelong mission!

Have you read Alan Macfarlane’s JAPAN – Through the Looking Glass, ISBN 978-1-86197-952-0?

Have you read Alan Macfarlane’s JAPAN – Through the Looking Glass

I haven’t, no. From the reviews, I think it might irritate me! (Or is that almost as bad as judging a book by its cover?)

Perhaps if I understood Japanese some meaning would emerge.

Ditto.

“水瓶座” – I got as far as mizu (water) something something. I cheated and used Google. ;-)

The danger with such personalizations of programming languages

…err, you have heard of OS-tan, right?
http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/index.php?title=RISC_OS
Not how I would have drawn her (I figure something a little closer to Java), but nevermind.

Perhaps Rick can tell us if that is what kawai means?

As WPB said – kawaii means “cute”, sometimes extending to saccharine-poisoning levels of cuteness.

Be careful with pronunciation. kawaii – because a very similar word (kowaii) means “scary” (!) and if you mumble the first ‘a’ or give it that odd American “ah” sound¹, it can be very easily mistaken.

Understanding the Japanese mind is a lifelong mission!

Hehe… That’s why I have a book or two on Shinto here. Now some of the random stuff in animé makes more sense… Perhaps the greatest challenge is to discard the OR mindset and embrace the AND mindset.

¹ I’m currently rewatching “Bodacious Space Pirates”, only this time with an English dub. It is driving me crazy as the primary character – Marika Kato (surname like cat-oh; the ‘a’ in dad²) is said as “Mahrikah Kahto” (sounds more like cot-oh; the ‘a’ in father³). I noticed this pronunciation years ago with a dub of “Ghost In The Shell” (Batou); and… it just doesn’t sound right. If they’re going to have English-speaking peope retain the Japanese names (that in itself is a mindscrew at times), is it too much to ask that they be pronounced correctly?!?

² It is my understanding (from lots of animé and films and stuff) that the bog-standard Tokyo dialect is akin to this…

³ …though sometimes the Kansai (Osaka region) dialect can tend more towards this. Kansai speakers are usually dubbed by “Southern Belles”, which isn’t entirely accurate, mind you.

⁴ Oh! Brynhildr is up. Later…! ☺

Have you read Alan Macfarlane’s JAPAN – Through the Looking Glass, ISBN 978-1-86197-952-0?

A brilliant review, ends with: “It’s my humble opinion that a self-proclaimed ‘observer’ who fails to see even this, probably shouldn’t be encouraged to begin analysing the hundreds of millions of people and two thousand-odd years which give Japan its name.”

I’d pick up a copy if I lived in the UK. At only £2,10 used&new, it would at least be something to read at work when on break. Sadly, however… Look it up on Amazon.fr and gasp at the difference. I’ll add it to my wishlist and maybe one day there’ll be an offer that isn’t legalised robbery… Oh, wait, there’s a broché version (paperback) for €1,75+P&P. <clicky><clicky> Just ordered it…

To be honest, however, I’m not sure that a Westerner would be capable of writing about another culture without growing up there themselves (and by definition wouldn’t be a westerner). I’ve been in France 12 years now, and I can point out plenty of differences between France and the UK (and plenty of similarities too!), but I would not consider myself qualified to write a book on, or even attempt to describe, the French mindset and way of thinking.

To be honest, however, I’m not sure that a Westerner would be capable of writing about another culture without growing up there themselves (and by definition wouldn’t be a westerner). I’ve been in France 12 years now, and I can point out plenty of differences between France and the UK (and plenty of similarities too!), but I would not consider myself qualified to write a book on, or even attempt to describe, the French mindset and way of thinking.

Quite. And if you’ve ever lived in Japan – or even just been there for a while – you’ll understand why even growing up there, but looking different, would mean that you’d never completely “get it”. It’s certainly a very enigmatic place!

you have heard of OS-tan, right?

Alas no; I live a sheltered life. But I am grateful that you have revealed to me a new and mysterious corner of the cosmos.

My mother typed Alan Macfarlane’s thesis many years ago. May I recommend his book The Origins of English Individualism, ISBN 0-631-19310-3. He was born in Assam and spent a significant portion of his life living with remote communities in the Himalayas. Writing about other cultures is his business.

May I recommend his book The Origins of English Individualism,

There was a German exchange student in my workplace about 25-28 years ago. She had a book which contained a number of items on “englishness”. One compared nationalities definitions of game with some considering life to be a game but the English considering cricket to be a game.

One I recall had text defining English attitudes roughly:
“Every nation, race or creed has at some time in its history declared itself to be the supreme nation race or creed. The English have fought many long and glorious wars to suppress such outrageous ideas and have never once stated who is the supreme nation race AND creed.”

She pointed it out because she didn’t understand the meaning of the text, I fell off my chair laughing. She failed to understand the joke even after an explanation.

“水瓶座” – I got as far as mizu (water) something something. I cheated and used Google. ;-)

I will admit to puzzling over 星座せいざ for a while until I remembered that 星ほし is “star”… the 水 in 水瓶座みずがめざ then followed naturally :)

Edit: Updated with furigana, but untested in NetSurf.

मेरी पहली भाषा अंग्रेजी है, लेकिन मैं एक भारतीय महिला को शादी का तीस साल है, और भारत को लगातार दौरों के बाद हिंदी के साथ बहुत परिचित हूँ.

И потом, бабушка моя русская была …

Последние сообщения на этом сайте предположить, что мы в скором времени смогут вводить текст, как описано выше, на наших RISC OS-компьютерах. В каиф!

I can enter Russian or Hindi to my RiscPCs by typing them normally at the keyboard – but only using my own proprietory fonts and keyboard handlers. They display okay on the Raspberry Pi using the same fonts, but the keyboard handlers don’t work and it’s not really practical to enter Hindi text on the Pi – yet. I look forward to being able to type properly in those languages and generate standard text files containing them so they transfer properly to PCs and Macs (this is something that doesn’t work well on PCs or Macs…)

I also look forward to being able to write my own keyboard handler so that I can have dead key accents (or, better still, floating accents…) so I can type in a wide range of Latin alphabets without having to switch keyboards for different languages (something else that PCs and Macs aren’t good at…)

Indeed, I enter Russian on my RISC OS machines since years as well, using EFF fonts, or even UTF-8 fonts with my own keyboard driver. The latter however doesn’t allow me to enter such texts into NetSurf, or any other program for that matter, other than !Edit and !Dict. Hopefully, this will change in due time! (See the discussion about UTF-8 elsewhere on this site). Exciting!

Indeed – I started that UTF-8 thread… 8~) (well, one of them, that’s particularly active just now)

I did offer my Cyrillic, Greek and Hindi fonts for sale – but I was never as energetic at promoting them as EFF, and sold very few 8~( although I think mine are better, properly scaffolded and hinted and with keyboard handlers that allowed touch typing with the traditional keyboard layouts. All water under the bridge now, of course.