rich and creamy

In failure to learn another language, blame history, unless you`re Belgian

I think I discovered the reason why it's harder for me to lean a new language (Japanese) than a camel to pass through the eye of a donkey. History and shock. Hear me out.

Imagine if you wil a nameless counrty. Okay, it's France. Say France had a shitty near neighbour who is always being an International Shithead. Let's imagine that country is Royomooni (that would be Britain if I could spell in French). Anyway as an International Shithead Royomooni is always meddling in Le France, so much so that for a long time it rules the day. That day goes on for around eight hundred years, but all the time Le France is beligerent and ungrateful. Pooh. One of the grande problems between the two, aside from culture, is language. La France speaks "blah, blah, blah," which sounds rather lovely, but is totally incomprehensible to the Chaps across the water. Anyway things stew on, as they do, relations getting worse. And worse. A watershed moment comes when the arse falls out from under La France and it loses half its population. Of course Roymooni smirks and feigns assitance, but on the whole is dandy about this.  

Then the darndest thing happens, La France switches from speaking le French to speaking the langauge of their neighbourly oppressors. In a generation or so it's like le French never existed. Now all you hear in the shops and streets is "hello" and "really, oh, rather". That other langauge, why they don`t even remember what it was called. It`s gone.

Now the notion of France without French is like Paris without the dog poo, but this is more or less what happened in Ireland. I can't think of any other countries that went switching national langauge so quickly with such a devestating effect on their mother tongue.  Worst of all is when that new language is English you are almost certain never to learn another language again. Just ask yourself what American, Scot, Australian, Kiwi or English person do you know that speaks a second langauge. If they do then they're probably Belgian. Because I am not Belgian I failed my Kanji and grammar test.

Some Wire re-up

Will and I have pretty much stopped hyperlinking because we got a bit bored of that game and besides we're cooler than that.  Having just written that, I am goina' go right ahead and link to another blog, because it's Wire related and pretty nerdy/funny. Jenn sent me a link to a post about how to bring The Wire to your office. All suggestions by Oliver Willis.

You can start by simply referring to all your supervisors as the "bosses", sneer when you do this. You also need to excel in bad grammar while showing pride in your work: "I'se a real web developer." When you're not praising your job, run it down by saying things like: "I wish I worked for a real accounts department."

Keep a supply of sweets and such in your office and refer to it as the stash. When a boss approaches let others know by calling out "Five-O, Five-O" and tell everyone you got your shit-hot computer speakers from "The Greek". Finally drink on the job, sleep with everyone, drink helps here, take credit for other's work, if confronted about this, just say "indeed" and walk on. When in doubt kill someone, that seems to work. And as your default phrase always say "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet."

On a related and unrelated matter, I am sure to fail my Japanese grammar test. I was hoping to find a small enough Japanese person to put under my desk to feed me the answers, instead I have to rely on my dumb ass brain. And finally if you haven't seen David Simon's Generation Kill, get on the burner to The Greek and get it yesterday. Again the writing is the best about and you can (will) watch it in a day, unlike having to take a month off for The Wire.

When politicians stop wearing ties, shit happens

This here is an Irish TD, or member of parliament. Unlike Westminister we have the single most boring parliament in the planet, so much so that all that occupies the place is air. However, when Deupty Somefellow from the Green Party, a minority government party, showed up after watching a few episodes of season four of The Wire, parlaiment all of a sudden got fierce unparliamentary. Idiot and legbab.

Journalism becomes Blogging

In between flunking my dictation tests in Japanese - today I scored point five - and recording the first Rodcast - see below -  I noticed a sandwich-filler news story on the BBC website which got me thinking about journalism in the digital era. The story was about a competition held in Australia to find a name for the coming decade. "The One-ders" was declared the winner although it's about as likely to catch on as  much as the "noughties" did. Anyway, the merits of the name are of less interest than how the short news piece was developed.

With the news elements dispensed - the why, what, where, etc. - all that was left was to do add a comment that was mildly provocative or juxtaposed to the story. The comment - it was disproving of the winning name - was lifted from the official website and it was attributed, but identities on the internet are about as sound as financial plans in Dubai.

The BBC is by no means unique in grabbing comments from forums, blogs, YouTube et al. Adding comments to stories is a by-product of blogging and testament to its influence on journalism. What it means is that some nameless journalist back in London can pad out a story with a comment and get the story on line in a matter of minutes, which is the bottom line in digital journalism. In my last job I did same; it came from the top down to do so.

If I understand it in the minds of editors the idea is to democratise journalism, if you will, to give everyone a chance to have their say about a story, in a story. But surely it runs against the principle of meticulously checking attribution? Added to this is the merit of these comments - what do they actually add to the story? Rarely anything. Above all though it shows journalists and editors willingness to participate in a form of journalism that is rooted in the internet, with journalists tied to their chairs tapping away at the Ctrl C and Ctrl V buttons on their keyboards to pad out stories.

On Learning a New Language, or Failing To

I am three weeks into a full time course of learning Japanese in Osaka. Currently - and probably for eternity - I am in Class J1. The 'J' is for Japanese and the '1', well, that's where they put people whose idea of speaking Japanese doesn't extend beyond bowing at everything. Anyway, I think Japanese is about the hardest thing I have ever put into my mouth, and I have put some pretty hard things in there. Groan.

There's nine people in total in my class, most are Asian, there's one other European and a Moroccan who is also Japanese - depends on which day you ask her. A few of my classmates speak English, which, as anyone who has tried to learn a language other than English will attest to, both good and bad. Conversations in Japanese with my classmates normally revolve around one word sentences where I say something that translates to "vegetables - like," "ramen -like" "hat - kawaii (cute)". It's pretty deep stuff.

As far as I know two of us are learning the language because of love. Well not that I love the language, yet. One of the Chinese girls has a Japanese husband, and unless he speaks Chinese, I can only imagine that they have conversations like "Peas - like," "Pigs ear - like." "Nuclear weapons..." hmm, maybe they don't talk about this.

I am hemmed in by Mongolia and Taiwan, as you invariably call your classmates in your head. The Mongolian reminds me of those Japanese people who sleep on the trains and manage to wake up at just the right stop. He too sleeps right through the class, except when he's called on to answer a question, which he does, and normally very well. If he didn't sleep so much he wouldn't be in J1.

There are two people in the class that on any given day I want to put my foot through. One insists on speaking Chinese to everyone and everything. No matter how many times it is explained that Japanese is the lingua franca, all you hear back is "chow, chow, chow, chow." Meanwhile the busy body on the other side of the class answers everyone's question and is generally so annoying that I have to check myself from flinging the desk at her.

Back to Japanese. What I am most struggling with right now, besides the five billion kanji, as well as the two other alphabets, is the word order of everything. For instance to say "the cup is on the table" - which by the way I have told my poor girlfriend a million times - you have to say something like "table, followed by loads of post prepositions - or something grammatically like that -  cup and end it with a verb."

As for the kanji, the Chinese characters, I actually enjoy learning to write these. But not forgetting them. Before I left London Sabine got me a book called something like "Japanese, the infinite language." Right now it feels like its more infinite than infinite. Anyway, all I can say for now is "the cup is on the table."