Apr 24 2007
I thought Japan LIKED it when you spoke their tongue.
Edit: So I got a reply back from her regarding a note this morning and this is basically what came out of it: She tells me not to model after Suzumiya Haruhi (lol) and she said she thought I was a “Japanese disguising myself as an American” hence why she verbally attacked me and she apologized for making that mistake. She also told me that my Japanese is excellent because she thought I “must have been aware” of what I was doing by purposely expressing myself rudely rather than making a light joke about DA’s porno policy. She said that if when I talked to people from 2ch and they never thought badly of my Japanese, that perhaps it’s because they’re very informal there (yea I knew that lol) but most people outside there use more polite language unless you are close friends with somebody etc. And lastly she said she does not hate foreigners, but it was my vocabulary that set bells in her head. So yea I guess that cleared up, pool’s closed guys, go home shuffle along now 
I don’t know why I’ve been 
doing a lot of these rant & rave post lately…well they seem to get a lot of hits so it’s either people reading them out of morbid curiosity or I pick bizarre topics nobody ever seems to talk about. So anyway this is like Deviantart dorama but it’s relevant to the fact: don’t Japanese people love when random Americans/gaijin-santachi speak Japanese? Proper Japanese? Or do they prefer us to be like dumb yaoi fangirls/otaku who go “kawaii wai wai neko neko” and “POCKY DAISUKI!!!111″ So anyway as I was browsing deviantart I came upon this image. It’s obviously a picture of some random girl getting fucked in an ero doujinshi but it’s cropped…however if you look at the preview image on the top right corner, you can see the whole thing.
Not that I give a crap about people posting porn on DA; I know it’s not allowed, I don’t do it, those who do it may or may not get caught, I don’t go around ratting anybody on etc. So just as a joke I wrote to this person:
“エロー同人つくってんの？ｗ” which translated to “Are you making an ero-doujinshi? lol”
Ok I see nothing wrong with that comment. However, I get a response that says:
“作っていますが・・・ = Yes I am but…
あなたのその日本語はとても失礼な言い方です。 = Your Japanese is very rude.
わかっていてお使いですか？” = Are you speaking like that on purpose?
Wtf? How am I being rude? Because I’m laughing at you drawing porno and posting it on Deviantart where CLEARLY porno is NOT allowed? I’ve gone to interviews for 2 Japanese companies, and each time they heard me speak they were shocked/impressed at how GOOD and NATURAL my Japanese pronunciation was. When I’ve had chats on MSN with Japanese people, they were happy that I could even hold a freaking conversation with them because most of them didn’t know any english except “Yes” and “no”. This is the FIRST TIME someone ONLINE has told me it was rude. How the hell can you tell it’s rude from 1 freaking line?
Yet the funny thing is, the people who in English write “Oh how naughty” and “Is that hentai?” get “Yes thank you!” from her. What the hell’s the deal here? Would she have been happier if I had said “HOW KAWAII NEKO POCKY SHES GETTING FUCKED YAY! ^____^” instead? So in response I wrote:
じゃもし私英語で「Are you drawing a porno?」と書いた。。。それ同じじゃないですか？
私べつに警護わからない。。だから使ってない。
私の日本語使い方は「とっても失礼」ネットで言う人はあなた初めてだよ。 （ｗ「です」ってよかったかな？）
Which basically translates to “So if I wrote ‘are you drawing a porno?’ in 
English, isn’t that the same thing? I don’t really use polite Japanese because I don’t know it. Actually you’re the first person to tell me my Japanese is “rude” over the internet. (lol should I have used “desu” instead of “dayo”?) Well obviously she musta been pwned by the comment cause all she did was “hide” all the comments rather than respond further.
Like you freaking insatiable buttholes. First you complain that we gaijin can’t speak Japanese and all we know are neko and kawaii, then when we speak Japanese, you get all bitchy that it’s rude. I think a friend of mine once told me in Japan they don’t believe you can speak Japanese even if you speak Japanese to them. They’ll start trying to speak broken English to you. The exception to this rule is at the Japanese staffing agency in NY that I went to, my agent had the most horrible English that she would just be like “Can I speak in Japanese?” I’d be like “please by all means” so that we could actually get a conversation going. Oh and as an omake, she wouldn’t take no for an answer….literally, unless I said “ENRYOUSHITEOKIMASU” in Japanese.
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34 Responses to “I thought Japan LIKED it when you spoke their tongue.”
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Interesting…
I’m learning Japanese…
And it hurts my head..
haha good luck Noble….try to learn from a book or you’ll speak “rudely” like me
I’ve only ever learned the polite way of speaking Japanese. Is there really a rude way? x___o
@Lenners
Well, they never teach you the bad stuff in school! You gotta learn that from anime. Or from begging your teacher.
Hinano, this is kinda off-topic, but how did you get so fluent in Japanese? I’d like some pointers…
Getting back on topic, the artist might have been threatened by the fact that you are a native English speaker (right?) who also speaks Japanese. The fact that you did not post an English comment like the other commenters may have made her feel inferior, or perhaps “invaded” - you know how some people are, they think every foreigner who can speak their language is corrupting their culture.
A couple of hypotheses that came off the top of my head -
1. She really did expect you to be super-formal. A lot of semi-anonymous internet correspondence I’ve seen in Japanese between strangers that isn’t on 2ch/2chan really does go like this, especially on art sites.
2. She picked up on the fact that you might be gaijin-san (dash after ero, not using kanji for tsuku) and was honestly curious to know if you always talked like that to everyone.
anyway, from what I’ve seen of Japanese people, the only way they’ll ever accept you is if they hear you speaking unaccented Japanese BEFORE actually seeing you, because just seeing a non-japanese stranger’s face = GAIJIN ALERT OH NO no matter how good your Japanese is. it’s bullshit, yeah, but that’s how it is a lot of the time.
Perhaps he/she doesn’t like the fact that you’re posing as his friend by not using keigo?
Oh wow, this kind of reminds me of the experience I heard that the guy who runs that fansubbers wiki site (AndrewLB I think) had when he was using Japanese on 2ch.
Your problem is that you didn’t use enough ASCII wai wai faces, which is considered rude.
haha your first comment was kinda informal, no?
it was a first time basis, so perhaps you were suppose to be a lot more FORMAL lol i dont know
i just started learning japanese last september
so i can only read hiragana, katakana, some kanji, and humble/honorific stuff…
but anyhow who cares what other thinks as long as you think you’re good enough, you are!!
bozz - from what I’ve experienced first-hand, if you’re on the wrong board and the 2chers figure out that you’re a foreigner speaking Japanese, they will not stop giving you shit until you leave the thread.
You should’ve just busted out the really super polite stuff just to get on her nerves. Like with “~de arimasu” at the end. Actually, I don’t know if that’s polite, or just dated…
They prolly just called you rude because they were angry at being called on it =P
I had somewhat of a similar experience, though I don’t think I was exactly frowned upon for what I said. At least…not directly ._.,
We had some exchange students from Okinawa at my high school a couple years back, and some friends of mine were hosting two girls. One of my friends decided he was going to use me as a translator because at that time I was starting to study basic conversational Japanese. We went to the mall with the girls one day, and they became fascinated with one of the $0.50 sticker machines. Well one sticker they got said “I love hot boys”. They had no clue what that meant, and of course everyone turned to me for translation. The only thing I could think of at the time to translate it to was “私は美少年が大好き”, which to this day, I still have no clue whether that’s the correct way to put it or not. I don’t even know if I wrote that right, actually. But anyways, they giggled strangely for a bit and said “Ah!” like they’d come to the realization, but they didn’t want anymore stickers after that. xD I felt awkward after that, and decided to keep my mouth shut the rest of the day. Especially when one of my stupid friends begged me to translate “bling bling” for her while in a jewelry store. I declined. Idiots. -_-
learning japanese really takes time >.
Maybe it was the “lol” equivalent you added at the end. She probably takes her work seriously and she misunderstood your comment to be a laugh at her work, which she would considering insulting. That or she’s a gaijin-wannabe. lol
No experiences like yours. And I think most Japanese appreciate the fact that someone would speak Japanese. When I was in Japan for about a week, getting around without knowing a lick of Japanese just sucked for both me and the non-English speaking people I was talking to. Ugh.
On 2channel, the mildest it gets is “Nihongo OK” which I guess means like “speak English.” But I’ve found that my horrible Japanese is sometimes accepted when I happen to express myself almost normally and they can understand what I’m trying to say. But I’m not going to go back to an “anti-” thread and try to defend a show, lol. Now that was a mistake.
Your Japanese seems a lot better than mine, but my first thought was not that she was trying to be rude back, but that she was honestly asking, and then got freaked out by your strong reply and just fled. Is it possible that it was the content of your question that was the problem, rather than the language per se and she just went into anti-gaijin defense mode?
Lol, actually, I am sometimes mildly annoyed by random people who post comments on my site with poor English that makes them sound rude. Even if I know it’s due to their intellectual or linguistic limitations.
So I can understand your Japanese stranger… after all, PORN is serious business in Japan unlike in America. Don’t you know that we have to bow and rub porn videos 3 times before opening it as a sign of respect in Japan?
But rants are always interesting compared to bland old episode summaries.
> I think a friend of mine once told me in Japan they don’t believe you can speak Japanese even if you speak Japanese to them. They’ll start trying to speak broken English to you.
I guess everyone’s experience is different, but when my wife and I were in Japan last, we had random Japanese people start talking to us in Japanese, despite the fact we’re both about as white as you can get. It’s like they assumed (as it turns out, very incorrectly) that since we were in Japan admiring the momiji we obviously had to be fluent. It was a good chance to practice our (very) broken Japanese, but it was surprising to me because I’d expected people to think “gaijin = typical American who only speaks one language worth a damn = I should practice what I learned at Nova last week” or “gaijin = I better not talk to them at all since I hate speaking English” but that wasn’t the case at all.
That sucks you had a bad experience on DA, but that’s the internet for you–it’s a pretty impersonal form of communication, which tends to bring out the worst in people sometimes. In a training class a while back, I remember They told us 55% of communication is nonverbal, and on the internet all you have as a substitute for that is smileys and an lol, which doesn’t quite cut it. Without tone, facial expressions, body language, and so on it’s really hard to communicate period–I’ve seen people send emails the sender thought was innocuous, but one thing gets misinterpreted into another and five Reply to All’s later it’s a flame war. Although it does sound like the person you ran into at DA is just an ass, or you caught her on a really bad day.
I can say the Japanese people we met on vacation were very nice–I remember an old man in Takao, west of Kyoto, who was sightseeing with his wife, and ended up talking to us for 5-10 minutes (I probably caught 5% of what he was saying though) before giving us some mikan. There was the woman at the am/pm near our hotel who always smiled when we walked in and would visibly light up when we used our admittedly sorry Japanese with her. Then there were all the schoolkids who asked for our picture/autograph in Nara (for English class, to prove they talked to a gaikokujin). I’ve heard from people who worked on a project in Paris that if your French isn’t perfect they really look down on you, but in Japan I didn’t experience anything like that.
Actually, you were quite rude. As kransom said, Japanese accepted on 2chan (some of the lowest of low of the Japanese side of the ‘net) is not accepted everywhere on the Internet - fanartists/cosplayers/etc. are usually quite polite with each other. And while they don’t expect you to be uber-polite (especially if you’re a gaijin), they do expect courtesy. There’s a stylistic difference.
What you PM-ed her wasn’t “Are you drawing porno?” You said “Hey, so you’re drawing porn? lol” It’s quite rude and derogative. And she most probably didn’t get pwned by your response, she just thought she wouldn’t bother with you anymore.
(By the way, this has nothing to do with being fujoshi or not. *shrug* Most fujoshi I know are really cool.)
well~ I took a look at the site. is she dumb or what? can’t she just post the pic instead of the screenshot? anyway, she’s being lame by responding so much, it looks like she’s flooding her own comments.
That’s really funny. Most people get offended by my polite tone (in English mind, I can’t speak Japanese)… Especially by people who were uncomfortable with my strictly professional tone.
Maybe that was the case this time as well? I mean if the companies you had interviews at were satisfied, I suppose your Japanese is not that much of a slang, right?
I was recently attacked by some geisha from Tokyo in Washington D.C. when I went up there for a Japanese competition… They were all surprised I could speak Japanese so we kept talking for a long time and she (the mamasan, I presumed) seemed really happy that she could talk to me cause not one of them even tried speaking in english. XD Then I was assulted by an NHK camera guy for an interview and the reporter girl kept switching between Japanese and English which I thought was strange. That was a first for me because most Japanese people don’t know what to do when I start talking to them in Japanese.
I also talked to a band when I was up there and only one member could somewhat speak english, another guy (who was cute) would only say “moment please”, and the lead couldn’t speak a bit of English. On stage she kept saying how even though we all don’t know english or japanese let’s get along! Which was funny cause the people who don’t speak Japanese (the majority) wouldn’t understand that. But when I started talking to them when I wen t to buy a CD for them they were like o__o;. Is it that strange for a non Japanese person to be able to speak Japanese? They were at a loss of words and when I asked her where they came from she just replied slowly, “Nihon no toukyou kara….”
I plan on living in Japan some day though, so I’m sure I’ll get plenty used to these reactions. I’ve been there before and I either remember being overly praised, or they’d just keep trying to use english with me. I can understand that though, since lots of Japanese want to use english they know to practice (especially if you’re meeting someone over here) but what about us gaijin who want to practice our Japanese? : \
I have so many experiences with this I could probably go on all day XD
Oh, sorry for another post, but you so should have gone full out keigo on her ass. 「申し訳ございませんですがこちらのすばらしい絵はもしかしてエロ同人に作られていませんでしょうか?」ですとおっしゃった方が良かったではございませんか？
Except I would have gone full out 大阪弁 on her. Ahahaha. I might have to keep myself from actually doing that later.
いくつか気になった点があったので、指摘させてください。
1.発端となった問題は、あなたとその人との個人的な衝突に見えるので、私からはなんとも言えません。個人的な問題ではないと思うなら、日本語のやりとりは不要であり、管理者に通報すべきでした。私としては、この一件をもって日本人全てを分かったつもりになってほしくはありませんが。
2.>when we speak Japanese, you get all bitchy that it’s rude.
これは「わかっていてお使いですか？」が全てを物語っていますね。初対面の方がとても失礼な発言をしても、事情を知らないだけなのか実際に悪意を持っているのか判別できないことはよくあります。あなたの日本語が日本人のものと遜色なくなり、「日本語がお上手ですね」と言われなくなった暁には、このような不愉快な思いは必ずなくなるはずです。
3.純粋にあなたの日本語についてですが、二つ目の文章はなんというかやや独特で、英訳版を読まないと意味が分かりませんでした。そうは言っても、実感しにくいでしょうから、あなたの文を清書してみました、何かの役に立てば幸いです。
>代わりにもし英語で「Are you drawing a porno?」と書かれていたなら、それでも同じく失礼だと思ったか？
>敬語は難しくて使ってないが、その点は勘弁してくれ。
>私の日本語を「とても失礼」なんて言ったのはネットじゃあなたが初めてだよ。（「初めてで御座います」の方がお気に召したかな？ｗ）
私からの個人的な助言を言わせてもらうと、「ですます」抜きが失礼なのではなく、傲慢な言動と不真面目な態度が人を不快にさせるのだと思っています。敬語が嫌いなら使わなくても結構だと思いますが、代わりに「大人」な日本語を心がけてほしいところです。
4.2chについて言及している人がいたのでついでに。
あそこでは日本語に不自由な人が見つかると、真っ先に韓国人ではないかと疑われます。それほど日本人と韓国人は仲が良いので、顔の見えない場での２ちゃんねらの態度は参考にならないかもしれません。
日本人も韓国人も中国人も英語話者も全員仲良くなれると言いのですが…
HARUHI IS RUDE. LOL.
That’s really the best classical retort ever. I swear, this has to be a new meme.
異文化交流は、時にこじれる場合がありますね。
今回ヒナノは特に悪くないよ。相手の思慮が足りなかった。
エロー同人つくってんの？ｗ
たぶんコレが悪かった→ ｗ
good 〇同人つくってんの？（＾ ＾）
very good ◎同人誌作っているのですか？
大阪弁 △同人誌作ってるん？
‘ｗ‘は、侮蔑的な笑いの意味に使われる場合があるので
友達意外ではあまり使わない方が良いかも。
同人は基本的にエロなので‘エロ‘言わなくても良い。
まっ、あんまり気にしないで。
すぐ‘go to hell‘言うヒナノ好きアルね。
The Japanese have double standards.
‘Nuff said.
Listen; there are assholes in every culture as well as various nuances to every culture. My question is: Why give a fuck, or even care remotely what someone else believes you said if they are themselves guilty of the same thing?—especially when their reply to your response reeks of “assholeness.” You always have cross-contamination of some kind when you’re able to speak, write, and understand different languages, no matter how careful or aware you think you are; and even if you’ve worked out all the nuanced gray areas you still have to identify your ego/self with one side, otherwise it’ll drive you crazy. But once you do that, you’re right back where you started from.
I’m more concerned as to why Hinano cares? I’m fluent in Spanish, yet time and time again implied meanings stemming from English, or vice-versa, pervade my writing, speech, and understanding. The same goes for my various foreign friends–India, Mexico, Spain, Britain, South Korea, and Japan–who are able to speak different languages. I’ve fucked up, they’ve fucked up, we just laugh at each other because we’re not that picky; we don’t like being assholes, playing the defensive communication martyr; we’re just happy that we can communicate with others outside our comfortable spheres. But even then, inside our spheres, we make various implication errors; it’s only natural to expect compounded inaccurate implied meanings outside of it.
Chances are Hinano just met with one of the perennial few individuals who think themselves special, you know, those that believe they don’t take shits; these individuals who, instead of looking for the positive or rather humorous aspects in communication between people, are on the defensive because of their own deluded high mindedness or pickiness.
Word of advice: Don’t walk on eggshells around people who you feel are assholes already. And you know you may be dealing with one if you have to try to explain nuanced genteelism to them. Let there little, brittle egos break themselves, or, if they keep pushing your buttons, stomp on them; maybe that’ll wake them up to the realties of globalization.
I think there’s something innately wrong with wanting to be too accepted by someone else, or some other culture; because if they don’t want you or reject you in some way, and some cultures want to preserve homogeneity, you hurt your own self identity. You can be realistic about the way people communicate with each other without it being considered rude.
Whoa well I’m glad this got feedback from….all sorts of countries! XD
Asuka> You know how I’m an ex-fansubber…fansubbing goes a long way in your studies…(and I
mean when you like do hard core translation, rather than just timing or encoding)
Kabitzin> You’re absolutely right nyoro~n :3
kransom> I don’t actually go to 2ch anymore. I was on like 1 thread about them translating
words into English and when I tried to help they thought I was a stupid Japanese person
giving them bad advice (LOL! I don’t know if that’s insulting or complementing.)
Hung> If I said dearimasu I think she woulda laughed and not gotten so angry XD
Katrak> LOL Bling bling! XD
Fubared> Yea turns out it’s that “w” I guess their version of “lol” isn’t the same as ours.
hashi> Yea I don’t mess with 2ch
tj> Aww what if they’re singaporeans with poor english?? XD LOL porn is serious business..and
if english cons let me I might make it my business too…
suguru> haha well good to hear a flipside of the coin from you
Vera> haha the irony!
Tess> Good luck on your plans. I’ve never been to Japan but I never plan to live/work there.
Tourism is enough for me!
Tsubaki> I always seem to be the start of dramas and memes or whatever else seems to pop out of anime nano lately XD
heaven> I guess since Japanese stuff in general is such a big part of my daily life that when I get things like these it’s like “whoaa what did I do” but since it’s been resolved now I’m back to being mellow.
nico> すみません。。漢字読めるつらいから全部わからなかったけど。。その人と話あっただからもう大丈夫です。アメリカ人演じる日本人とまちがえたみたい。そして「あなたの日本語はそれほど凄い」とか言いまして。。あはは。。。だからもう私気にしない。。でも次の時失礼な言い方を気をつけます。:)
ひでぽん＞ やっぱり日本語の”ｗ”は英語の”ＬＯＬ”と違うね。ＧＯ ＴＯ ＨＥＬＬバンザイ！！！:lol:
♪⌒ヽ(*ﾟOﾟ)ﾉ めでたしめでたし
I like how you respond to everyone’s comments…
XD
Yah, I’m learning from a book
“Japanese for idiots”
Wow, that’s so stupid.
Darn it, I wish I knew japanese half as well as you. I’m still learning. >_>
やっぱああいうとこじゃ敬語使わんであかんやで。とりあえず”w”はやめてな。ワイそれ2chにしかつこうたことないから。
Whatever it is, maybe she thought it was a very formal place so a lol isn’t acceptable, even when expressed in English I think. That person is yet to understand the western side of the ‘net I suppose.