2005-12-11

It's OK, though, a lot of words begin with A

Motherlode of Japanese/English dictionaries and phrasebooks from the 1800s, including A through D of Hepburn's dictionary. Yeah, that Hepburn.

There's also Ernest Chamberlain's Handbook of Colloquial Japanese:

Aru hĭto ga naga-ya no mae wo tôrimasŭ toki, ishi ni tsumazukimashĭtareba, naga-ya no uchi no hĭto ga baka ni shĭte, "Aitata!" to koe wo kakemashĭta kara, tsumazuita hĭto wa, ima-imashii to omoimashĭta ga, waza to otonashĭku, "Iya! go men nasaimashĭ! Kemashĭta no wa, ishi ka to omoimashĭtara, anata no hana no saki deshĭta ka?" to iimashĭta.
A certain man, passing one day in front of a block of houses, tripped against a stone. Thereupon, some one inside the block of houses made fun of him, and cried out: "Oh! how I have hurt myself!" So he who had tripped constrained himself to be quiet (although he felt disgusted), and said: "Oh! pray excuse me, I thought that was it the tip of your nose?"

Sadly, Chamberlain totally ruins the punchline here; it should be something like "Oh! pray excuse me, I thought I tripped against a stone -- was it in fact the tip of your nose?"

The Okinawan book is disappointingly Standard. I wouldn't even bother.

Popularity factor: 2

IbaDaiRon:

I guess "Ouch" wasn't refined enough in those days? Then again, his translation has a certain sumpin-sumpin about it; maybe I'll try it out on one of my classes later today?

I'm wondering why he wrote "tôrimasŭ toki" but "tsumazuita hĭto" (not "tsumazukimashita hito").

I suppose this (over)use of -masu was common then, but now it always reminds me of the "Simplified Japanese" (簡略日本語 was it?) some people were proposing for use by foreigners a few years back. (I hope they've all gone to their just rewards by now...or are they still about?) That or some things I've read by Donald Keene.


Matt:

Yeah, you got me too. Perhaps -masu still retained some dying instincts from its days as (an) auxiliary verb(s) rather than an official Verb Ending, back then... or it could be that Chamberlain made a mistake.

Note also that keru is apparently still a vowel-stem verb! Oh, the excitement.

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