10-12-2003 12:58									#61
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Well, while we're threadjacking, I have a question for someone lower on the food chain that Drake should be able to answer. I know that somehow, the Japanese have the same sound for "r" and "l" because I see r's and l's used interchangeably in different translations of the same stuff. Or something like that. How does it sound in Japanese? Well, as best you can express over text, I suppose. "r" and "l" don't strike me as being particularly similar sounds, although it kinda works when soft rather than hard I guess.

	10-12-2003 13:08									#62
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quote: Well, while we're threadjacking, I have a question for someone lower on the food chain that Drake should be able to answer. I know that somehow, the Japanese have the same sound for "r" and "l" because I see r's and l's used interchangeably in different translations of the same stuff. Or something like that. How does it sound in Japanese? Well, as best you can express over text, I suppose. "r" and "l" don't strike me as being particularly similar sounds, although it kinda works when soft rather than hard I guess.

From my experience, SnowFire, the Japanese use a sound that is somewhere between an "l" and an "r". Sometimes it sounds like an "l" to me, sometimes it sounds like an "r" and sometimes it even sounds a little like a "d". It must be some sound that I can't hear properly, so my brain links it to the closest sound I can think of.

Japanese honestly can't tell the difference between "r" and "l", so words like "light" and "right, "liver" and "river" and even "laughed" and "raft" sound identical to them if they have no experience with other languages. Makes for some rather humorous exchanges with my students.

	10-12-2003 13:20									#63
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten This is a bit off-topic, but MtG might have the answer to this question... OK, Japanese only has one syllable ending in a consonant (n), right? So what's the deal with romanized Japanese words that have syllables ending in "m"? I used to think it was just a mistake on the part of Westerners, like calling the movie "Yojimbo" instead of "Yojinbo", but it happens over here as well and you'd figure the Japanese would fix the mistake if there was one. Why do I go to Namba-eki in Osaka, not Nanba? Why is there a Nipponbashi in Osaka, but a Nippombashi in Tokyo? Was there an "m" sound that dropped out of the language like "ye"? Or is it just some remnant of bad romanization during the Occupation that hasn't ever been fixed?

It's a combination of things - there has been a strong merger of dialects to a sort of "educated Tokyo" standard since WW2, but romanization of traditional names tends to reflect historical local dialect. The other issue is the fact that the pronounciation of Japanese phonemes is in many cases not exactly the same as english approximations. One example is the "o" that signifies direct objects - it used to be phonetically a soft "wo" sound, but is essentially a pure "o" now.

The "m" and "n" sound difference is more analogous to the "su" sound, than the "ye" phoneme. "su" is more like a drawn out sss in verb suffixes - imasu, tabemasu, etc., compared to sugoi, etc.

It's a less extreme form of the ha-ba-pa type of aspirated transformation, and very similar to the ha-hi-fu-he-ho, except that it's governed both by dialect and the combination of phonemes.

An "n" sound before certain syllables, particularly the ha, ba and pa series of syllables, is phonetically almost halfway between an English "m" and "n" and is quite a bit different from the intermediate "n" in words like kansai, kinki, shinkansen, etc. That "n" as a separate syllable is definitely distinct from the harder (essentially identical to English) "n" sound in the na ni nu ne no syllables.

It's not bad romanization, it's an attempt to more accurately render the actual pronunciation, but in many cases, the softening of dialect differences has all but eliminated those differences in modern pronunciation.

	10-12-2003 14:12									#64
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Thanks.

	10-12-2003 16:02									#65
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten Bond completed his mission, didn't he?

Yea, he banged the hell out of that Japanese agent.

	10-12-2003 16:15									#66
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quote: Originally posted by Ned This may be Tom Cruise's best performance.

I'm fainting with damn praise over here.

	11-12-2003 00:40									#67
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MtG, do you google everything you post?

	11-12-2003 00:42									#68
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quote: I'm fainting with damn praise over here.

Well Cruise was pretty damned good on "Born on the Fourth of July"

	11-12-2003 06:59									#69
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quote: Originally posted by Sikander I'm fainting with damn praise over here.

The question is whether Tom has extended himself into the oscar realm. His performance was very good, but it still may not be among the top five. Just off the top of my head, I think Sean Penn in Mystic River and Kevin Costner in Open Range had better performances.

	11-12-2003 12:57									#70
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and Ken Wantanabe dammit!! He did a great job in that movie.

	12-12-2003 06:39									#71
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Saw this movie last night with my son and have to tell you was extremely pleased!

I thought Cruise delivered a fine job

I myself having studied martial arts found it a wee bit hard to conceive Cruise's character not only picking up but elevating himself to a point worthy of competing with a master Samaruai

But that only paled in comparison to the mere "implication" that Cruise and the widowed wife of the samaurai he took the life of maybe could have a potential life together..

The pure Japanese code of Honor would certainly have prevented such an idea from coming to fruition


BUT..still I enjoyed the movie here...

Loved how Cruise took all the Japanese henchmen...enroute to rescue the Samurai chief under house arrest!

Peace

Grandpa Troll

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	12-12-2003 07:21									#72
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quote: Originally posted by Zero MtG, do you google everything you post?

No. I lived in Japan, studied it's history and still speak and read the language passably well.

I still have about a hundred books in Japanese on my office shelf behind me.

	12-12-2003 08:42									#73
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Did you ever take any of the Japanese language proficiency tests, MtG? If so, what level did you end up at?

Knowing you, you were probably at i-kyu or something...

	12-12-2003 11:25									#74
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Damn -- I thought I was going to pass this movie over, but now I GOTTA GO SEE IT.

Along with LOTR III when it comes out.

	12-12-2003 11:34									#75
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten Did you ever take any of the Japanese language proficiency tests, MtG? If so, what level did you end up at? Knowing you, you were probably at i-kyu or something...

The only proficiency test I took was to go to NE Honshu in January (Sendai and Matsushima) where the only thing in English was the romanization of Sendai in the JNR station signs. Snow was knee deep on the ground, so it was "communicate or die."

At the time I was there, Japanese speaking gaijin were uncommon in Tokyo and virtually nonexistent in most areas outside the major commercial cities, so I didn't even know there was any form of organized proficiency tests for the language itself.

	12-12-2003 18:23									#76
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quote: The only proficiency test I took was to go to NE Honshu in January (Sendai and Matsushima) where the only thing in English was the romanization of Sendai in the JNR station signs. Snow was knee deep on the ground, so it was "communicate or die."

I think I'll be going to Tohoku next summer. The weather should be nice then, which is good, since my Japanese is still utter crap. If it came down to "communicate or die", my body would be on its way back to Nebraska within days...

quote: so I didn't even know there was any form of organized proficiency tests for the language itself.

It's a pretty big deal now. I'd like to pass the ni-kyu test by the time I leave, but that's a pretty steep goal. San-kyu should be pretty easy though.

	14-12-2003 18:41									#77
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That was a pretty good movie. I don't see Cruise winning an Oscar for his role, but he played the part well and the movie was quite good. A-

The Japanese love interest was a total fox, BTW.

	15-12-2003 04:31									#78
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten That was a pretty good movie. I don't see Cruise winning an Oscar for his role, but he played the part well and the movie was quite good. A- The Japanese love interest was a total fox, BTW.

	15-12-2003 07:44									#79
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The Last Samurai by the MPAA
Secularity: 8
Technophilia: 6
Tilt: 6
Arithmetic Mean: 6.7
Geometric Mean: 6.6
Median: 6
Mode: 6
Standard Deviation: You gotta be out of your mind

My Friend's Review: This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. [Dialogue snipped]. That's because you don't understand emotions. [Dialogue snipped]. This movie is about doing what you want and being happy with yourself and to hell with the world (loose paraphrase).

Okay, that's his opinion. Here's mine:

This movie is a load of bullshit hooey supported by swells of music that's designed to win Oscars, that goes on too long, and that has an absolutely terrible and insulting ending.

Tom Cruise, a depressed yank trying to drown his depression with a depressant, goes to Japan and improves his lightsabre skills.

The good guys in this movie are a bunch of macho jackasses from a highly-stratified society devoted to stultifying perfecting anything they do for perfection's sake.

The bad guys are stuffy corporate half-asses whose turn-ons include telegraph poles, railroads, and gunpowder. Not champions of social mobility and individual empowerment either, but at least they don't have the mechanistic motions their ancestors went through stuck up their asses.

Tom Cruise does his best to look like Viggo Mortensen. Or vice versa. I don't really care.

The worst thing about this movie is that Mr. Yankie survives the charge of the light samurai brigade against machine guns due to, uhm, magic and alien space bats. He then actually returns to his adoptive village with no survivor guilt or visible resentment from the locals. Bah.

Before the grand uberbattle, he compares the situation to the Battle of Thermopylae. He also mentions that all the idiot Spartans died at that battle.

Well, in that case, *******, "come back with your shield or on it". Don't ****ing survive a machine-gunning and don't ****ing yield. The whole point of the movie was the glorification of dumbassity. If the protagonist behaves like a non-dumbass, it ruins the whole point.

Anyways, if you want to see a realistic Hollywood movie about the life in 19th Century Japan, you aren't going to do any better than this.

rottenTomatoes.com: 68%

	15-12-2003 07:58									#80
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quote: Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat No. I lived in Japan, studied it's history and still speak and read the language passably well. I still have about a hundred books in Japanese on my office shelf behind me.

‰R‚‚«...

	15-12-2003 08:05									#81
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I liked this movie. I imagined every bad thing it could have happened for this movie, and it did. But I liked it anyway.