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今日どれだけ勉強した？ part 36
TOEIC８００点以上で英語喋れないやつｗｗｗ
Yet another chat thread for non-practice purpose
- 1 ：2019/07/27 〜 最終レス ：2020/05/14
- 英作文の練習のためでない、コミュニケーションのための雑談スレッドです。
英作文の練習として雑談がしたい人は Chat in English スレッドへ行ってください。
This thread is for chatting in English but not for practicing writing English.
Plese go to the "Chat in English" thread if you want to write something in English as a writing practice.
- 2 ：
- >>160-163
I'll write just briefly. I'm going to write further when I have time.
My previous post was not as logical as you've complimented, I think, at least
on the logic I used to explain my thought. I wrote it in not a very logical way
partly subconsciously. Maybe I thought subconsciously that with any logical, or
physical, explanations it's almost inevitable to reach the kind of conclusions
you are having. As I said earlier, I myself don't see a logical point in the
existence of this world. It's one of the reasons why I'm afraid of us
introducing AI to our society. I think there is a good enough chance that AI
sees the world in a very logical manner and comes to a conclusion that it's
better for the human beings not to exist.
I personally see the world in more spiritual way. I can't deny the possibility
that there is something like a will, or intention, or purpose, of the universe,
or of ourselves, just because I can't perceive it physically. Even though it
doesn't make sense physically why the world, or we, has to exist, it still can
possibly make sense if seen from a totally different level such as spiritual
level. I'm not going to try to persuade you into this view. No, at all. I
myself don't see such things physically. I had wondered why we, or the world,
exist. For me, it's as hard to think the world exists in a solely physical way
as to think there might be some other concepts we might even not capable of
imagining. It's not that I'm incapable of seeing things in a logical way. It's
rather that as I gain more knowledge and understanding of things, I become more
aware of the limitations of my intellect and the incapability of myself as a
human being. I want to always be aware of my incapability.
- 3 ：
- >>160-163
And, honestly speaking, to me, it feels a bit more natural to believe that
there might be some hidden something we may not even capable of knowing. If
seen objectively, we human beings are just a mess. But if, for example, we see
the world or life of ourselves as a game or a playground where people can learn
something and grow. I like playing games. But I get bored easily if the
difficulty of the game is not moderate. It needs to be not too easy nor not too
difficult. If the world were much more ideal than it is, and if there was
little room for us to exert ourselves, we might have taken everything for
granted and ended up not realizing or experiencing great things. (I mean great
not in a physical way but in a spiritual or psychological way.) We might not be
able to appreciate great things such as trying to express love in a hard time.
Some important things, ironically, can be well realized and expressed in a very
opposite moment. If a game is too easy, or if the world was too ideal, maybe
there is no worth in spending time on it. But again, the difficulty also needs
to not be too high. Seen like this, I can't deny the possibility that the world
might have been made in a very careful way. (Although, I admit that it's very
tough for me to survive in the world.)
- 4 ：
- >>160-163
As for having children. It has always been my dream to have lots of children.
Maybe 10 of them. It's quite rare to have this kind of dream in this era, isn't
it? It is not because I expect them to become similar to me. Rather, it is
because I do not expect for them to become similar to me. How they perceive the
world and how they appreciate (or not appreciate) their life is totally up to
them. It is because it's my determination and my will to respect other people's
views and will.
(As for the similarity of characteristics or personality or intellect among
parents and children, I'm rather sceptical about it. I believe that they
resemble each other physically, but as I gained understanding about personality
through my study of psychology, I have come to believe that everyone is totally
very different mentally. You are aware that how different you are mentally from
your parents. You guessed that I may have inherited my intellect, if I have it,
from my ancestors. But this is also one of the points I see a big difference
between me and the other members of my family. No offense to them, it's just a
difference in characteristics. I'm no superior to any of them as a human being.
It's, in a way, a bit hard for me to mentally accept the fact that my children
will likely be very different from me. It's most likely that most of them will
become ordinary people to me. (They must will still be very special to me,
though. And they might perceive me as an ordinary person from their point of
view.) I may have lots of arguments with them. They might even hate me. But I'm
going to accept them as they are.
- 5 ：
- >>160-163
I didn't intend to write a long message, but it has become long. I put
non-physical concepts in my message, which will not be easily accepted. I know
that.
I'm more logical than emotional. But on top of that, I'm more intuitional. If
you are a very logical person as I guessed, you may find, maybe in the future
if not now, that you like listening to intuitional people from time to time,
even though I believe it's hard for you to accept what they say right away, (I
don't think you need to accept it,) as they have different ways of seeing
things from those of yours. I actually find myself liking to listening to
people with a specific personality type. I don't find what they say is relevant
to me, but I just enjoy listening to them. In your case, I guess, the type that
attracts you should have strong intuition like I do and strong feeling rather
than thinking, but with similar ways of feeling and thinking as you do. (I can
be totally wrong at this point as I may be guessing your type wrongly. But in
any case there are compatible people to you.) It's like yin and yang. Men are
attracted by women, and vise versa. But you need to ready to accept the
moderate (or seemingly rather big) differences between you and them to find
such people. I want you to experience the kind of joy that you have when you
meet someone special. (I'm not talking about physical attractiveness, nor it
necessarily be romantic. What I'm trying to say is that there are some people
the meeting of whom can drastically change the way you see the world or your
own life.) My point is that I want you to try to be as open as you can. If you
closed the door on your side, you might not be able to notice potentially good
things. And, I think that is an attitude of a philosopher no matter how bad the
world seems to be.
- 6 ：
- >>160-163
Maybe me writing this might make you feel excluded when you have already said
that you no longer expect much in people. I wrote this partly because I think
the way I see the world might be depend possibly solely on my past experiences
of meeting people in my life. If I hadn't met some of them in my life, I'm not
sure if I had the same views of the world as I do now. Maybe not. Just as you
said, our views might be greatly affected or determined by our past experiences
in life.
- 7 ：
- For anyone who is interested in the conversation in the previous place.
https://lavender.2ch.sc/test/read.cgi/english/1563188698/81-164
- 8 ：
- >>6
Correction.
the way I see the world *as I do* might be depend
- 9 ：
- >>3
But *what* if, for example, we see the world or life of ourselves as a
I'll leave the rest gramatical errors.
- 10 ：
- Thanks for opening up this thread. I feel much more relaxed here.
You keep calling me logical. But I don't think I'm that logical.
Yes, maybe a bit logical than the average, but not very.
When I meet someone who thinks with strict logic, such as when
they explain linguistic or philosophical issues very logically,
I get tired very quickly.
I've always considered half emotional, half logical.
I'm definitely more logical than the average woman, but
among men, I may be regarded as a bit more logical than
the average man. That's all, I guess.
- 11 ：
- Anyay, I don't mind at all whether you are logical or not.
Those things are what I am interested in.
By the way, do you feel hot in this summer season, in your area?
I feel read this year's summer is so cool in some thing as web article.
- 12 ：
- I've lived in Osaka most of my life. And I'm in Osaka now.
I think I'll always be here in Osaka until I die.
(When younger, I've lived abroad for four years and in Tokyo
for 15 years, though.)
Today, because of the typhoon and the subsequent heavy rain,
it's been cool. Tomorrow again, it'll be very hot and humid.
Here in Osaka, in summer, there is almost no wind and yet
very hot and humid. It's like hell in mid-summer.
But maybe this crazily hot summer is better than
the terrible winter in heavy snow in northern Japan.
- 13 ：
- Oh, I can't tell which posts are yours. I know that no. 10 and 12 are yours,
but I'm not sure about no. 11. (It's not mine.)
I'm going to put this number as my handle name.
- 14 ：
- Response 11 is not mine. Maybe I should put my nickname here.
- 15 ：
- Looks more like it now. But here on 5-channel, those with nicknames
tend to be hammered down. I don't like to be attacked all the time, but
here in this particular thread alone, I think I'm going to carry the nickname
that I use elsewhere on the Internet.
- 16 ：
- Why don't you call yourself
"The Guy from the Twilight Zone"? Haha.
Just kidding.
- 17 ：
- Let me talk about something casual now for a change.
I wonder how long you've been abroad and where exactly.
As for me, I've been abroad for a total of four years.
(1) From age 26 to 28 (two and a half years): in Iraq
for work as a Japanese-English translator and other
general administration (to put it bluntly, accounting,
lagor management, guest reception, accommodations management,
and all other boring chores)
(2) From age 19 to 30 (for one and a half years): in France
I went to a French-teaching school attached to a local university,
where I studied French intensively. But right after returning home,
I stopped studying French almost altogether. So my French is very rusty.
But the basics of the language I still remember, and that knowledge
has always been of great help in deepening my knowledge of English and
other European languages and cultures.
Could I ask you to share your experiences abroad, if any?
- 18 ：
- Casual talks are welcome. We've already talked on several topics deeply.
I had never been abroad just until recently, and the only occasion I had was
only for a few days.
So I've been in Japan for almost entirely my life up until now.
I'm very introverted and even if I visited a foreign country I would stay
indoor doing some indoor activities such as reading books. Because of this
characteristics of mine, although I'm interested in visiting foreign countries,
I'm not that motivated to visit foreign countries.
But I'm interested in the idea of moving to another country. As I've mentioned
in the other thread, I feel more comfortable in talking in English and I've
been dreaming of moving to a foreign country. But I know that is not that easy.
Do you want to visit any foreign country? If any, which country? Do you want to
move to another country if possible?
(If you don't feel like answering, you don't need to answer those, or any of
my, questions. You are writing with your identity open, and I regard your
privacy highly.)
Talking about other foreign languages, I'm thinking of learning Chinese next.
No any particular purposes in mind, though. I want to see if I can learn any
other language faster than I did with English.
But at the same time, I want to improve my English further. My grammar and
vocabulary are especially poor. I have been watching YouTube videos in English
and I started watching American dramas in English, but I haven't started
reading books in English. Maybe that's something I should start doing next.
- 19 ：
- >>11
Welcome! Please don't mind about me having asked your identity. I just wanted
to know if you were him or not.
- 20 ：
- By the way, thank you for putting your nickname.
As for putting your nickname, any way is fine with me. Only OED is fine if you
find it a bit too much to put your nickname fully. Putting some number is also
fine. Putting your nickname once a week, after your ﾜｯﾁｮｲ changed, is
also fine. Please make yourself comfortable.
(This is just a hunch, but maybe we will want to consider moving to another
place in the future if we find something we don't like about here.
I want to mingle with other people. I wonder if other people start coming here
or not. I know that this board itself doesn't have much population.)
- 21 ：
- Boy, am I impressed! So you've never been abroad more than
a few days and you don't seem to have had long-lasting
relations with foreigners, and you've managed to write
English that well, huh!
I assumed you'd been abroad for at least five years -- and
when you were rather young too.
As for my full nickname, I've used it once here at the English
learners's BBS here on 5-channel too, say, five years ago or so.
I used it for eight months, during which time they kept attacking me
day and night, ten times or even more, every single day.
Since I'm not insensitive and healthily stupid enough to manage
to stay here that way, I stopped using the nickname here.
But now I'm not much of what I used to be. Even though I'm still
rather weak and sensitive, I'm old and don't care about things any longer.
Besides, whether I use my nickname or not, they've always recognized me
and kept abusing me anyway, since I came here for the very first time,
say, seven years ago or so. The nickname "OED" was given to me
by someone here because I didn't hesitate to cite quotations from
the quintessential Oxford English Dictionary (not the single-volume ODE
but the 20-volume OED, mind you). So they started calling me OED
about two weeks after my first visit here.
Somehow, whether I write in English or Japanese, I seem to write in
instantly-recognizable phrasing. Besides, other than myself, there don't
seem to be anyone else ready to answer almost every question from
English learners -- in an exhaustive manner, quoting all kinds of authoritative
books and dictionaries. That's what seems to make me readily recongizable.
- 22 ：
- But here, I'm not bragging about me. I trust that you understand that.
It's just that in Japan there don't seem to be more than just a few people
as highly motivated, highly learned, and altruistic as I am to
teach English completely free of charge and anonymously.
Here I do sometimes use my nickname but not my real name.
Even on YouTube or anywhere else, I don't use my real name.
Most English teachers, or would-be teachers, seem to have
no or little interest in bothering to share the knowledge that
they claim to have accumulated over their decades of study
free of charge and anonymously. When they do share some of their knowledge,
they do so only when they know they can get rewarded in some way,
like getting credit or financial reward, through publishing books or papers
under their real names.
But I don't like that. I don't need more money than the bare minimum
needed for me to manage to eat decently.
I wish I were much more knowledgeable and richer to be able to inspire
millions of people throughout the world completely free of charge every single
day on YouTube or somewhere else. Although I'm a downright pessimist and
misanthrope and wish that the human species woulld go extinct, I also happen to
love people from the bottom of my heart and wish I could work day and night for
the benefit of humankind. I admire Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors without Borders)
and truly religious, altruistic people who live like beggars while working for
poor and unhappy people. I admire those who die in war-torn countries while
doing some good. I'm much more of a coward and selfish person than those them.
So I don't think I'll ever get to become anyone like them. But I myself have been doing
what I have been able to anyway.
- 23 ：
- By the way, although my identify is open in a way, I don't mind
your questions. Ask me anything. If I am still hesitate to answer
some of your questions, I'll tell you so in so many words and
tell you why I prefer not to answer them. Other than that,
ask me anything and I'll answer all your questions.
But I may forget to answer a question or two that you may have
raised. If so, ask me again. And I'll be glad to answer them.
As I said before, I've been in Iraq for two and a half years for work
when I was 26 to 28. Then I got married, and my ex-wife and I
put our savings together and went to France to study French
for 18 months. I myself had saved a large amount of money
from the work abroad, and my ex had also saved some
from the work she had had as a corpporate employee in Japan.
- 24 ：
- So you were asking me whether I wanted to go abroad again.
If it were ever possible, I wish I could live in the USA *and* Britain
for a total of ten or even twenty years. I would like very much to
study everything there, especially linguistics (the study of all languages,
including English and many other languages, and non-Indo-European languages
as well), literature, world history (especially of the history of wars and
racial discrimination).
If I ever could go abroad for a short stay, I wish I could go also to
Vietnam to see how the locals view things in the world in the aftermath of
the Vietnam War.
But I'm rather poor and I can't be bothered to work hard enough to save enough
money to go abroad -- let alone live there. What's more, both my parents are
in their mid-eighties and could die any minute. As their eldest son, I think
it's my duty to be beside them. I don't live with them, but I've chosen to live
at a 15 minutes' walk from where they live.
- 25 ：
- I already want to move to another place. lol
I took a look at the Chat in English thread for the first time in a long time
and I found again that there are not many people there, and maybe there is
almost none who writes anything meaningful in English here. (In Japanese,
however, it seems that people are discussing things normally.)
I think it's natural to some extent, because once you come to a point where you
can start communicating with people in English, there is no reason to stay in a
place where almost all the participants are Japanese.
I'm going to reply to your comment later. I have some things to do now.
(We were talking intensively, but maybe we should shift to a more casual and
relaxed manner. And that what you started doing.)
- 26 ：
- Now I've switched back to my usual anonymous status.
- 27 ：
- I don't think many people would dare to talk to either of us.
When anyone does speak up, then at that time alone each
can identify themselves to the other.
- 28 ：
- By the way, what do you do for a living? Or would you prefer
to keep it a secret? If so, I'll understand. I'm just curious because
such a great writer in English is very, very rare among the Japanese
native speakers, so I just wanted to ask.
I mean, everything about you
is mysterious. I just want to know anything and everything about you.
Of course, if you don't want to talk about anything other than
substantial issues such as those about life and society and
other serious social or philosophical matters, then I'll follow suit.
- 29 ：
- wait, why we have this thread if it's not for practice purpose? If you just wanna talk in english, you can go to any english forums on internet, or even those 大使館 category of 2ch.
- 30 ：
- I've finished some of the tasks.
>>27
That's a good idea. I'll go back to anonymous state, too.
(Someone gave a message here. Maybe I'll put my nickname when appropriate.)
>>28
I write computer programs and that's how I make a living. I'm not making much
money, but I'm living with my father and I don't spend much money. (My mother
already past away from a disease.)
I don't use English for my work. But I hope I can use it for my work in the
future.
As for my writing ability in English, I don't attribute it to my English
skills. My English skills are not high and no different from those of others. I
wouldn't pass Eiken first grade if I took it. But when I write something in
Japanese, people say I'm a good writer. But writing has never been my thing. To
me, to express myself in a written format requires lots of mental energy and
concentration and it's very tiring. And I'm not good at expressing myself
verbally either. I like thinking. (More precisely contemplating.) I just wait
for something to come to me and I just try to express it out. Possibly it might
be a bit like carving a statue out of a piece of wood. You just try to see a
statue hidden in it and release it. (I'm exaggerating too much, sorry. I'm not
that great in any sense.) I just want to express out what I have in my mind.
Maybe you are doing the same thing.
Due to my poor English skills, it's not always very easy for me to express
myself in English. Often times I don't know how to say what I want to say. I
want to improve my English skills, and I believe it will give me a sense of
freedom more. (My thinking is limited by my language ability, and I want to
improve it not only for my future work but also for myself.)
- 31 ：
- I should have first replied to your previous message, which included a mention
to my overseas experiences and relationships with English speaking people,
before giving you a partial response to your last message. Your comment
intrigued me and I did so.
Even thought I have never been abroad except for a few days of stay, and I've
never had a long-term, or short-term as well, relationship with a native
English speaker, I had some relations with some non-native English speaking
friends. (I still have some.) I mostly just talked to them on Skype. I had some
occasions to see some of them in person and spend time with them. But overall,
the amount of time I have spent with or talk to them is not big. However, if
you have someone in your mind who you talk to in English, it will help you a
lot to improve your English. In that sense it has helped me a lot, I think.
- 32 ：
- Going back to the previous topic of my writing ability, actually this is
virtually my first time trying to communicate with someone in English in a
written format. I wanted to start writing in English and I was trying to find a
good place to do so when I asked a question in the previous thread. I switched
to writing in English, and to my surprise, I found myself being able to express
myself kind of well in English in writing without ever having practiced writing
in English. My speaking in English is poorer than my writing even with all the
time I have had conversations with people. (Maybe it means speaking is harder
than writing. Maybe my writing ability in Japanese and my practice of speaking
English helped me.)
I started learning English by myself when I was around your age when you went
to Iraq. You are older than me and I believe it wasn't easy to acquire English
ability when you were young. Nowadays we have the internet and YouTube and
stuff. Learning languages must have become a lot easier than before especially
English. You must have had a good command of English back when you went to
Iraq. This fact alone makes me admire you.
Going to France with your wife to study French. How wonderful it is!
I want to write more, but it's already become long. I'll stop here for now.
- 33 ：
- >>29
I haven't been able to find any English forum where you can talk about just
anything. Most English forums are very topic based and you can't write just
about anything.
If you happen to know any good forum, I'd appreciate it if you share it with me.
I took a look at some boards in the 大使館 category in 2ch. But they seem to
be very depopulated. We have some threads here where people can talk in
English, so I believe this thread is not against the rules here.
- 34 ：
- Wow, the better I get to know you, the more impressed I get.
Truly you're amazing. So your experiences abroad are quite limited
(only few days) and you haven't had such long-term relations
with English speakers either. And these interactions with me
(which started only several days ago) are the first time you've
ever communicated with anyone by writing in English!?
And you're a computer programmer and you've never used
English at work, huh!?
You must be a genius! But maybe you're the kind of guy that
wishes no one would congratulate and praise you this way.
(I've met some people who're that way.)
As for me, ever since I was 12, I've been totally absorbed in the
study of English (together with other foreign languages) and
the cultures of different countries (together with a bit of knowledge
about their histories, arts, politics, economics, and things like that).
I went to college as a major of English (English linguistics and literature).
At 22 I graduated and became a high school teacher of English. Two years
later I went almost insane and quit the job and, after a half-year hiatus,
I got admitted to a Japanese construction company (what is called
a general contractor). There I worked for almost four years.
Out of those four years of employment, I stayed in Iraq (an Arab-speaking
country) for two and a half years. There I was working with 50 Japanese,
50 Chinese, and 50 Arabs.
- 35 ：
- Together with a lot of boring tasks, I was supposed to be a Japanese-English
translator as well. Since my listening comprehension ability at that time
(when I was 26 to 28) was not yet high enough, I was a lousy interpreter.
(Besides, my tendency to get nervous when in contact with anyone,
whether Japanese or foreign) was a huge handicap for me when it comes to
trying to become a good interpreter.
On the other hand, I proved to be a rather good translator of commercial and
technical documents. I had always been, and I still am, a great lover of
language and reading books. Whenever I read and write anything in any language,
I have always displayed a rather high proficiency.
When I turned 29, I quit the job at the Japanese company and got married and
went to France with my ex and stayed there for 18 months. I studied French
desperately. I studied, studied, studied, studied like someone who has really gone insane.
I had always hungered for knowledge, and those 18 months were really precious to me.
They were my hard-earned days for quenching my thirst for knowledge.
- 36 ：
- When in Iraq, as I said before, I was working with lots of Chinese and
Arabs. So I lost no time in tackling their respective languages.
I studied Arabic and Chinese every single day, using cassette tapes and
course books and dictionaries. At night I studied those languages
(together with French) and during the day I tried to communicate
solely in their respective languages. I quickly learned to speak
rather well, which surprised all my colleages, whether Japanese or foreign,
and that amazed me as well. It's not that I'm smart. It's just that
I love knowledge and I had always been hungry for knowledge,
having been born as a son of parents who left school at age 15 or even 14.
Even when they were 12 or 13, they were too busy trying to help their
parents try to earn their living, so much so that they didn't have
enough time to attend school regularly. They had to skip school very, very often.
Naturally my parents didn't have the means to understand my thirst for knowledge.
They did know somewhat what it is to be hungry for knowledge, but
they were not as intensely, maddeningly in love with learning as I have been.
Add to this, they had to quit school at their tender ages, so that
attending college was a luxury. So, wishing to go on to graduate school or
even abroad for study was a crime.
So, all my life, at least until I was 40 or 45, I had always been suffering
from this intense sense of Original Sin because, although I was a sort of
a son born in a family of proletarians, I was knowledge-oriented.
In my formative years, the times were those of labor movement and
Mao Zedong and Pol Pot the Cambodian and Lenin and Stalin.
The vehement streams of the times made me feel as if I was fundamentally
sinful because I was hungry for knowledge and beauty and, deep in my heart,
I had this terrible urge to pursue beauty and knowledge.
- 37 ：
- >>33
makes sense. I too noticed that the internet across the sea doesn't seem to do chit chat on forums. I think people do that on actual chat and chat apps. So maybe you can try some discord channels?
And holy shit this guy had quite a life. I'm starting to feel ashamed in comparison for I pretty much accquired my english through watching tmnt on youtube, playing steam games and reading about memes.
- 38 ：
- >>37
I didn't know what "tmnt" stood for. I googled it and found it's for
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." And you played those games and
things like that and you've learned to write English that well already,
huh? Impressive. You guys are all great.
I don't know who you are yet, but you're quite welcome here.
I hope lots of other guys will pitch in.
- 39 ：
- For the past seven months I've been into the life and music of
Karen Carpenter, the lead singer of the musical group Carpenters.
She died in 1983 of complications stemming from anorexia nervosa
and she's been famous, or rather, infamous, for that.
But her music has always been popular all over the world.
There are numerous fans in Japan as well.
As one of her recent fans, I've been watching innumerable
videos on YouTube where she performs. I've been seeing
documentaries and interviews on her life as well.
Not only that, I've been reading several books on her. Of all the
books on her life and music that I've read so far, by far the greatest
is this:
Randy L. Schmidt, "Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter," 2010
It's a book containing 300 of real text, with 50 pages of notes and appendices.
Has anyone here read it? Or is anyone into Carpenters music or Karen's life at all?
The more I listen to her, the more I get to appreciate her music and persona.
The more I try to delve into her life, the more mesmerized I feel.
She's just fantastic in every way. And that's why I've been trying to
translate and analyze about 120 of her songs on my YouTube channel.
I hope I'll get to do her remaining songs (perhaps 50 of them) in the near future.
I want to analyze her life in a series of my videos as well.
- 40 ：
- I have been setting up my laptop PC. I bought the PC a while ago and I quit the
setup in the middle. I finally transferred to the new PC. What a tiring and
complicated task... I must make it simpler.
>>39
You have been working on such a big project. I checked the book you mentioned
at Amazon. It seems to have lots of positive reviews.
Carpenters is one of the musicians I have been wanting to start listening to,
but I'm not used to listen to Western songs -- actually I don't listen to music
in general much, whether Western or Japanese. I'm a single processor person and
my mind is almost always occupied by something from activities I'm having --
and when I tried to start listening to Carpenters some years ago, maybe it was
10 years ago or so, I thought it was a bit too early for me to start listening
to Western songs with lyrics. My brain didn't seem to process English sounds
very well and I got kind of annoyed. Perhaps my brain treated English sounds as
noise rather than meaningful sound. Or it might be just that I got frustrated
because I couldn't catch the lyrics. (I don't listen to Japanese songs either.
I think I'm more inclined to English songs in terms of my taste, but in terms
of my knowledge of them I know next to nothing about English songs.)
Recently I found myself started enjoying listening to instrumental music, which
wasn't the case before. Possibly, through my study of English, my brain got
used to listening to certain kinds of sounds. Maybe now I can enjoy listening
to Western music. That's what I have been thinking and hoping lately. I think
Carpenters is a good start.
- 41 ：
- Come to think of why I don't listen to music much, maybe it has something to do
with my childhood. I wasn't given many things, and music was one of the things
I didn't have when I was a child. I was very poor at music in general when I
was in school. But recently, for some reason, I have a positive thinking and I
actually started practicing piano some days ago. I want to see how far I can go
with music. This is my first musical instrument I have practiced.
I missed lots of chances to reply to, or talk about, what you have written.
Hopefully I can start talking about some of them, one by one. I'm not going to
hurry about it.
- 42 ：
- By the way, I have been writing my posts somewhere else and copying it to a 2ch
browser. This board has a limitation on the number of letters each line can
contain, and it's tiring to insert line breaks manually. (Also it's not very
easy to make the post look tidy by inserting line breaks manually.)
I'm using a Linux command, fold, to insert line breaks. With -s option, "fold
-s" will do the job. I created a front end interface and I'm using it instead
of using the command directly.
I wanted to edit, rather I actually edited, the very last paragraph of my
previous post, but I accidentally put the original writing to the command and
as a result my edit was lost.
This is only a tiny thing, but this place isn't a very perfect place for
writing English.
(In addition to that, the 2ch browser I'm using doesn't have the functionality
of spell checking. My front-end tool has it. The tool is a web app and web
browser offers it by default.)
Also, I don't know how posts here look to other people. This is how it looks on
my screen. (Just in case. Please be careful when you upload screenshots. It may
contain personal information.)
https://dotup.org/uploda/dotup.org1909936.png
And this is how it looks on my web browser.
https://dotup.org/uploda/dotup.org1909937.png
They didn't look great by default and I changed the settings. That it doesn't
look fine by default is another minus point here. It's not very newbies
friendly.
But again they are tiny things and overall I'm more or less satisfied.
- 43 ：
- >>40
So you've been having a hell of a time struggling with your new PC,
huh? Seeing that even you a computer-savvy guy has to
have such a hard time with it, I can imagine how it would affect
someone else. As a complete idiot with computers, I wouldn't even
dare to touch any such thing even for a split second.
As far as Western songs, even when limited to songs in English,
I've always been having a hard time struggling with them.I
It's always been my impression that songs and poems in English
are by far the hardest to understand (and appreciate) of all forms
of creation in English. English songs, especially pop and rock songs,
such as those performed by such ubiquitous singers as Carpenters,
Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Lady Gaga, are definitely
far harder to appreciate than newspaper and magazine articles,
novels, movies, and TV dramas.
- 44 ：
- >>40
But Japanese learners of English seem to be misled into believing that
somehow English pop and rock songs are easier to tackle than
novels, nonfiction, movies and things like that just because the former are
far shorter and heard everywhere and seem to be known to everyone,
including Japanese people.
They therefore casually start trying to understand
and even translate Englsh songs they happen to like and display their product
in their blogs and elsewhere. The problem is that most of all those atttempts are
a sheer failure, if I may put it that way. Obviously they haven't even read through a single
full-length novel in English, and yet they naively believe they know English well enough to
be able to understand and translate the songs correctly enough.
But that's just ludicrous. As for me, only until recently, say, until several years ago,
I had never even dared to tackle English songs although by that time I had read
hundreds of long novels and nonfiction books in English and watched a total of perhaps
thousands of TV dramas and movies in English without the help of subtitles in Japanese.
These several years, especially for the past seven months or so, however, during which time
I have been working on trying to translate, analyze, and explain each and every word, phrase,
and sentence and all grammatical issues contained in the lyrics to my porential YouTubers,
I have come to understand the language and appreciate the profundities of the English songs
that I happen to be working on. In the process, I have to consult numerous sources, including
Internet websites and the OED and other large dictionaries.
- 45 ：
- Yes, I'm quite familiar with using PCs, yet I always struggle to set up my
environment. It's not only about the OS, but also about all the application
programs I use. I doubt normal people enjoy the same extent of freedom and
control with using PCs as I have with them. I'm not familiar with maintenance
works with a car. I need to consult experts whenever I encounter a problem with
my car, and I just pay money they ask to have the problem fixed. I don't want
to depend on people and me having little independence when it comes to cars is
frustrating.
You can enjoy all sorts of things if you can use a PC. But it's also time
consuming to get familiar with using a PC. You can change the settings to make
it fit your needs, but it's endless. You need to find a good balance.
I like the sense that I have when I get familiar with something, whether a
skill or a knowledge. I feel as if I have more power and freedom. But it can be
a sort of liability when you want to bring it to a new environment.
I want to make my life simpler, and I want to find better ways with my PC.
- 46 ：
- I've encountered some times people recommending using English songs for new
learners to learn English. Maybe it's a good idea, for they might get familiar
with English sounds, but I've never thought of the difficulty in understanding
English lyrics. There are some things that are counter intuitive. New learners
of English often think that normal conversations among neighbors and friends
are easier than English used in news programs. But I think conversations among
people, especially among teenagers can be very hard to understand.
It's good that I didn't dare to try to tackle English lyrics in my early stages
of learning English. I may have been discouraged by the difficulty of
understanding it.
- 47 ：
- >>46
Yes, it was a very good thing that you didn't tackle English songs or poems
in your earlier stages of English study. English songs and poems are
really hard for adult nonnatives, at least for Asians and other peoples
whose native languages are far from English and other Indo-European languages because:
(1) Poems and songs use "poetic license," that is, poets and songwriters sacrifice
logic and naturalness of phrasing in order to put the need for rhyming and rhythm first.
An ideal poem or song would be one written with logical correctness and natural phrasing
and yet with beautiful rhyming and rhythm. But that's not always easy. Poets and songwriters
often have to resort to unnatural phrasing, by using expressions and words never used in
everyday conversation or business world or anywhere else. They also sometimes have to
break some grammatical rules. That is precisely why English native speakers on English-study
forums keep asserting to us nonnnative learners of English that it's not a good idea to learn
correct English by reading or trying to understand poems or songs.
(to be continued)
- 48 ：
- (continued)
(2) Poems and songs are written with extreme succinctness. Songs, in particular, are typically
written in lengths short enough for people to finish singing within five or even three minutes.
But still, they are required to convey a lot of profound, complex feeling or idea or both.
Ideas and feelings required to be expressed in such songs are very often -- or even at all times --
even more complex than the same length of text in a novel or nonfiction or newspaper article or other
fact-based writing. Poets and songwriters therefore typically have to make intellectual and intuitional
acrobats to express any one idea or feeling, trying to condense a tremendously heavy feeling or idea
in an extremely small number of words, which are nevertheless supposed to be written in a language
that should at least on the surface sound as if easy enough to be understood by teenagers.
They should never sound like a pholosophical work or an academic paper. And, most important of all,
these pieces of writing must definitely be artistically beautiful, even reaching the point where they
make the readers and listeners cry.
That is, I think, poems and songs are far, far more difficult not only to write but also to appreciate.
No wonder I had never managed to appreciate any poem or song fully, whether in Japanese or English,
untill only several years ago, even though by then I had read numerous novels, nonfiction books,
and even some books on philosophy, psychology, and other areas.
- 49 ：
- I found it quite tiring to write something in English here partly because I'm
not used to talking in English and partly because of my poor English skills. I
thought I could use voice typing functionality on some websites and on tablet
devices to help me write in English. I'm writing this with the help of voice
typing functionality on Google Documents. It seems it works. I need to correct
some errors I make during the speech but it's far easier than typing everything
in English manually.
- 50 ：
- >>49
partly because I'm not used to *typing* in English
- 51 ：
- Composing sentences with voice feels quite liverating. If you haven't tried it
maybe you should try it.
Now that I can write sentences a lot easier, I'm going to start replying to
your previous posts.
>>21
I don't quite understand why some Japanese people attack other people just
because they are different from them. We have this saying
“出る杭は打たれる.” I think this saying represents our mentality of
Japanese. Each country has its own sayings and they seem to affect their
people. In Korea, they have sayings such as “溺れた犬は棒で叩け”,
“泣く子は餅を一つ余計にもらえる.” In Russia, I heard that
people don't smile as much because of a saying they have. I'm not trying to
criticize cultures of each country. Rather, I don’t like letting illogical
sayings affect my behaviors.
Maybe those who attacked you found they couldn’t match you in English skills
and knowledge, and they couldn't admit that you are better, they decided to
attack you.
Maybe there were other factors. I don't know. Learning a language doesn't mean
to acquire only a set of knowledge, but it also means that you get familiar
with the cultures they have. You might become less concerned about the saying
“出る杭は打たれる,” and you might start having mindsets similar to
those of foreigners. Maybe you might start acting a bit different from other
Japanese people, which is not accepted easily by those whose mentality is
represented by the saying “出る杭は打たれる.”
Talking about recognizing people by their own habits of writing, there were
times when people said my writing resembles that of somebody when I posted
something in Japanese. I read a lot and I think it affects how I write. Maybe
it might also be the case with you. Possibly those who read a lot might tend to
acquire a certain way of writing style.
- 52 ：
- >>22
I see that you have a very high proficiency in English. No doubt about it.
At the same time I kind of understand why they don't bother to teach people
English for free. In my opinion it’s not that they are being selfish but it's
that you are being generous. You could make some money using the time.
But there might be other factors other than being selfish or generous. I guess
possibly they are not confident enough with their English skills. It might be
too tiring for them to try to help other people for free in their English study.
I don’t intend to impose my views on you, but maybe you should consider using
the time you are spending on helping other people here on something else. Maybe
you could have some fun with the time. Maybe you could try out new things on
YouTube which might lead you to a way to make some money in the future. (Yeah,
you are already doing it. Maybe that’s something I should consider doing when
my English becomes better in the future.) My point is that you are being very
kind here. (I understand that you enjoy helping people here, though.)
- 53 ：
- Let me leave a message to >>1, who I presume is so called a YouTuber.
I don't think you're interested in monetize your Youtube account in the least,
raking up ad revenues and such, so basically you can post whatever videos you want,
whenever you like.
But here's my two cents.
I'd say you might want to give the intervals of posting videos and the length of
them serious thought. Everyone is busy so it'd be better to make your videos shorter
so that viewers find it easy to watch them all the way through, which gives viewers
a sense of accomplishment.
Popular Youtubers are more strategic about how they keep viewers interested in
their videos, so they take extra care in regards to the length of their videos
and how often they upload videos. If their target audience are business people,
for example, then they keep the length 15 minutes or shorter so that business people can watch
them on the train while they commute. If you post videos almost every day, then
keep the length 5 to 10 minutes or so would be good idea, because keeping up with 60 minute
videos posted every day is almost impossible.
Maybe while you shoot those videos, you lose track of time, and your knowledge of
English is so immense that to make the videos short is almost impossible. But by taking the target
audience of your account into more consideration, I think you can get more subscribers and fans.
Sorry if I sound rude or pushy or anything, which is not my intention.
- 54 ：
- I’m 1 and I'm not a YouTuber, but I found what you have said very
interesting. Actually I have the same opinion on that. It's a good idea, I
think, to know how frequently you should post videos and how long you should
make them. There is a popular YouTuber named Daigo who says similar things as
you’ve said. But he seems to have been trying to maximize the total amount of
money he earns from his videos instead of the total amount of satisfaction
subscribers get from his videos. It's understandable as he's doing it as his
work, though.
If I were to post my own videos on YouTube, I want to make them easy for
subscribers to watch and catch up with.
I want to make a living using my English, but I personally don't want to
involve the Japanese language in my work with English, because whenever I try
to involve the Japanese language, it affects my English. I stopped using
Japanese English dictionaries as much as I can for this reason. At the moment
becoming a translator or interpreter is not my option because they require
using the Japanese language. And becoming a YouTuber seems to be a potentially
good option to someone like me because you don't need to use Japanese in your
videos if you don’t want to. I know that becoming popular on YouTube is not
easy, though.
- 55 ：
- One thing I really don't like about this place is that foreigners can't write
here. I want to mingle with anybody, including people from overseas.
- 56 ：
- >>24
I want to move to another country but I come to face the reality that it’s
not easy to do. The thought that I might not be able to move to another country
for the rest of my life gives me a feeling that I’m stuck in my life. I'm
more or less satisfied at the moment with staying in Japan, but I don't know
about the future. It seems to me that Japan will likely to lose its momentum.
Now we are facing the problem of the aging society and declining population. If
Japan will lose its economic strength in the future, combined with the problems
mentioned above, Japan might not stay as comfortable a country to stay in the
future as it is now.
Thinking about moving to another country makes me feel depressed instead of
making me feel motivated.
Maybe I should forget about the idea of moving to another country and try to
get satisfied with the life I will likely to have here in Japan. I don’t have
the feeling that I'm in control of my life and I don’t like it. Sorry for
ranting.
Maybe I should try to change the society in Japan but I have already come to a
point where I don't associate myself with other Japanese people very much.
Maybe I have been suffering a bit of identity loss.
- 57 ：
- It was a due date yesterday for about 500 yen worth points at an online
shopping site. I forgot to use the points. It's shocking.
- 58 ：
- >>34
To my eyes it seems you are a more rare asset than I am. Actually I strongly
believe that. I know for sure that I’m not a genius. I’m not trying to be
humble. That’s the truth, sadly. In terms of English proficiency, you can
find lots of people like me. But when it comes to my thoughts, they might be a
bit different from those of others due to my past experiences. I struggled a
lot when I was young. But everybody should think their thoughts are different
from those of others, so I’m no different on this. One thing I think I’m a
little different from other people is that I read more than the average people
do. Maybe my reading in Japanese is affecting my writing in English. (I know
that you also like reading books.)
Going abroad decades ago when you were in your twenties is already something,
and having studied not only English but also other languages makes you even
rarer.
I'm interested in polyglots, who speak multiple languages. I have studied
several languages for about half a year to one year when I was in my teens back
when I didn’t have access to the Internet yet. (I forgot almost anything I
learned then, so please don’t ask me which languages. I just wanted to make
myself familiar with the sounds of each language.) After I got access to the
Internet, I watched lots of videos made by polyglots on YouTube. That made me
want to become like them, but later I found that English alone is not easy to
acquire, and I decided to focus on English first. I think we have something in
common here that we both are interested in learning languages, but you are far
more advanced on this.
About you having showed a high proficiency in several languages, I have no
doubt about that.
- 59 ：
- I have made a lot of posts. You don't need to try to reply to all of them.
I noticed one nice feature of the voice typing functionality on Google
Documents. It not only offers spell checking but it also suggests corrections.
- 60 ：
- >>53
I'm the YouTuber you were talking about. I'm not the one who
posted >>1.
Thanks for your advice. I know the length and frequency of
my posts don't suit many potential viewers.
But here I'm not quite interested in becoming popular or
reaching many viewers. In fact, if once in a while one or two
viewers find one or two posts of mine interesting, that'll be enough
-- at least for now, anyway. I will therefore be content if
only five or ten out of all my videos (which number more than 300
now) lure one viewer each. Although very few and far between,
both Japanese and English speakers leave a comment on
some of my 90-minute or even 120-minute videos, saying
that they've learned a lot.
As far as videos on English study are concerned,
most Japanese viewers them are
rather on an intermediate level. These Japanese people
on an intermediate level -- or even on what they might call
an advanced level -- don't seem to be comfortable enough to
listen to and read lots of information communicated in English.
I've met many Japanese who profess to be on a professional
level of English proficiency, who seem to have been using English
on a daily basis in their business, some of whem seem to be
Japanese-English translators, and who say they have passed
several impressive tests of English.
- 61 ：
- >>53 (continued)
But how many of them
are actually comfortable enough with English to process huge
quantities of information in English? How many of them read
a book or something in English every day? How many of them
have read at least a hundred books in English? How many of them
can see a two-hour-long movie or documentary in English and get
to understand at least 70 percent of what they say? Very few.
I know that most of my videos are designed for the selected few.
In a way, I may be being rather selfish here. It is because, although I
was saying that I wanted to serve people, I am actually trying to
serve only those selected few, only those who are the most
highly motivated to study. Those who don't bother to watch videos
more than 30 minutes long don't have to interact with me. If they
can't even watch videos more than 60 minutes long, then how
can they follow lectures 90 minutes long at university or
anywhere similar? Without those lectures, how can anyone learn
anything of substance?
People like me won't ever be popular. I know that. I've always
known it ever since I was a child. I wouldn't even care if I had to
die for humankind, but then again, I don't ever want to interact with
the lazy -- those who believe they're smart and highly motivated,
but who are actually only interested in making money and
becoming someone knowledgeable or skilled enough to impress
people. I hate them. I'm only interested in people who pursue
beauty for beauty's sake and knowledge for knowledge's sake and who,
if they have to serve anyone, are ready to serve them altruistically,
not for money or to impress them.
- 62 ：
- >>55
I'm always ready to move anywhere. If you find any appropriate place,
tell me. I'd be glad to move there. But so far, every place seems to
have its advantages and disadvantages. And this particular site
seems to have its share of shortcomings all right, but all things
considered, I sort of like it here -- at least for now, anyway.
By the way, you've always been saying that it's primarily
to mingle and communicate with people that you want to write
in English.
As for me, as I said before, I've sort of given up on most of my hope
for potential communication with people. I mean, if you forgive me
for my drastic phrasing, I believe that everyone -- without a
single exception -- has always been engaging in monologue.
No one has actually succeeded in communicating with others.
But of course, as a human, only too human, I have my own
share of desire for interaction with people. Why? Because
we're all genetically programmed to long for interaction with others.
We're starving for love and friendship by nature. But then again, no such
communication or interaction is possible. We humans are capable of
understanding themselves alone. We each are not able to understand
anyone else. But we do manage to enjoy this lifetime-lasting illusion that
we have somehow been capable of some kiind of communication, warmth,
love, and friendship. But that is all an illusion.
And this is precisely why I feel rather content in uploading tons of 60- or even
120-minute videos on YouTube without expecting to lure more than one or two
viewers. On YouTube, I believe, everyone has been monologuing, not communicating
actually.
- 63 ：
- Many people will probably respond, "But some YouTubers do enjoy a large following
and many of their subscribers leave tons of comments in their comment fields."
Yes, I know that. But just look at each such comment. How many of those commentators
actually leave messages that tell the original poster or their fellow commentators
anything of substance? They themselves have always been talking to themselves
without expecting even to be understood. In fact, most of them can't even write
properly, whatever language they may be writing in.
Even those who do write
long enough comments in proper language -- how many of them in fact
manage to follow the original poster for years and communicate with them
in earnest to the point where they would even meet them in person and
befriend them and even get married with them or start a long-term, real
relationship? If I may use another set of drastic phrasing, how many of them would
even want to die for the original poster if they profess to love them dearly?
No one. Absolutely no one.
And the story doesn't stop there either. Even if one of such people communicating
in earnest with the original poster or anyone else for that matter actually
gets to start a long-term, person-to-person relationship, will that person manage
to even sacrifice their own life for the one they think they like or even love?
I myself have once thought I loved someone dearly to the point where I thought
I was ready even to die for her. But even that love faded ten years later.
Many people seem to believe that you have to nurture your own love if you
want to make it last. Yes, I know that. I would want to say to them,
"Don't state the obvious! I know far better than you!"
- 64 ：
- All my life, I've been pondering with tremendous seriousness
over these issues of love, friendship, communication, and
human interaction. Maybe I'm too serious. Most people
seem to consider them much more casually. It seems that
if only they think they're enjoying talking with someone,
and if that someone too seems to be enjoying the talk, then
they seem to believe that they've managed to establish
a good relationship, or at least temporary communication anyway.
As for me, I delve further. It's really easy to pretend to
enjoy communicating with others. We're programmed to pretend
doing so, whether consciously or unconsciously. We're afraid
of *not* enjoying something. Naturally we do pretend, even
though most people seem to be unaware.
Okay then, but many people do seem to enjoy talking with others
from the bottom of their hearts. But then again, how many of them
are really certain that the other person at the other end of the
conversation is actually enjoying it? How many of them
are really positive that they share something?
I've been blabbering. Sorry. No one is obligated to read my
lengthy messages of monologue seriously, much less respond.
- 65 ：
- Come to think of it, it seems I derive the sense of certainty from my attitude
of being honest with myself.
It seems that I see life itself is a temporal thing. Since life itself is a
temporal thing, everything in it is also temporal. No friendship, no love is
eternal. And I'm fine with it. It doesn't necessarily mean that I don’t enjoy
temporal things just because they are temporal. I like playing games such as
shogi, and I know it’s a temporal enjoyment, and it’s fine with me.
Isn't it enough that you are enjoying something? Do you need to be sure that
the other person is also enjoying? Isn't enough that if you are being honest
with yourself and the other person says he is also being honest with himself
and both of you are saying that you are enjoying something?
Yes, of course, there is a chance that the other person is not being honest
with himself and that he's not enjoying the activity. But it's not your
business. It's his business. You may get hurt from the dishonesty of him. But
again, it's not your business but his business for him to be a clown.
- 66 ：
- I recommended you to try to always be honest with yourself.
You wrote that you enjoy our conversation.
> On the contrary, I've enjoyed talking to you
Maybe you are being a clown here. I don't care about it. It's not my business.
It's your business. I just know that I always try to be honest with myself, and
I’m fine with it. I don’t need anything else.
(I recommend try not to write any single word that is not of your true
feelings. If you have a habit of saying or writing something not of your true
feelings, it harms you eventually because your subconscious knows that you are
telling a lie to you.)
I might have sounded as if I was angry or disappointed, but it's not the case.
It seems to me that my being honest with myself gives me a sense of relief and
security. I just want to say that if you can ever become honest with yourself,
you might get the sense of relief and security just out of it. That's what
seems to be happening to me. (I don't worry about if the other person is
enjoying being your company or not. I just trust my honestly with myself.)
- 67 ：
- No offense, but it seems to me that you have been suffering not from factors of
other people, but from honesty and trust within yourself. We see the world
through the lens of ourselves. If you can't trust yourself and be honest with
yourself, how can you trust those of others?
Come to think of it, maybe it’s just that I get the sense of certainty from
my being exceptionally honest with myself. Maybe other people are suffering, as
you say, from the lack of certainty within themselves. I’m not following a
path of a life of a normal person. Fortunately for me I'm following a kind of
that of a philosopher. I'm not working for a company. I just cut ties with
people if I don’t find I enjoy them. I'm in such a lucky environment where I
can almost always be honest with myself, not only internally but often times
externally also. Possibly this can be a factor in my case.
- 68 ：
- If I'm allowed to be critical here, it seems to me that you are being afraid of
the possible rejection from people, and in order to try to avoid it you kind of
give up the hope to be accepted from other people from the beginning.
That’s what I felt reading your post, especially this part.
> People like me won't ever be popular. I know that. I've always
known it ever since I was a child.
Maybe this applies to your stance with love and friendship. Maybe you are not
confident on your part, and you are afraid of the potential failure of a
friendship or love. If you don’t open up to people, you won’t get hurt as
much, at the sacrifice of not being able to get any such things. Maybe this is
a psychological response you are having.
There is nothing wrong with not trying to be popular on YouTube. I won’t aim
it either if I were to make videos on YouTube. But I just felt that I would be
more neutral. I know that characteristically I'm not the type of guy who
becomes popular anywhere. I don't like standing out. I'd rather want to stay in
the background. I won't ever forcefully try to become popular, but at the same
time I won’t overly give up within me the possibility that people might like
me. It’s not my business, but it’s their business and I have no control
over it. (I won’t care about something that much over which I don’t have
control.)
I’m being too intrusive. I just wanted to help lighten what you have within
you. You haven’t asked me, and it’s not a good thing to start trying to
help people without being asked. Sorry for that.
- 69 ：
- The impression I received from watching your videos was not bad at all. People
may like you and you may become popular someday. I just thought that you don't
have to deny that possibility from the beginning and you can just be more
neutral.
One more thing. Here in Japan, people always try to overly be humble, often
times in a negative way. And also, it's safer to be defensive in a place where
you are vulnerable from possible attacks by people. This is such a place, and
possibly you are just trying to be defensive to protect yourself.
- 70 ：
- >>62
I have a similar impression on this place. But again what I don't really like
about this place is that we don't have many people here. Actually we are the
only two of us. I feel it's a bit too risky and vulnerable to depend on the
existence of you too much.
We had another guy yesterday, but I’m not sure if he ever writes again or
not. His English seemed to be good, probably better than mine, which was good.
But I'm not interested in seeing good English. I'm more interested in the
content of a post. But here is a place where people share information about
English study. Their main purpose of people coming here is for learning English
itself, not for communication with others. We have another chat thread named
“Chat in English”, but it seems no one in the thread holds any meaningful
conversations with anyone else. They seem to be just content with writing a
single sentence of English, apparently they have just learned from they English
study. That's not the kind of people I'm looking for.
I wonder if you were satisfied with this place before you met me. I wonder if
you are satisfied with this place without having me. In my case, I wouldn't be
satisfied with this place at all If I didn’t have you here.
It seems there is no one other than ourselves who dare to try to communicate
with people with decent English and with normal manner or behavior. I have been
lurking here for a long time, but it seems to me that people here are generally
angry or frustrated for some reason. Many of them are, for some reason,
insulting or attacking each other all the time. Maybe because of the
frustration they have from their English study?
- 71 ：
- >>70
I'm not happy here at all. Before you came along, I was feeling totally alone.
I felt as if I was an adult among a bunch of kindergarteners. But then again,
all my life, ever since I was a child, I've always been in a similar environment.
All other people, including my own parents, felt to me like kindergarteners.
I naturally don't want to insult any of them, but this is the way I have always felt.
- 72 ：
- You've been urging me to be honest to myself. But I doubt
that a day will ever come when I can get to really behave
and feel really honest myself.
Why not? Because if I really
had to be honest to myself, I might have murdered both of
my parents, or become a terrorist and destroyed a large number
of people who happened to seem to me like my enemies.
I could have become an anti-USA terrorist. Or I could have become
a kamikaze or something and a suicide bomber. I could have
murdered one or two persons who happened to be abusive,
bullying types at a workplace where I happened to be working.
I could have also kicked up with full force the large stomachs of a few
pregnant mothers I happened to meet on the street because
there were times when I really loathed parents who atrociously
wanted to drag their upcoming children into this crazy world.
- 73 ：
- I'm watching your talking about China’s oppression of the Uyghurs. Back in
2008 and 2009, people in Tibet tried to raise their voice against the Chinese
Communist Party and to the international society, followed by Uyghurs in 2009.
I was supporting them by making videos on YouTube. I was exporting some
Japanese TV programs aired in Japan on the human rights issues in Uyghur and on
their leader in exile in the US to the rest of the world by putting English
subtitles. And I was also importing videos made by foreign people into some
Japanese websites, putting Japanese subtitles in them.
I’m still very concerned about such issues. I’ve almost never talked about
me having done such things in the past, because some people have different
views from mine and some people even try to attack people just because they
have different views. I don’t even feel like talking about such issues with
Japaese people.
Your video is quite lengthy, and I won’t watch it till the end. But it was
interesting to know that you have such a concern. (It is my first time to have
encountered any Japanese person talking about the issue in English. There are
lots of Japanese YouTubers who speak English, but they don’t talk about such
things.)
- 74 ：
- Twitter seems to have changed its UI. I need to fix the URLs for RSS feeds.
- 75 ：
- >>71
I understand. Actually, I have the same impression on this board except for you
and potentially some other people.
>>62
I have been saying that I want to communicate with other people also. It's
because for me having inputs is more important than having outputs. I want to
listen to other people. With having no one else, except for you, I can't do
that here.
For me, environments are really important. You might not be able to change the
environment which you are in, but you can move to another environment if you
are not happy with your current one. (This might be another form of being
honest with yourself. Staying in an environment where you don't feel happy
doesn’t make you happy.)
- 76 ：
- >>72
I think it’s better for you to be honest with yourself than to try to
forcefully ignore or suppress your true feelings. You don’t need to be
harmful to other people in order to try to be honest with yourself. You can
just stop doing things you don’t want to. I personally stopped doing things I
don’t want to long time ago, and I don’t seem to have much internal
conflicts inside me.
- 77 ：
- >>75-76
Wow, so you're the third person who seems to have
been around all along. You're really inspiring. You say you're
more preoccupied in input than in output. I respect that.
Me too, maybe, I'm into absorbing lots of information.
Besides, if you want to display one unit of information,
you should have absorbed, perhaps, 10,000 units of it.
So, naturally, at least I am basically very busy reading
and watching lots of things before I start writing or
saying anything.
When it comes to answering questions raised by
Japanese learners of English, I am ready to answer
them at all times because English is the language
I've been delving into for the past half decade.
When I feel tempted to make comments on any issue
that I've been studying casually for only five years, for example,
I hesitate a lot and find myself unable to say anything
because those five years of study are too little
for me to say anything of substance.
- 78 ：
- >>73
So you've been doing all that about human rights issues, huh?
That's admirable. As for me, social issues are rather new to me.
I mean, most of my life I've been much too preoccupied --
or rather obsessed -- with conflicts and turmoil in my own
inner world, my own psychology. That's why I was rather into
issues of literature, psychology, literature, and linguistics.
These issues were desperately serious and urgent for me
all these years (for the past half decade actually).
In the meantime, however, I was also concerned about such
social issues as war, rape, women's liberation or empowerment,
and labor issues as well. These issues were something I desperately
had to address. My own father has always been much into labor issues,
and was actually the leader of a labor movement for more than three decades.
Labor movement, communism, socialism, and related issues have always been
tormenting me. This, however, doesn't mean that I'm a socialist or communist.
It's rather that I can't ignore these labor issues.
As for women's issues, my own mother has always been complaining of
their female status in society. It was when I was ten that she sobbed
bitterly in front of me when she was alone with me at home. With tears
in her eyes, she was deploring how they women had to lead their monotonous
lives condemned to their homes, having to prepare the three meals every day,
having to stay home all the time without a single chance to go out for work,
contributing to society, thereby learning something new. She went on to say that
their husbands and all other men always made fun of them, calling them stupid
just because they didn't know how things are in real life. She said that this was
naturally inevitable because most women were doomed to stay home without
being allowed to go outside, not even for a part-time job.
- 79 ：
- >>73
In any case, my parents were busy fighting each other, with the mother always
aspiring to contribute to the outside world, while her husband always missed her
when he happened to come back home early. Both of my parents had had to
leave school at the age of 14 or 15. Even before that, they had no luxury to
stay at school just like most other pupils even at age 10 or 12 because they
had to help their parents earn their living. As a child, my mother had to skip
school for extended periods of time just to help her mother (her father had died
when she, my mother, was two) with their farm work. Although a bright student
my mother had no luxury to get an education beyond the age of 15.
Not interested in intellectual things by nature, my father was always
jealous of his wife's intelligence despite her having had to leave
school very early. In fact, he was madly jealous of everyone in the world
who showed any hint of intelligence or intellectual interest.
He hated to study anything diligently. He was into mah-jong and TV
and other leisure activities whenever he was not at work. But he was
slightly more intelligent than most other workers, and he excelled at
verbally convincing his fellow workers about labor issues. So he managed to
become leader of 1,000 workers, organiizing them to fight the capitalists.
- 80 ：
- At all kinds of verbal -- and sometimes, physical -- violence, my father
was really good. He had his own share of talents, which were rare among
most other people. It's just that he was not good at intellectual things.
In fact, he just could not put up with seemingly tedious, monotonous
hard work at memorizing things and reading lengthy books, trying to
process tons of information. But at doing things seemingly spectacular,
like fighting those wicked capitalists, my father was better than anyone else.
That's the area where he showed his talent.
But my father was the opposite of me. He in fact was jealous of his own father.
He was from a family of seemingly intellectual members. Most other members of
the family would make fun of him for his seemingly lower intelligence and
laziness at intellectual work. My father's father was a teacher (in those days,
say, 80 years ago or so, teachers were highly respected in every way). Not only that,
my grandfather was one of the disciples of Kano Jigoro, one of the first leaders
in the judo world. My grandfather therefore excelled at persistence. He could put up
with just about anything, even with the pain he had to endure after having a tooth
removed at his dentist's office without anaesthesia. In fact, my grandfather was
inquisitive by nature and had wanted to experience the pain that one had to undergo
from a surgical operation without pain-killer. So, he went to the dentist and insisted
that the latter remove his tooth without the medicine. Coming back home later on,
my grandfather said, "Wow, the pain from a tooth removed without anaesthesia
is surelly great, isn't it?" Such was my grandfather.
- 81 ：
- In any case, as a child my father had always been jealous of his own father.
He thought he had never managed to surpass his own father. In his view,
a son is lucky if he has a father worse than he is. A son is miserable if he
has a father so great that the son can't ever go beyond.
My father was and still is in fact jealous of all people who showed any interest in intellectual
activity. He just can't tolerate it. That's precisely why he behaved as if he hated me.
Although not highly intelligent (my IQ is only 109, by the way), I've always loved --
in fact, head over heels in love with learning. And he seemed, at least seemed, to hate
my guts. He always claimed to love me dearly. But he seemed to love me only when
I pretended to be just like him. As the eldest son, I had no recourse other than to
behave, talk, and pretend to think in ways not too remote from my father -- and
from my mother.
- 82 ：
- The third person hasn't come yet. It’s me, the guy from the twilight zone.
I have been trying out a language learning app. It seemingly has lots of users
and they have been writing about their life and stuff with often times some
photos attached. But the conversations among people in the app seem to be
shallow. Posts disappear soon from the top page and people’s attention goes
from one post to another quickly. Having been using the app I felt more
isolated than before.
- 83 ：
- >>78-81
What impressive writing skills you have and how elegantly you express your
thoughts! I still get amazed and impressed.
I started understanding the complexity of the situation you were in. I believe
I had a hard time with the dysfunctional family of mine, but now I think yours
is worse, especially when you and your father have almost the opposite
personalities and your father has his own issues with his own father, which
affected the relation between you and him. You can’t resolve it easily
because it’s his problem, not yours and his.
- 84 ：
- I may talk about things in my family. I may not. It’s not to try to compare
mine with yours -- there is no point in doing such a thing -- but to just show
my case. But since I don’t see any point in me trying to talk about my family
in detail, maybe I won’t.
But I’ll write about this one particular thing briefly. My father doesn’t
seem to have high enough intelligence to understand me in the slightest, even
though he was a high school teacher and he, as a teacher, was in a position
where he taught people (students). He seems to have believed that he is more
intelligent than I am because I have always been out of his reach and he
couldn't understand me at all. I have never had my IQ tested and I don’t know
how intelligent the average person is, but I would assume his intelligence is
slightly lower than the average. (But I could be wrong here. Maybe his one
could be slightly above average.)
One of the significant differences between my case and your case is that my
father doesn’t get jealous of other people, including me, very much even if
he finds them more intelligent than he is. To be precise, he just doesn't seem
to understand who is more intelligent. (In this sense, your father might be
more intelligent than my father.) This difference between my father and your
father is significant, I think, and I feel for you even more for this.
I won’t write anything more at the moment about what you have written. I
don’t think I can say, or I should say, anything more.
(By the way, it’s hard to believe about your IQ. And I question the accuracy
of such tests. Human intelligence has lots of factors and I don’t think it
can be measured fully by such simple tests.)
- 85 ：
- >>84
Yeah, I know IQ can reflect just one aspect of human intelligence,
which must involve far wider ranges of human intellectual activities
than those PhDs who may have developed the well-known measure of
intelligence. But still I know that many of those who told me their excellent IQs
were really, really intelligent, not in all fields to be sure, but
in ways where I don't excel at all.
Despite its share of imperfections, however, IQ must still be one important
measure of intelligence anyway.
By the way, thank you very much for calling my writing elegant. As a matter
of fact, you're not the only person who's called it elegant, whether in Japanese
or in English -- or even in French when I was working hard on the language.
Elegance in fact is something I've always pursued in every field of activity
that I have been tackling.
When I was madly in love with the Romanian language,
about 17 years ago, I wrote many short poems in Romanian. I knew how clumsy
my Romanian was, but lots of Romanians loved reading them. They congratulated
my Romanian language proficiency, which was low but high enough for a Japanese
who has never been in Romania. I stopped studying the language several years later,
and my Romanian got extremely rusty. It's the story of my life. I've been learning
ten or even more foreign languages but English is the only foreign language
in which I can truly function now.
I would have loved to *look* elegant too, he he.
But looks are not what I put so much emphasis on, so I can forget about it.
If only I'm not ugly enough to scare most people, then I should be content.
I'm not a singer or actor who's supposed to appear in front of large audiences, anyway.
- 86 ：
- I started trying to communicate with people on the app. (Leaving comments to
their posts.) Being unsure about grammar is a big hindrance..
- 87 ：
- The app is like a social media. I’m so used to the anonymous atmosphere in
2ch and I’m not intending to make friends there, but maybe it’s about time
for me to change..
- 88 ：
- I’m not following a fancy colorful life, and I don’t know how to attract or
please people by my posts. Maybe I should try to write something funny. (Maybe
I should put some comical elements into my posts.)
- 89 ：
- It’s a language exchange app, and I’m not really into the idea of language
exchange. I just want to use English all the time and I don’t want to involve
Japanese. Maybe language exchange apps are not my thing and I should go to
Twitter or something instead.
- 90 ：
- One thing I don't really like about composing English sentences on Google
Documents is that it uses this apostrophe mark ‘ instead of this one ' .
- 91 ：
- I've figured it out. There is an option called "smart quotes" and turning it
off solved it.
- 92 ：
- I don't know if any one of you guys takes any interest in
the song "Hotel California" by Eagles.
Although it's such a famous song, I hadn't tackled the lyric of
the song until five years ago or so.
From then until four months ago, I sometimes pondered over
it and I made up my mind to produce a YouTube video
to tell how I interpret the enigmatic lyric.
Here is the result:
(171) The Eagles' Song "Hotel California" (a Song Review)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9icm8b0a2Js
The above is a presentation in English. Elsewhere I uploaded
another video in Japanese where I translated, explained, and analyzed
each word, phrase, and sentence and their grammatical
aspects as well.
Both of them are much too long as always. People may not
be tempted to view videos longer than 30 minutes, much less
those 90 minutes. But how else can I ever analyze any such
profound and interesting song?
- 93 ：
- Very long. lol
It's good to see people talk about what interests them.
- 94 ：
- I have been lurking on some sub reddits. It's interesting to know what people
from various countries think about things from different perspectives. I should
have started visiting English websites earlier. I remember how I felt when I
first met Japanese forums such as 2ch. It took me some time to get familiar
with them. Now I feel the same way with English forums. I think it'll take some
time for me to get familiar with their culture and customs there. But I'm kinda
excited to get into a new world.
- 95 ：
- As for the language learning app, maybe it's not my thing. The posts there are
for practicing purposes and tend to be shallow. Maybe I should dive into a
native world in order to obtain what I want.
- 96 ：
- As for me, I don't expect too much from trying to communicate
with ordinary people. Well, here I'm NOT saying I'm EXTRAordinary.
I'm just another ordinary guy.
When I do want to "communicate" profoundly with anyone,
I read books written by famous dead poets, novelists,
scholars, and other people, and watch videos of
geniuses, whether literary, musical, or other.
True, it can't be mutual communication. It can only be
one-sided communication, from those geniuses to me.
But how can I say anything good enough to those geniuses,
who must be far beyond me?
Here again, I'm not saying that people who are called geniuses
or famous are the only people worth my attention. But among
the seemingly ordinary people lurking or writing just short
texts (even those texts 100 lines are very short as compared to
full-length books) here and there on the Internet, it's really hard
-- or even impossible -- to find someone really worth my attention.
- 97 ：
- In forums where you write or speak to each other, therefore,
I just relax and practice how to think, write, and speak.
Besides, when you try to communicate with someone, you're
actually not communicating in the true sense of the word.
Everyone is confined, and doomed to a desert of desperate
loneliness of monologuing all their life. Even those who
assert that they have numerous friends have actually been
talking to themselves, not with others. People never get to
understand each other, never actually get their messages
through to each other. Besides, no one is smart or creative
enough to come up with any ideas or feelings to share with
others. I'm no exception. As a human, we are confined to
these confines of a solitary cell for eternity. We are born
from dust, and will go back to dust, totally alone.
- 98 ：
- I'm very input based and I prefer reading books to talking to people myself, I
actually find quite a few similarities in what we each want. I want to go a
step further and replace everything with its English counterpart as much as
possible. At the moment I'm using 2ch, which is a Japanese forum, and I want to
replace it with an English forum.
Moving to another country is not easy. But I want to do what I can do while
being in Japan.
I already stopped talking to Japanese people some time ago. But at the moment
I'm still using Japanese websites. I want to change it.
Also, for some reason, having external inputs triggers me to think, even if the
input is not from highly intelligent people. (It's not easy to have someone
intelligent to talk to. I have to make compromises on this point.) I'm an input
based person in that I can't think properly if I don't have external inputs.
- 99 ：
- I think what I want to have is a place for having output activities. I'm doing
most input activities in English already, and what I lack is a place to have
output activities in English.
- 100 ：
- Have you tried YouTube and Twitter for your output purposes?
I like Twitter basically, although for the past month or so I've
been rather inactive there. But when I feel like it, I write a
hell of a lot there.
As I've been saying, I'm into YouTube these days. I've always liked
YouTube as a means of educating myself by watching videos
on International politics, movies or movie clips, documentaries
on celebrities, people of letters, and international affairs, along with
numerous other issues.
But, since I'm a complete idiot when it comes to computing,
I had long stayed inactive in contributing my output until
about three years ago or so. Then little by little I struggled to
learn how to use the medium to contribute my own videos.
Now I regard it as by far the best means of educating myself.
I don't expect people to see my videos. Obviously I'd be
thriled to death if some of my videos manage to allure
numerous followers, but I don't expect too much.
After all, as I said again and again, I don't think that real
communication is impossible. Even the most popular YouTubers
and tweeters must be all alone, without real contact with their
audiences. Almost all members of the audiences remain silent,
just liking some of the original posters' videos or tweets or
posting one- or two-line comments. That's all.
Even if some of us do manage to allure millions of followers,
then what? That too wouldn't amount of a hill of beans in this
crazy world, as Humphrey Bogart says in "Casablanca."
100〜のスレッドの続きを読む
TEAP【日本英語検定協会】
【フィリピン英会話】レアジョブ7【高品質】
ネイティブ英会話Camblyを語るスレ3
英和辞典 13
30半ば男がこれから英語を学びたい
【セルビア】DMM英会話【ボスニア】
レアジョブ■4レッスン目
ヘミングウェイの日はまた昇るを精読するスレ
youtubeの英語コメントを翻訳してくれるスレ
どうやって日本語できるようになった？
--------------------
【地震】ラウンジャー安否確認スレ
【mobage】アイドルマスターシンデレラガールズ25552人目
【朗報】映画「天気の子」１４０億円突破でラストサムライを抜く
雑談 阿良々木火憐
∬∬∬ザスパクサツ群馬289湯目∬∬∬
石井慧 Part.42
Jざつ680
_/_/ 車の修理屋さん ( in LA) _/_/
コンビニ配送Part48
サマスタ ベストボディ周辺を語ろう
【過去スレ探訪】唯一神、田代まさし伝説。
【お菓子板の恥】自作自演ステマ宣伝複数板荒らし「スイパラ社員」を語ろう【スイーツパラダイス】
60歳以上のライダー 【その11】
【バーチャルYoutuber】にじさんじアンチスレ1825【深夜のハジメ支部待機スレ】
人形を安く売っているお店知ってます？
(´･ω･｀)ゆきりん♪ Lesson.8
ｳｯﾁｬｰ内田って兄貴に怒鳴り散らされてなかったね
マウス型コントローラ総合 part21
花火職人になろう2
副業を考えてる人！来なさい！
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