Have you ever

Now that school has started again, I'm going to start practicing the grammar points we're learning. Today's lesson is "Have you ever done V?"

なっとうをたべたことがありますか。
--ええ、たべたことがありますが、好きじゃなかったよ。

温泉に入ったことがありますか。
--ええ、入ったことがあります。気持ちがよかったですね。

パリへ行ったことがありますか。
--いいえ、いったことがありません。

Big Bend NP へ行ったことがありますか。
--いいえ、いったことがありません。でも夫と二人はあした行きます。週末休みです。--

Hatch Chili Festival

週末は私たちのスーパーで唐辛子祭りです。その唐辛子 New Mexico Chili です。

母の出身はニューメキシコです。子供の時にニューメキシコ料理を作りました。唐辛子を使いました。黄色なはたはニューメキシコのはたです。私はテキサスにニューメキシコのはたを見るのが快い。

Generally Speaking

This weekend it's the Hatch Green Chili festival at our local supermarket. These chili peppers are from New Mexico. (I think they are Anaheim chili peppers, but sometime they are called cayenne pepper.)

My mother is originally from New Mexico. When I was a child, she used to cook a lot of New Mexico dishes. She used chili peppers a lot. (In those days, we could only find canned chili peppers outside of New Mexico.)

The yellow flag is the state flag of New Mexico. When I see it flying in Texas, it makes my heart swell with pride.

A Concrete Silence

Ken Loo has written some interesting observations on the differences between writing in Japanese and writing in English. (He's turned comments off in his newly designed blog, Notes of Doubt, so I'll comment here.)

I agree with Ken Loo that the standard for written English emphasizes active voice (A does B), concrete adjectives and adverbs, and a focus on the subject, not the writer. This is the English of reports, instruction manuals, and newspaper articles. Creative writing (fiction and poetry), however, tends to bend these rules in order to be "artistic."

I worked as a technical writer for more than 15 years, so I was obsessed with objectivity in my writing. To keep the focus is on the subject matter, not the writer, a technical writer must write so that the reader never "hears" the writer's voice. (That is, the reader should not know what the writer's opinions or feelings are on the subject.)

Writing blogs is change for me. I've had to develop my voice, to make my writing more personal--as Ken Loo says "closer to the heart". Learning to write in Japanese is twice the struggle. Rather than write "A does B", I have to translate, not just my words, but my whole way of thinking, my whole way of expressing an idea. So "A does B" becomes "As for A, B has been done."

English is all about actors (nouns) and actions (verbs). Be direct. Be specific. Be concrete. As for Japanese, it is all about states of being and becoming と思います。

PS. That reminds me of the saying, "Music is not the notes, but the spaces between the notes." If languages were music, then English is focused on the notes, on what is said. Japanese is focused on the space between the notes, on the silences, on what is left unsaid.

PPS. My communication style tends to be direct and to the point. When I visited my family, I noticed that most of them preferred indirect forms of expression, softened by "I feel" and "I think". They thought I was too brusque and aggressive. I thought they were too indecisive and afraid to express themselves.

Las Vegas, 1953

ほかのラスベガスの写真です。1953年です。

Refreshing

先日はオーシテンの天気が涼しかったですよ。先週は42度でした。でも一昨日わ32度以下でした。雨が降ったので、芝は緑色になりました。今朝は芝を刈りました。

Generally Speaking

The last few days the weather in Austin has been refreshingly cool. Last week it was 110F degrees (the second highest temperature ever recorded here). But the day before yesterday, the temperature didn't even top 90F. We got some rain and the grass greened up again. This morning I finally had to mow it.

Las Vegas, 2003

パリじゃない。ラスベガスですよ。変な所ですね.。

出身ちょっと違います。でも両親と兄弟住んでいます。私も住んでいました。三十年以後住んでいました。

いまはラスベガスがぜんぜん違います。今は大きくてきれいけどとても変所ですよ。

Generally Speaking

Paris it ain't. It's Las Vegas. What a strange place!

It's not really my "hometown" even though my parents and most of my brothers and sisters live there. I used to live there, too...thirty years ago. Las Vegas has changed a lot in thirty years. It's much bigger, and it's actually prettier. But one thing hasn't changed. It's still the strangest place on earth.

質問とコメント

1. Wow. I stop thinking in Japanese for a week or two and I completely forget how to do it. So, I beg your pardon if my grammar and idiomatic expressions fail to communicate. At least you can see some of my vacation photos. 2. Usually, when I visit my family in Las Vegas, I avoid the Strip. But one night, Joseph and I went with my youngest brother Matt to act like tourists. It was lot's of fun. Neither the Bellagio or the Paris were open the last time I was in town. 3. Las Vegas has changed a lot since I live there. Sixty percent of the town has been built in the last 30 years west of what used to be the western border of the city. The new sections of town are all nicely landscaped with wide roads that a Japanese or an English person would find hard to believe. I thought they were huge, and I'm used to big down here in Texas.

Grandpa West

私は両親の家にいるの時に古い写真を見ました。

この写真わ祖母と曾祖父です。

曾祖父わNew Mexicoにsheriffでした。

馬で乗りました。

ガンを取りました。

本当にワイルドウエストでした。

Generally Speaking

When I was at my parent's house, I looked through some old photographs. This one is of my grandmother and my great-grandfather. He was a sheriff in New Mexico. He rode a horse. He carried a gun. It really was the wild west.