Feb 20, 2025
Guests:
J, S, K, M
Discussion Content:
S arrived first, and I asked if he came by car or on foot. He came by car, and so I asked what kind of exercise he does, to which he replied golf and swimming. He said he swims at the Inzai Swimming Center, which is right next to the Inzai Garbage Recycling Center, and heat from the garbage incinerator is used to heat the swimming pool water.
However, the current Inzai Garbage Recycling Center will be moving in about two years, and apparently there won’t be a swimming pool at the new location.
Just then, M, K and J arrived. M said there were no vegetables today out the front of the Indian restaurant, where there are usually some for sale every day.
M then said that she found her pants that had been missing for a long time, and which we had asked her Tarot cards about just last week. Apparently, she had placed them under a large photo album on the floor inside her closet, and so she saw them when tidying up.
This reminded me of the Japanese lady, Marie Kondo, who became famous in the USA for her book about tidying up your house. K said she has 3 of her books, which her husband bought for her. I said the movement was sometimes given an exaggerated name: “The Japanese Art of Tidying Up”.
K said she is also following another woman who does similar things called Hideko Yamashita. She said she is more into creating empty space between objects, and I said that might be “minimalism”. I was surprised that everyone already knew the word “minimalism”, but apparently Japanese people also use the same English word. (Later on, I mentioned the word “catchphrase”, and was similarly surprised to see that Japanese people all know and use that word as well, along with the word “catchy”).
While speaking, K said the word “water” (for some reason), and I noticed that she said it with a very good American English pronunciation, like “wah-der”. I then asked M to say it as well, as she spent time in Britain, and she said it with a typical British English pronunciation, like “wor-ter”.
J mentioned that some British accents drop the letter “t” completely from the middle of the word, which is true. This type of pronunciation is called a “glottal stop” or a “glottal t”, and it makes the word “water” sound like “wor-ar”, or “button” sound like “buh-n”, etc.
I said a good tongue-twister to test this would be the sentence:
“A little bit of butter makes the batter taste better”
J then told us how the people in Singapore pronounce English words. Because there’s a strong Chinese influence in Singapore, they often “skip over” the endings of words, such as the word “like”, which sounds like just “lai”.
This reminded me of an Australian comedian who said he met a Chinese man who was saying, “My wife is working in the back yard”, but it sounded just like “My wai wah i ba ya”.
What’s amazing though, is that it is still pretty clear what is being said, even though the ending is completely missing.
J said this means that it’s very hard for people learning English because there’s such a wide variety of accents and pronunciations for them to get used to, which is true.
Similarly, J mentioned there are lots of words and phrases in Japanese which are used incorrectly, and over time their usage has become different to their original meaning, so this can make it confusing when even native speakers of a language are speaking to each other.
I know the same thing is true in English as well, and I mentioned how I’ve noticed in the past few years people misusing the word “proud” in social media comment sections. The definition of the word “proud” requires that there be some kind of direct connection between the people – such as family, friends, student, coach, etc., - but recently people use it to express their feelings of admiration towards celebrities and people they see in the media who are actually complete strangers.
Useful phrases:
Garbage recycling
garbage disposal
incinerate (burn)
landfill (to bury garbage)
clean up
tidy up
minimalism
exaggerated
tongue-twister
batter
a glottal stop
proud