« June 2016 | Main | August 2016 »

July 30, 2016

Feckless or reckless?

A writer named Paul Pillar described Jeremy Corbyn as a "feckless left-winger", and a lot of people think that Boris Johnson is too reckless to be Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I just realized that "feckless" and "reckless" are different and the difference is just one letter. While I feel that Boris Johnson is a reckless person, I don't know if Jeremy Corbyn is feckless or not. I am interested in the context where the two words are used. Which word is more favored by those who want to criticize their antagonists? To you, which word causes more damage?

I prefer to be called "feckless" rather than to be called "reckless".

|

July 21, 2016

"A ridiculous overstatement"

Mr Nathan wrote: “Time to start killing these people till article 50 is invoked”, adding “perhaps remainers will get the message then.”

Ukip councillor Terence Nathan says 'Remainers should be killed until Article 50 invoked'
The Independent


Is Terence Nathan no more qualified to be a politician than Boris Johnson? I don't think he feels that he made a ridiculous statement. He instead feels that he just stated his honest opinion too strongly. What did he exactly want to convey with the phrase "time to start killing these people"?

|

July 20, 2016

About the word "radicalism"

I think that radicalism, fundamentalism, and extremism should be differentiated. They have different meanings

Extremism cannot have a good meaning because it simply means going too far. "The orange that is too hard squeezed yields a bitter juice." it is often a label for the people whose opinions and behaviors are extremely different from yours. Extremists might not believe that they are embracing extremism.

Fundamentalism means sticking to original principles or something, and it could have a moderate as well as an extreme form. (I tend to prefer revisionism to dogmatism. Rejecting any and all revision simply because it is revision, cannot be considered logical by any means.)

Radicalism is not necessarily the same as fundamentalism because the core spirit of radicalism is thinking through something critically and thoroughly, whereas fundamentalism tends to stick to some principle, which is regarded as sacred or self-evident. ( I tend to respect radicalism. On the other hand, I am well over thirty and think that our world is often more complicated than radicals admit and everything under the sun could have both a good aspect and a bad aspect. In addition to this, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. We always face unintended and unexpected results.)

|

July 16, 2016

What is going on in Turkey?

"There have been three successful coups in Turkey, a NATO ally, since 1960, and in 1997 the military carried out a 'soft' coup, issuing directives to the Turkish government that it was forced to accept. The military has cast itself as the traditional protector of secular, democratic rule. "-- USA TODAY

I am interested in the issues that triggered the military coup. It appears that secularism and the rule of law are the core of the issues. It is ironic, but in Turkey the military seems to be a proponent of secularism and democracy.

|

July 14, 2016

Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary

“We do not need to fear the Chinese,” he[Boris Johnson] said. “China will not dominate the globe. We do not need to teach babies Mandarin.” “Compared with the old British Empire, and the new American imperium, Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase.”-- The Independent

Boris Johnson’s appointment as Foreign Secretary is reportedly raising some eyebrows. Is Boris Johnson qualified to be Foreign Secretary? Is he qualified to be a prophet who are expected to give Brexit supporters some hope of reconstruction of the crushed empire?

Do you agree with his opinion about foreign language education in the UK?

P.S.
Don't get near to reckless Boris Johnson. He also looks very heavy. I wonder how many innocent cows no less than the same size of him are slaughtered for food every day in his backyard.

Boris Johnson knocks over 10-year-old during rugby game in Japan
The Guardian

|

July 12, 2016

What motivates you to learn the language?

I am interested in Chinese characters and the grammatical order of them in a sentence, but I feel that pronunciations are very difficult. I think that the German language is easier to learn because its pronunciation is not so complicated.

What motivates you to learn the language? I am interested in Chinese classics, but not in political documents and what you might call business Chinese. I prefer Karl Marx to Mao Zedong. If Geoge Orwell and W. Somerset Maugham had been Chinese, I would have studied their language. Perhaps, I would read Chinese classics by means of kanbun kundoku("漢文訓読" in kanji), which is character-by-character translation in a specific style of Japanese.

--------
The following is an example of kanbun kundoku. We read the original text by changing the order of the Chinese characters and adding kana letters.

楚人有鬻盾與矛者(『韓非子』「難編(一))
---> 楚人盾矛與鬻者有(楚人に盾と矛とを鬻ぐ者有り)

楚人(そひと)に楯(たて)と矛(ほこ)とを鬻(ひさ)ぐ者有り。

|

"no more than", "not less than", "no less than", and "not less than".

"When we use 'no less than ...', we add a little attitude to what we are saying."
englishforums.com

I am not sure if the above forum is authoritative, but you would notice the differences between " no more than", "not more than", " no less than", and "not less than". They are not interchangeable.

However, I don't know if native speakers of English do differentiate between "not more than something" and "no more than something". I read somewhere that they now tend to think that the two expressions are the same.

|

July 10, 2016

The English language and Chinese classics

Non-native speakers of English have, in a sense, wasted a lot of time learning the English language. I hope that some native speakers of English are willing to waste their precious time learning more than one foreign language, if they want to be sympathetic and fair to non-native speakers of English all over the world. As for which language to choose, economically speaking, scarcity as well as demand should be taken into account.

In Japan, Chinese classics are taught as 漢文 at junior-high and high schools. We read Chinese text in Japanese. I imagine that many of the young people in Mainland China cannot read the original Chinese text because it is not written in 簡体字(simplified letters), which I feel too simplified and very odd.

The following episode "矛盾" is extremely interesting.
http://protaka.sakura.ne.jp/mujyun/

|

« June 2016 | Main | August 2016 »