This is my reply to a post about the "domo arigato, mr. roboto" song.
it got out of control! I had to step in as all the gaijin (foreigners/outsiders)
were getting a little too agrivated with each-other!
Hmmmmm.... What we're dealing with here is a couple of different problems.
I'm a semi-language-expert so if it helps, I'm pretty much spot on. So, correct
me if I'm wrong.
First
in my studies I've found that there's translation and transliteration,
the former
is translating one language to another. The latter is
using the characters of one
language (i.e. english) to "sound out"
the words of another
(i.e. Japanese). While this is all good
and true, the confusing part is that besides
transliteration for
Japanese there is Romanji. Romanji is also like transliteration in
the sense that it uses English to say Japanese words, however it is
taught that with Romanji you'd only be able to speak it and not
write it. I learned the vowels
in Japanese were like Spanish, in
the sense that there is only one way to
pronunciate them, however
writing them in English is different. you see "ou" and "o" are both
correct, it depends whether you are writing Romanji or writing out a
pronunciation.
"O" would be for writing Romanji.
"ou" would be for writing out a pronunciation.
for most people saying "thank you very much" is:
Domo Arigato Gozaimasu
Second
gozaimapoopa VS. gozaimasu
this dives into verb conjugation territory
simple:
-Masu present/future tense
-mapoopa past tense
third
I don't know how the song got started but being as that it was most
certainly
an English pun/play-on-words, I'd hate for anyone to
create a sort of "Japlish"
sub-language as it would be terribly
confusing for those of us who are trying to
learn proper Japanese.
thank you very much for your time and consideration.
