Asia Excluding Japan, Quirking English Intonation, SI & Third Language

I don’t quite get it. It seems to me that many Japanese don’t see Asia as the area their country belongs to and they love to separate Japan from the rest of Asia. When they say “Asia,” this “Asia” almost always excludes their own country. Making this thinking doubly unbelievable is the fact that there were days when Japan was trying to make the rest of the vast area of Asia a part of it. It may not be so surprising because of, not despite, this history. Their mindset seems to be so narrow, superficial and even arrogant just as it was many years ago.

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The intonation of English spoken by most Chinese-Singaporeans is like a needle inserted between nerves. Their way of stress placement makes my body squirm as when a needle goes into a position in a way that it doesn’t hit any nerve directly causing great pain but it touches two adjacent nerves only so slightly.

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マリさんの「米原万里の『愛の法則』」と「言葉を育てる：米原万里対談集」を読んだ。「愛の法則」は講演を記録したもの。同時通訳を同時通訳者として経験した今、彼女がくれるヒントが実際的なものとして理解できてありがたい。それにしても出版社の集英社はなんで「愛の法則」なんて題にしたんだろう？そして帯に書かれているのが、前者が「最初で最後の講演録集」と筑摩書房がちくま文庫として出した後者は「最初で最後の対談集」と、なぜかそっくり。

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The idea of learning a third language is something that comes back to me. Korean, Chinese, Spanish. I only dabbled in them without reaching the critical mass that should have snowballed my learning. A third language, I believe, will make the language part of my brain triangular, allowing me to see the three languages in perspective. Now my interest is starting to tilt toward Russian. I admit this tilt is very much influenced by the books by Yonehara Mari that I’ve read.