[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Larry McVoy

    > Are you sure? Someone else said moshi was hi and mushi was bug. Does
    > mushi have two meanings?

Yes:

  http://www.nihongodict.com/?s=mushi

Actually, more than two! Japanese is chock-a-block with homonyms. Any
given Japanese word will probably have more than one meaning.

There's some story I don't quite recall about a recent Prime Minister who
made a mistake of this sort - although now that I think about it, it was
probably the _other_ kind of replication, which is that a given set of kanji
(ideograms) usually has more than one pronunciation. (I won't go into why,
see here:

  http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/prints/glossary.html#Reading  

for more.) So he was reading a speech, and gave the wrong reading for a word.
There is apparently a book (or more) in Japanese, for the Japanese, that lists
the common ones that cause confusion.

A very complicated language! The written form is equally complicated; there
are two syllabaries ('hiragana' and 'katakana'), and for the kanji, there are
several completely different written forms!

	Noel

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Nick Downing]

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Yes, I just looked it up too.

http://jisho.org/search/むし
States that mushi means "insect" and "the act of ignoring". (In Japanese
some verbs are nouns and used with the word "suru" meaning "do").

http://jisho.org/search/ばぐ
States that "bagu" means computer bug/error. That's also my recollection as
they use loan words for most of these technical things.

However, Japanese is NOT a complicated language. The spoken language is
very simple. The grammar and sound system are basically like English but
cut down and streamlined. It has a few unique features like "wa" but many
of the particles like "o" and "ga" have direct translations.

Where Japanese is harder to learn is the politeness levels of which there
are basically 4: rude, normal, polite and ultra polite. In ultra polite
there is a different vocabulary so that common actions such as seeing,
going, eating etc have to use a different word, however most ultra polite
language and basically all of the rude and polite language may be derived
systematically from the normal. We do this in English but less rigorously.

The other main thing is the writing system, well Japanese view it as a
beautiful thing and highly cultured but it's not. It's actually the world's
clunkiest writing system, in the 50s the Japanese government seriously
tried to get rid of it and replace with Latin letters like many other
sensible countries have done, and if they'd succeeded then learning
Japanese would be no more difficult than say Tagalog (Filipino) or Bahasa
(Indonesian/Malay). The reason they did not succeed is the many homonyms
resulting from Japanese's very limited sound system (about 50 syllables
compared with hundreds for English and thousands for Chinese or Vietnamese)
which makes Japanese a bit confusing/slow to read when written
phonetically. Note English also uses a similar system to disambiguate
homonyms.

cheers, Nick

On Feb 16, 2017 2:30 AM, "Noel Chiappa" <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:

>     > From: Larry McVoy
>
>     > Are you sure? Someone else said moshi was hi and mushi was bug. Does
>     > mushi have two meanings?
>
> Yes:
>
>   http://www.nihongodict.com/?s=mushi
>
> Actually, more than two! Japanese is chock-a-block with homonyms. Any
> given Japanese word will probably have more than one meaning.
>
> There's some story I don't quite recall about a recent Prime Minister who
> made a mistake of this sort - although now that I think about it, it was
> probably the _other_ kind of replication, which is that a given set of
> kanji
> (ideograms) usually has more than one pronunciation. (I won't go into why,
> see here:
>
>   http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/prints/glossary.html#Reading
>
> for more.) So he was reading a speech, and gave the wrong reading for a
> word.
> There is apparently a book (or more) in Japanese, for the Japanese, that
> lists
> the common ones that cause confusion.
>
> A very complicated language! The written form is equally complicated; there
> are two syllabaries ('hiragana' and 'katakana'), and for the kanji, there
> are
> several completely different written forms!
>
>         Noel
>
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[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Nemo]

On 15 February 2017 at 11:13, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I just looked it up too.

I know no Japanese but I could not improve on Noel's and Nick's answers.

My Japanese colleague was born in Japan and obtained his
computer-engineering degrees from  Japanese universities so I would
defer to him.  (He has lived here a few decades but married a Japanese
woman and they send their kid to a special Japanese school for
ex-patriats on the weekend.)

N.

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Rudi Blom]

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The advantage of Thai is that it's character based so at least I can
see the difference easily and try to replicate. Pronouncing correctly
and hearing correctly is a different kettle of fish all together
though.

On 16/02/2017, Nick Downing <downing.nick at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think Westerners are actually tone deaf as such. It's
> basically that we didn't exercise our ability to tell those tones
> apart when we were acquiring language, so we more or less lost the
> opportunity to learn it when we could. Although it can be learnt
> later, something that happens as a very natural process during
> language aquisition, becomes a very artificial process involving
> MONTHS or YEARS in the lab listening to tapes and testing oneself and
> so on. Acquiring tones is somewhat similar to having perfect pitch in
> music. There are courses out there that claim to teach you perfect
> pitch. And, I believe it CAN be learnt, but it is an extraordinary
> amount of work and will probably slide backwards if not maintained.
> Anyway, I still find the phenomenon really strange and intriguing. My
> wife is Vietnamese and I was at her relatives' house just tonight. I
> spoke a little Vietnamese to her aunt and she didn't understand me at
> all (as usual). It's because what sounds to us identical, sounds to
> her like a completely different word -- so much so, that her brain
> doesn't even register any similarity.
> cheers, Nick
> PS OT sorry.
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 8:36 PM,  <jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
>> Try Cantonese… 9 tones, or 10, or 12.  Nobody agrees on how many which
>> makes
>> it all the more fun.  The more I learn, the more I don’t know it just
>> adds
>> in more confusion.
>>
>>
>>
>> I never realized I was tondeaf until I moved to Hong Kong.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Rudi Blom
>> Sent: Friday, 17 February 2017 3:43 PM
>> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
>> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Mushi and Bagu
>>
>>
>>
>> Tonal languages are real fun. I'm living and working in Bangkok,
>>
>> Thailand and slightly tone deaf am still struggling.
>>
>>
>>
>> Which reminds me, regarding binary there are 10 types of people, those
>>
>> who understand and those who don't :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> rudi
>>
>>
>

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Nick Downing]

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I don't think Westerners are actually tone deaf as such. It's
basically that we didn't exercise our ability to tell those tones
apart when we were acquiring language, so we more or less lost the
opportunity to learn it when we could. Although it can be learnt
later, something that happens as a very natural process during
language aquisition, becomes a very artificial process involving
MONTHS or YEARS in the lab listening to tapes and testing oneself and
so on. Acquiring tones is somewhat similar to having perfect pitch in
music. There are courses out there that claim to teach you perfect
pitch. And, I believe it CAN be learnt, but it is an extraordinary
amount of work and will probably slide backwards if not maintained.
Anyway, I still find the phenomenon really strange and intriguing. My
wife is Vietnamese and I was at her relatives' house just tonight. I
spoke a little Vietnamese to her aunt and she didn't understand me at
all (as usual). It's because what sounds to us identical, sounds to
her like a completely different word -- so much so, that her brain
doesn't even register any similarity.
cheers, Nick
PS OT sorry.

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 8:36 PM,  <jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
> Try Cantonese… 9 tones, or 10, or 12.  Nobody agrees on how many which makes
> it all the more fun.  The more I learn, the more I don’t know it just adds
> in more confusion.
>
>
>
> I never realized I was tondeaf until I moved to Hong Kong.
>
>
>
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>
>
>
> From: Rudi Blom
> Sent: Friday, 17 February 2017 3:43 PM
> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Mushi and Bagu
>
>
>
> Tonal languages are real fun. I'm living and working in Bangkok,
>
> Thailand and slightly tone deaf am still struggling.
>
>
>
> Which reminds me, regarding binary there are 10 types of people, those
>
> who understand and those who don't :-)
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> rudi
>
>

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[jsteve]

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Try Cantonese… 9 tones, or 10, or 12.  Nobody agrees on how many which makes it all the more fun.  The more I learn, the more I don’t know it just adds in more confusion.

I never realized I was tondeaf until I moved to Hong Kong.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Rudi Blom
Sent: Friday, 17 February 2017 3:43 PM
To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

Tonal languages are real fun. I'm living and working in Bangkok,
Thailand and slightly tone deaf am still struggling.

Which reminds me, regarding binary there are 10 types of people, those
who understand and those who don't :-)

Cheers,
rudi

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[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Rudi Blom]

Tonal languages are real fun. I'm living and working in Bangkok,
Thailand and slightly tone deaf am still struggling.

Which reminds me, regarding binary there are 10 types of people, those
who understand and those who don't :-)

Cheers,
rudi

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Steve Nickolas]

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On Wed, 15 Feb 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 09:51:58AM -0500, Nemo wrote:
>> Follow-up to Larry's "Mushi! Mushi!" story
>> (http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/008149.html).
>>
>> I showed this to a Japanese acquaintance, who found it hilarious for a
>> different reason. He told me that a s/w bug is "bagu" -- a
>> semi-transliteration -- and "mushi" is "I ignore you".  So corporate
>> called, asked for status, and the technical guy said "I am going to
>> ignore you!" and then hung up.
>
> Wow, that's even better than "Bug, bug!".  Are you sure?  Someone else
> said moshi was hi and mushi was bug.  Does mushi have two meanings?
>

If you can believe this the Japanese version of "Pok��mon" occasionally 
puns on the dual meaning of "mushi" - ��ϟoҕ ("mushi wa mushi", more or 
less, "the bugs don't bug me").

-uso.

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[John Floren]

When I studied Japanese in high school, our teacher told us mushi is bug.
Bagu is a literal transliteration that may be more common in actual use,
but mushi certainly means bug.

On Feb 15, 2017 08:01, "Larry McVoy" <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 09:51:58AM -0500, Nemo wrote:
> > Follow-up to Larry's "Mushi! Mushi!" story
> > (http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/008149.html).
> >
> > I showed this to a Japanese acquaintance, who found it hilarious for a
> > different reason. He told me that a s/w bug is "bagu" -- a
> > semi-transliteration -- and "mushi" is "I ignore you".  So corporate
> > called, asked for status, and the technical guy said "I am going to
> > ignore you!" and then hung up.
>
> Wow, that's even better than "Bug, bug!".  Are you sure?  Someone else
> said moshi was hi and mushi was bug.  Does mushi have two meanings?
>
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[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 09:51:58AM -0500, Nemo wrote:
> Follow-up to Larry's "Mushi! Mushi!" story
> (http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/008149.html).
> 
> I showed this to a Japanese acquaintance, who found it hilarious for a
> different reason. He told me that a s/w bug is "bagu" -- a
> semi-transliteration -- and "mushi" is "I ignore you".  So corporate
> called, asked for status, and the technical guy said "I am going to
> ignore you!" and then hung up.

Wow, that's even better than "Bug, bug!".  Are you sure?  Someone else
said moshi was hi and mushi was bug.  Does mushi have two meanings?

[TUHS] Mushi and Bagu

[Nemo]

Follow-up to Larry's "Mushi! Mushi!" story
(http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2017-February/008149.html).

I showed this to a Japanese acquaintance, who found it hilarious for a
different reason. He told me that a s/w bug is "bagu" -- a
semi-transliteration -- and "mushi" is "I ignore you".  So corporate
called, asked for status, and the technical guy said "I am going to
ignore you!" and then hung up.

N.