> Not a bad day, just a pet peeve Another commenter hinted that my "bad day" comment might come off as condescending. If so, please forgive the oversight. > I

> Not a bad day, just a pet peeve Another commenter hinted that my "bad day" comment might come off as condescending. If so, please forgive the oversight. > I mean, if you're going to pontificate about Japanese literature on the world stage, is it really too much to ask that you read some of it? This feels like a low blow to me. There are some pretty amazing linguistic ideas that have come from linguists analyzing languages they don't personally speak. More to the point, though, in my experience there is a tendency for Japanese ability to establish feelings of superiority and inferiority amongst Japanese learners. I certainly don't know your personal psychology, but your comments in this thread remind me a lot of the hierarchy-establishing social dynamics that happens all too often amongst expats here. > But claiming that omou has 29 radically different meanings is wrong Maybe? I use Japanese daily in personal and professional life, and I certainly am unable to completely write off that claim as wildly innacurate. Delineating between meanings is more of an art than anything else. How many meanings does the word "talk" have? Approaching your partner and solemnly pronouncing "I'd like to talk," seems to have a different meaning than approaching your partner and chirpily suggesting, "I'd like to talk." How does the meaning change if we declare the setting to be a funeral? What about at home? What if the conversants aren't romantic partners but parent-child? What if the statement is made alone in one's bedroom? All of those feel like they "mean" something different to me, and I would likely render some of them in different Japanese. Similarly if we reverse the roles of English and Japanese. Anyway, you've seem to hit on a topic that I enjoy discussing. Thanks for engaging. How long have you been studying Japanese?