0612.6
22:59:24

Birthday Schmirthday

Jump to Comments Yeah, so Tuestag was birthday 22, which I will hereafter refer to as “the deuce-deuce.” It started off small with an election I could win: the requisite facebook birthday spam, the occasional “happy birthday” going to class. Nothing big. I got some fun things in the mail. I’m still waiting on a figurine of Sir Topham Hatt, whose intrinsic excellence I have recently rediscovered. Went to classes, quiz bowl practice. I convinced some of my cronies from the old days here at Harding to go with me to the fabulous Mexican restaurant “Mi Ranchito” (hereafter referred to as “Mi Ranch”) for the standard Mexican enchiladas verdes. Unknowingly I had just set myself up to be sombreroed and serenaded by the restaurateurs! OH YAIS. Den afta dat, I returned to the old Cone 109B, and sifted through my second wave of birthday facebook festivities. Later at the library, Molly Morris (hereafter referred to as “momo”) presented me with a rather large gift certificate to the rather prominent hangout of the (pseudo-)intellectual élite, the coffee shop Midnight Oil (hereafter referred to as “MO Rocca”). In addition to her faux-social-club (hereafter referred to as “I Eta Pi”) sisters, Bryan the awesome dude from Spanish class ages ago, several fun dudes from Knights, and the kings of the (pseudo-)intellectual élite themselves, Alex (the) Cone and Jason (J-Ball) Ballenger were in attendance. The latter two, in order to escalate their political science major mock-feud with my roommates, presented me with a large apple tart (hereafter referred to as an apple “tort”). It is very tasty! Anyhow, in case the Nazz (hereafter referred to as the Nazz) is still reading this nonsense: the envelope containing the aforementioned gift certificate had various Japanese bons mots written on it. While some of them were translated for me, the following sequence was not. I have painstakingly transcribed it into the digital medium to the best of my abilities, and it appears to read thus: ベンさんはとてもすごいですよ。ねたしのともだちです。The first two kana are my name, I think! I’ll be home in a little more than a week. Thank goodness.

4 Comments

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4 Comments

  • The Nazz
    GMT-0500 15:35:02 0612.7 (Thu)

    It reads, “Ben is very awesome. He is my friend.” (Since it’s addressed to you, the more appropriate translation into English would be “Ben, you are very awesome. You are my friend.” Japanese often uses 3rd person in place of 2nd person. I’d say 95% of the time in academics, 80%+ in real life. Japanese is a context-driven language.)

    The only incorrect character is the ね (ne) in “ねたし” (“netashi”), which should probably read “わたし” (“watashi”; I, me, myself) since the clause likely says “He is my friend,” or “Watashi no tomodachi desu.” Otherwise, the transcription is perfect. You even managed to differentiate between hiragana (most of it) and katakana (your foreign name) when typing it here. Good on you!

    The politeness level is interesting. (More on that explained via e-mail if you would like. I’m afraid this reply is already cluttered up with footnote material.)

    In other news, Happy (Belated) Birthday! That’s two friends, now, that I’ve not been able to wish a happy birthday in time. In less than one month. Bad luck, bad karma, bad something. ^^; I am glad you had fun, amused to see you have a revived interest in Shining Time Station (apparently, the interest never died in the UK — I know one British teen who sports a Thomas avatar on our forum), and happy to have had a bit of Japanese talk with you. Cool that you have a friend who speaks Japanese at Harding — what a diverse campus!

  • BHLamb
    GMT-0500 18:05:16 0612.7 (Thu)

    Yeah, that first one of the second sentence was a duesy: the handwriting looked to be an “I” superstruck with a mitred “3” (you know, the style the top part of the 3 is a horizontal line). I had very little idea what to make of it; though otherwise the sans-serif-analogue Japanese typeface is rather similar to Japanese handwriting.

  • Matt
    GMT-0500 18:54:38 0612.8 (Fri)

    Why did you not just ask the person who wrote that Japanese on there what it means?

    Also happy birthday.

  • BHLamb
    GMT-0500 19:00:47 0612.8 (Fri)

    Didn’t have a chance to.

    Also thanks.