ダニエルの冒険

I was at a restaurant a few days ago for dinner. One of the staff greeted another, and I knew from the greeting that her shift had just started. I could tell, because she greeted him by saying “good morning” (おはようございます, ohayou gozaimasu). The first time I heard this, I was greeted by a private lesson teacher in Yamasa at 4pm with “good morning” and I thought it was a joke, but she explained that in Japan when people arrive at work, they often greet each other by wishing each other a good morning, even if their shift starts in the afternoon or even at night time.

If you’re a foreigner you might be greeted with the odd “harro!” (hello), especially from enthusiastic middle-school kids who have just started their English classes. It is no secret that the difference between R and L is negligible in Japanese. For example, in Lost in Translation Bill Murray took a while to understand why a woman sent to his room to entertain him was demanding that he “lip” her stocking. It shouldn’t be a big surprise though: R seems to vary a lot in difference regions. French Rs, Spanish Rs, Italian Rs, English Rs… even within English it varies—in Ireland we call it “or” and pronounce it just like the Americans do, but in England and the US it’s called “ar” and the English soften it so much it sometimes disappears altogether (put on your best posh English accent and say “our door”). In Japanese, it is simply pronounced similarly to L, and since there is no “L” in Japanese, they just blur together and out drops cacophonies such as “harro!!”.

What I have found particular interesting is how I have trouble learning new non-Japanese words because of this. One brand of ibuprofen tablets here is “Bufferin”, but I was calling it “Buffalin” in my head until I saw it written in English. On TV I saw a documentary about an elephant called “Randy” but I was calling him “Lundy” in my head until an American woman started talking in an interview about him. A ploblem it is, but at least it’s a cute ploblem.