Juliet Winters Carpenter Commentary

After I started this class, I soon realized that the unique ways of expression that Japanese is very hard to translate. They all have very similar meanings but have slight differences. Japanese people know they’re different because they have been knowing Japanese since they were born, however, it is difficult to distinguish for English speakers. I was able to relate to Juliet Winters Carpenter when she was talking about the differences between similar words such as “wakuwaku” and “dokidoki.” Also, while I was reading her piece, I realized that there are so many words related to the spirit in Japanese that are like onomatopoeia because I associate those words with sounds. Furthermore, she mentions the humor and playing around with words and names of characters and how she ended up using that humor to a different character, and I thought that is very interesting. When I read this part, I remembered how when movies, anime, or TV shows in Japan are brought overseas, sometimes the names of the characters are completely different, which I thought is very weird at first. For example, Tanaka-san turns into Mike in the English version of the movie. Another interesting part I found was when she mentioned “pa pa pa” because I use this phrase pretty often. I thought about what exactly this phrase means and realized that even though I use it often when I am asked to give a clear definition, I cannot. Because it is more of a nuanced and feeling problem. After I read Juliet Winters Carpenter’s writings, I realized that Japanese has many words that can be distinguished by nuances rather than definitions.

 

Mitsy