Japanese tongue twisters and suchlike.
Not so twisty, but this one might cause a stumble:
Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kuu kyaku da
The nextdoor guest is a guest who eats a lot of persimmons.
theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
Japanese tongue twisters and suchlike.
Not so twisty, but this one might cause a stumble:
Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kuu kyaku da
The nextdoor guest is a guest who eats a lot of persimmons.
Key sentences from my textbook, p. 197:
すしに わさびお いれないでください。
“Please don’t put any wasabi in the sushi.”
Our textbook is titled Japanese for Busy People, vol. I, and the lessons are organized around situations that a businessperson would want to handle. (A very early unit concerns exchanging business cards.) Each unit has a theme, like “Express gratitude,” or “Make a telephone call,” or “Order food at a restaurant.”
With more than a little nod to James Thurber’s “There’s No Place Like Home,” I remixed some of the unit themes into
Sensei was amused when I asked why Mr. Smith, in our textbook, did not use the o-prefix for politeness when asking the name of the fish in the tempura restaurant scene, おなまえ sted なまえ. She said, “Nobody uses the prefix in this situation—well, maybe some senior ladies would.”