People in China still can't express their thoughts freely. My longing for freedom of speech is so strong. For me it's more important than economic prosperity. I admit I might not belong to the majority, but there must be many people like me in China, and thinking about them, I can't help but feel for them. At the moment Hong Kongers are fighting for democracy and freedom. I just hope for the best for them. (I have some Hong Konger friends personally, and I'm worried about them.)
The Tiananmen Square incident. Hmmm, that's another big issue to delve into. I too should study it hard and ponder over it seriously. Although I pay high respect to China as if it is my country's father, I know its evils as well. China seems to have been committing numerous atrocities throughout its history. While its defensive attitude, I mean, its desperate attitude to protect the Han race's integrity not only by engaging in defense but by trying to protect its national borders is in a way understandable when you consider its past being occupied and abused by numerous foreign powers such as Britain, France, and Japan, the country is definitely going over the top when massacring and sending numerous (perhaps even a million) Uyghurs and Tibetans to concentration camps.
Mao Zedong was allegedly responsible for the death of tens of millions of Chinese through avoidable famine. Chairman Mao didn't seem to give a damn about the commons. In order to achieve his goal of making his country a superpower in the region, thereby making it competitive with ever-powerful Russia and other countries, he was busy trying to attract the attention of Russia and other important powers by sending them huge supplies of food and money. Bu food and money was what China constantly desperately needed itself.
Very highly populated indeed, China was supposed to strive to produce enough food and feed its own nation. The country could never ever afford to grant that much food and money to other countries. Mao knew very well that his own compatriots were very hungry, including his own extended family. But he was selfish enough to eat luxurious food himself while letting his family and the rest of the nation go hungry and even starve to death. Hence the notorious starvation of tens of millions of Chinese to death. Why did Mao want to grant so much money and food to Russia and elsewhere? In exchange, he needed technical assistance that enabled his country to become a nuclear superpower owning nuclear bombs.
As far as foreign accents in TV dramas and movies, they bug me too. But I do like regional accents, like Southern American, Midwestern American, Irish, and regional British accents. Although I am still not completely comfortable in understanding spoken English in movies, especially in war and gangster movies, I enjoy the wide range of regional accents of English native speakers seemingly from different parts of the land.
As far as regional dialogs used in novels, I enjoy reading works written by novelists coming from different parts Britain or the USA. Several years ago there was a time when I was much into reading Thomas Hardy, a 19th-century novelist from Dorset, England. I read six of his novels at the time. Dorset is to the southwest of London. I don't know what the English dialect of the locals today is like, but at least the 19th-century dialect used in the author's novels is interesting. At first it was hard for me to follow the dialog, full of dialectal expressions and transcriptions of speech with dialectal accent. But with lots of patience, I got used to it.
Likewise, I read two of Charles Dickens' novels. They too are full of regional speech. The same is true of D.H. Lawrence.
As for movies, I enjoyed watching "Angela's Ashes," where the characters speak with the dialectal accent of Ireland. (I don't remember which part of Ireland it is from.)
I enjoy regional speech in novels and movies so much that I've reached a point where I don't even like works of art using no dialectal accent or local expressions. In gangster movies and other movies set in ghettos, for example, the characters often use Black English accents and Italian immigrants' accents, for example. They're both beautiful if those accents are the authentic accents the locals were brought up with.
True, I don't like the accents of speakers who speak English as a foreign language and can't speak with a standard English accent. But I happen to like the regional or dialectal accents and phrasing that the children of immigrant parents and of African American families. Although substandard, those are the accents and speech patterns that the speakers are brought up with. Such languages I like. I wish I could learn to emulate some of their dialects, but I'm not good at it.
As for regional accents, I like them too. Irish accents seem to attract me, although I haven't had many opportunities to listen to them. I like Southern American accents, too.
I don't know how my taste has been developed, but at the moment it seems that I like Southern American accents and Irish accents. I like American accents in general, and Canadian and British accents are just fine, but Australian or New Zealand accents don't attract me as much. Maybe it's because I haven't exposed myself to such accents that much. But I'm at a very early stage of learning English and my taste may change in the future.
As for the sound of languages, I'm attracted by Italian. (I wrote the other day that I studied some languages when I was young. I studied German, French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese other than English.) At that time I didn't get attracted by the sound of the Italian language, but recently I found that I like it. Maybe there might be some other languages, the sound of which attract me more, especially in Europe.
Your level is a whole lot different. I don't know at all about dialects in a written format.
As for copying their accents, or the influence by listening to their accents, I want to learn languages in natural ways. I want to just try to mimic the way they speak. I try to listen carefully to how the speak. Listening to their accents seems to affect my English without me knowing it. I normally speak with an American accent, at least that is what I'm trying to, but I often speak with a British accent. I suspect it might be partly because I was listening to BBC radio program. (British accents seem to be more sticky to me than American ones, even though I want to first acquire an American accent.) My English is not very firm, and listening to regional accents affects my English, and I'm kinda trying to avoid listening to regional accents other than American ones, which limits the programs I can watch or listen to. But I'm not very strict with this. I just tend to postpone watching British programs for this reason.
About China and its history, I respect its culture and its language. Knowing that they have tried to destroy their own culture in Mao Zedong's time is just sad. CCP may attribute China's economic growth to its ruling and they might try to justify their rule for that, but there was no reason for China not to grow economically in the first place, with such a good location and weather and resource and population and excellent language. The leaders of China and some people in China don't need to be afraid of losing power by changing its system.
A million of Chinese students and their supporters gathered in and around Tiananmen Square before the incident. I read an article the other day that people in mainland China started showing their support for protesters in Hong Kong by uploading photos in which their messages and their partial IDs such as the cover of their passport or driver's licence card are shown. Maybe their longing for the direction toward freedom and democracy hasn't died down. Whether the power wins or people win, it will also eventually affect the lives of us people in Japan in the future. (I'm afraid the people in Hong Kong might be fighting a losing battle. The international society doesn't seem to be aware enough of what's happening, nor they don't bother to get involved. Apart from that, the world seems to have changed its direction some time ago already to anti globalism once again.)
When World War II ended people in many countries got awoken to a new level, but it didn't happen to people in some countries. I don't blame such countries for that. I personally see such things as kind of biorhythm-like cycles. (This view must sound strange to many people.) Fortunately for Japan, America was one of such countries that got awaken at the end of the war. (Or maybe America was the only exception that it was in such a state before the end of the war.) It's not that I don't blame America for what it did to Japanese civilians, nor I support America's position. It's just that I tend to see things from different angles.
I have such a habit of seeing things differently, and I don't just blame China for its actions. (Subjectively I want to blame them, but I'm kinda detached from normal views, which enables me to see things calmly and objectively.)
Too complex theme to talk about in one post. Anyways, I think I need to think about it more in the future.
As you say, international relations and politics are too complex. China alone, even when the issue is confined to history, and again even when it is limited to just two or three centuries of local history, is a discipline that deserves decades of dedicated study by a Harvard-level professor. International issues, when you look at the world in general throughout human history, are an immensely big discipline to cover. Mao Ze Dong alone is a big subject to tackle.
Two years ago or so, I was studying the history of the Vietnam War with American military involvement. I read about a thousand pages of related history in English, together with about 500 pages in Japanese as well. I also watched a total of 20 DVDs worth of documentaries and movies on the Vietnam War. That too is a tremendously vast field of study.
Since I was very weak at history when I was in school, failing to memorize anything at all in the subject, I had always felt this vast lack of knowledge in my brains when it came to social studies and history. That's what prompted me to at least try to study a little, although not much, of the history of Japan and of the world.
I have been reading comments by people, Hongkongers and people outside Hong Kong, on what's going on in Hong Kong. I wish I had a chance to visit Hong Kong before this incident happened and before freedom might get lost there.
I want to visit there even if it's after freedom was lost there. It will prompt me to think.
Vietnam War is a war that I haven't had enough opportunities to look into.
Inspired by your post, I started watching a series of videos (a long film consists of 10 parts?) on Vietnam War, that has been available on Netflix and had long been in my watch list but I didn't take time to start watching. It has 10 videos in it and the title of which is "The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick." I've just watched the first episode, and it seemed the film is well made.
As it's a documentary film, the English in it is spoken slowly and clearly, and they sometimes use a bit difficult words or literary expressions, which is good for my English study, but I didn't get some important parts. I need to watch them again in the future to better understand it.
I would be ideal to watch films (or books) created by directors form the other side as well. But I don't know if they, for example authors from China, can be as objective and honest with themselves under CCP's rule. This lengthy film will take a long time for me to watch. I'm going to watch it slowly.
Yes, the Ken Burns documentary video, about 20 hours long, is by far the greatest available so far when it comes to a documentary on the Viet Nam war where the producers and other personnel seem at least to try hard to be objective. I imported a copy of the entire series on DVD format from Britain and saw it twice. Since my English ability, especially my listening comprehension, is still not enough, I have to watch it many more times before I can really understand it fully.
By the way, there is a written material sort of bundled with the video:
The Vietnam War: An Intimate History Hardcover – September 5, 2017 by Geoffrey C. Ward (Author), Ken Burns
I own a copy of the book. It's 850 pages long. Much, maybe one third, of the book is basically the same as what is described in the video. But the book seems to convey even more. I'm afraid I have read only a part of it. But I believe it can be a good companion for viewers of the video version. It can, I believe, be especially helpful for us nonnative English speakers who can confirm what we think we have heard in the video in written form.
As for other books on the Vietnam War, I own a copy of:
Reporting Vietnam: Part One Reporting Vietnam: Part Two
The Library of America, the publisher, is a non-profit organization and has long been publishing great treasures of the USA in journalism, literature, and nonfiction in beautiful, stitch-sewn, cloth-bound form. Although the series seem at a glance to be a bit expensive, typically between 3,500 and 5,000 yen a copy, these books are actually good buys. I mean, all these books -- not only those related to Viet Nam but all other literary, nonfiction, and journalistic materials -- are sold in very small installments by other publishers, who typically sell only 200 to 300 pages (which are only a tiny fragment of any copy available in the Library of America).
Although each book available from this publisher seems rather expensive, one book is typically between 800 and 1,500 pages long. For the length of each book, the series can be called rather cheap.
If you're into books rather short, then you can go to other publishers and buy books 200 to 400 pages long each. The Library of America (LoA), on the other hand, are all very long. One book of novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne the famous American novelist available from LoA, is 1,500 pages long but sells only for 3,500 yen.
These days you can shop around in different bookstores all over the world, both for secondhand and new books, so you can find the best buy rather easily. These days I'm into secondhand books. Some of the secondhand books are clean and in reasonably good condition. I used to be afraid to buy secondhand books from book distributors from abroad for fear that they might sell very dirty copies. But I 've become much poorer than before and I've recently begun to buy lots of secondhand copies from abroad. To my surprise, although some books are sold in rather bad condition, there are some in very good condition available for very low prices.
More importantly, the Library of America (LoA) sells books bound beautifully, in very high-quality form. You will love everything about the books they sell. I'm head over heels in love with the publisher.
Thanks for the info. It would be helpful when I, or anyone else, want to know more about the war. On Netflix, the film has only 10 episodes. Maybe one episode on Netflix is equal to two episodes on DVD. Even though I only watched one episode, I noticed that the war seems a lot more complex than I thought. And, not only the war part, but also how Westerners, namely French people here who were occupying Vietnam, were seeing and treating Vietnamese makes me think about the situation back then as well as the situation today. (Yeah, I kinda noticed their effort to try to be as objective as they can. I like it a lot. Some American documentary films I have watched in the past had a very imposing manner with its noisy sound effects and endless assertive narration, as if the creator was trying to "educate" the viewer, and I didn't like their manners very much, but in this film it's not noisy and they give us time to consider and ponder over the situation.) Today the world seems to be heading toward anti globalism once again and China has become a superpower. Maybe knowing about the Vietnam War might be helpful in this sense, too.
About the secondhand books, I have bought a few secondhand books, one book each time, from overseas in the past. The condition was really good, and the price was reasonable. I prefer paper books to digital books. I have been thinking of starting reading English books. I might start buying secondhand books at bookstores abroad. Thanks for the helpful info again.
The above Wikipedia article gives a table of 10 episodes, some shorter and others longer. Episode 1 (Deja Vu) is 1 hour 22 minutes, while Episodes 3 and 4 are nearly 2 hours long. There are only 10 episodes. In addition, there are some special footage showing some interviews, telling you how the graphic personnel were doing their creative jobs by making footage look as visually beautiful as possible, while the musical personnel selected the most appropriate songs that were most popular while each stage of the war was on.
The Wikipedia articles goes on to say that the documentary took 10 full years and 20 million dollars to make. With such a huge budget, and with selected personnel versed in their respective fields of expertise, the documentary has managed to look and sound artistically soothing, beautiful, and profound to viewers. Before I saw the Ken Burns movie, I always thought that documentaries were fact-based and therefore we viewers can't complain even if they are ugly to watch. But this masterpiece manages to be an artistic success as well, not only a source of information.
In any case, every time I get in touch with any such masterpiece., whether it is a movie, a documentary, a novel, a journalistic work, or an academic paper or something, I certainly wish I understood English better, whether spoken or written. If I were able to understand and absorb any kind of information in English as well as an educated native speaker does, or even better than they do, I would be able to learn tons of precious things around the world.
Thank you for the info! I was watching it just casually without knowing such things. 10 years and 20 million dollars..! They must have put lots of effort to make it. That explains why it is very well made.
Vietnam is a land of treasures. Before I started to delve into the Vietnam War two years ago or so, I had known practically nothing about the country. The Vietnam War was one of by far the greatest tragedies and important issues that I had always wanted to delve into. Then I began to study it. I was flabbergasted by the greatness of the Vietnamese.
The more I studied the history of the Vietnam War and other issues surrounding the country and its people, the more in awe of them I became. Just pick any shred of the history of the war and start to study it. You'll be stunned.
The Vietnamese may be the only one non-superpower that has actually beat and chased away not only one but three superpowers of the world: China, France, and the USA. What is it about these then poverty-stricken, seemingly emaciated peasants actually beat these nations, one of which is the long-time Asian superpower and the two others of which are quintessential Western superpowers? Even the USA, which no one else had even dared to beat, and which was powerful enough to devastate Japan through its atomic bombs, suffered unhealable trauma and had to retreat from the land.
Two super power’s crash, America’s miscalcuration of the effect of each strategies on the result concerned with kill, airred scenes of the actual battle field which caused anti-war movements around America, such things might be the reason of America’s defeat. If battles on the main land had been had with Japan not offering the defeat, the same sort result might have been had, with 22 or so atomic bombs dropped down sequentially after each preparation of the bomb, on the main cities as having been planned in America’s government.
I've watched the second part of the Vietnam War. Now they have conflicts between religions, Christianity and Buddhism, because of the government's treatment of them, and people in the south don't support it's then government. People in Vietnam were fighting with each other, but they didn't have a firm position to stand on, and that must have made the situation more difficult for people there. I have mixed feelings when it comes to the idea of introducing AI, but if it works as a fair judge, it seems to me that having a platform with an AI as a judge where people can debate to change anything is better than trying to resort to violence. When people feel stuck and come to believe that they have no way to change the situation other than turning to violence, then they turn to it. But, to me, I'm quite doubtful if people get satisfied with the result of such a process. (But possibly, I guess at times results with pain might be needed, for some people, to psychologically accept things. Again, I don't like the idea, but sadly, their problem seemed very complex and they didn't have any good platform.) I wonder if Vietnamese today could have successfully processed what they had in the past, given that it seemed so complex and difficult.
>>126 Having repelled superpowers three times is indeed something.
>>127 Yeah, America was backing up the South Vietnam, but was not engaging in an all-out battle. They couldn't distinguish normal citizens from Viet Congs. If they were fighting an all-out battle against the whole nation, the situation might have been different.
I don't remember how many Buddhist monks burned themselves on a busy street in Saigon while everyone were watching them and reporters were taking photos of them. Maybe eight or so killed themselves that way.
Amazing Story Of The Burning Monk Who Changed The World
