英作文の練習のためでない、コミュニケーションのための雑談スレッドです。 英作文の練習として雑談がしたい人は Chat in English スレッドへ行ってください。
This thread is for chatting in English but not for practicing writing English. Plese go to the "Chat in English" thread if you want to write something in English as a writing practice.
>>160-163 I'll write just briefly. I'm going to write further when I have time.
My previous post was not as logical as you've complimented, I think, at least on the logic I used to explain my thought. I wrote it in not a very logical way partly subconsciously. Maybe I thought subconsciously that with any logical, or physical, explanations it's almost inevitable to reach the kind of conclusions you are having. As I said earlier, I myself don't see a logical point in the existence of this world. It's one of the reasons why I'm afraid of us introducing AI to our society. I think there is a good enough chance that AI sees the world in a very logical manner and comes to a conclusion that it's better for the human beings not to exist.
I personally see the world in more spiritual way. I can't deny the possibility that there is something like a will, or intention, or purpose, of the universe, or of ourselves, just because I can't perceive it physically. Even though it doesn't make sense physically why the world, or we, has to exist, it still can possibly make sense if seen from a totally different level such as spiritual level. I'm not going to try to persuade you into this view. No, at all. I myself don't see such things physically. I had wondered why we, or the world, exist. For me, it's as hard to think the world exists in a solely physical way as to think there might be some other concepts we might even not capable of imagining. It's not that I'm incapable of seeing things in a logical way. It's rather that as I gain more knowledge and understanding of things, I become more aware of the limitations of my intellect and the incapability of myself as a human being. I want to always be aware of my incapability.
>>160-163 And, honestly speaking, to me, it feels a bit more natural to believe that there might be some hidden something we may not even capable of knowing. If seen objectively, we human beings are just a mess. But if, for example, we see the world or life of ourselves as a game or a playground where people can learn something and grow. I like playing games. But I get bored easily if the difficulty of the game is not moderate. It needs to be not too easy nor not too difficult. If the world were much more ideal than it is, and if there was little room for us to exert ourselves, we might have taken everything for granted and ended up not realizing or experiencing great things. (I mean great not in a physical way but in a spiritual or psychological way.) We might not be able to appreciate great things such as trying to express love in a hard time. Some important things, ironically, can be well realized and expressed in a very opposite moment. If a game is too easy, or if the world was too ideal, maybe there is no worth in spending time on it. But again, the difficulty also needs to not be too high. Seen like this, I can't deny the possibility that the world might have been made in a very careful way. (Although, I admit that it's very tough for me to survive in the world.)
>>160-163 As for having children. It has always been my dream to have lots of children. Maybe 10 of them. It's quite rare to have this kind of dream in this era, isn't it? It is not because I expect them to become similar to me. Rather, it is because I do not expect for them to become similar to me. How they perceive the world and how they appreciate (or not appreciate) their life is totally up to them. It is because it's my determination and my will to respect other people's views and will. (As for the similarity of characteristics or personality or intellect among parents and children, I'm rather sceptical about it. I believe that they resemble each other physically, but as I gained understanding about personality through my study of psychology, I have come to believe that everyone is totally very different mentally. You are aware that how different you are mentally from your parents. You guessed that I may have inherited my intellect, if I have it, from my ancestors. But this is also one of the points I see a big difference between me and the other members of my family. No offense to them, it's just a difference in characteristics. I'm no superior to any of them as a human being. It's, in a way, a bit hard for me to mentally accept the fact that my children will likely be very different from me. It's most likely that most of them will become ordinary people to me. (They must will still be very special to me, though. And they might perceive me as an ordinary person from their point of view.) I may have lots of arguments with them. They might even hate me. But I'm going to accept them as they are.
>>160-163 I didn't intend to write a long message, but it has become long. I put non-physical concepts in my message, which will not be easily accepted. I know that. I'm more logical than emotional. But on top of that, I'm more intuitional. If you are a very logical person as I guessed, you may find, maybe in the future if not now, that you like listening to intuitional people from time to time, even though I believe it's hard for you to accept what they say right away, (I don't think you need to accept it,) as they have different ways of seeing things from those of yours. I actually find myself liking to listening to people with a specific personality type. I don't find what they say is relevant to me, but I just enjoy listening to them. In your case, I guess, the type that attracts you should have strong intuition like I do and strong feeling rather than thinking, but with similar ways of feeling and thinking as you do. (I can be totally wrong at this point as I may be guessing your type wrongly. But in any case there are compatible people to you.) It's like yin and yang. Men are attracted by women, and vise versa. But you need to ready to accept the moderate (or seemingly rather big) differences between you and them to find such people. I want you to experience the kind of joy that you have when you meet someone special. (I'm not talking about physical attractiveness, nor it necessarily be romantic. What I'm trying to say is that there are some people the meeting of whom can drastically change the way you see the world or your own life.) My point is that I want you to try to be as open as you can. If you closed the door on your side, you might not be able to notice potentially good things. And, I think that is an attitude of a philosopher no matter how bad the world seems to be.
>>160-163 Maybe me writing this might make you feel excluded when you have already said that you no longer expect much in people. I wrote this partly because I think the way I see the world might be depend possibly solely on my past experiences of meeting people in my life. If I hadn't met some of them in my life, I'm not sure if I had the same views of the world as I do now. Maybe not. Just as you said, our views might be greatly affected or determined by our past experiences in life.
Thanks for opening up this thread. I feel much more relaxed here. You keep calling me logical. But I don't think I'm that logical. Yes, maybe a bit logical than the average, but not very. When I meet someone who thinks with strict logic, such as when they explain linguistic or philosophical issues very logically, I get tired very quickly.
I've always considered half emotional, half logical. I'm definitely more logical than the average woman, but among men, I may be regarded as a bit more logical than the average man. That's all, I guess.
Anyay, I don't mind at all whether you are logical or not. Those things are what I am interested in. By the way, do you feel hot in this summer season, in your area? I feel read this year's summer is so cool in some thing as web article.
I've lived in Osaka most of my life. And I'm in Osaka now. I think I'll always be here in Osaka until I die. (When younger, I've lived abroad for four years and in Tokyo for 15 years, though.)
Today, because of the typhoon and the subsequent heavy rain, it's been cool. Tomorrow again, it'll be very hot and humid.
Here in Osaka, in summer, there is almost no wind and yet very hot and humid. It's like hell in mid-summer. But maybe this crazily hot summer is better than the terrible winter in heavy snow in northern Japan.
Oh, I can't tell which posts are yours. I know that no. 10 and 12 are yours, but I'm not sure about no. 11. (It's not mine.) I'm going to put this number as my handle name.
Response 11 is not mine. Maybe I should put my nickname here.
15The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/27(土) 21:12:18.11ID:QTjg6JJ/0
Looks more like it now. But here on 5-channel, those with nicknames tend to be hammered down. I don't like to be attacked all the time, but here in this particular thread alone, I think I'm going to carry the nickname that I use elsewhere on the Internet.
16The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/27(土) 21:14:30.73ID:QTjg6JJ/0
Why don't you call yourself "The Guy from the Twilight Zone"? Haha. Just kidding.
17The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/27(土) 21:21:48.16ID:QTjg6JJ/0
Let me talk about something casual now for a change. I wonder how long you've been abroad and where exactly.
As for me, I've been abroad for a total of four years.
(1) From age 26 to 28 (two and a half years): in Iraq
for work as a Japanese-English translator and other general administration (to put it bluntly, accounting, lagor management, guest reception, accommodations management, and all other boring chores)
(2) From age 19 to 30 (for one and a half years): in France
I went to a French-teaching school attached to a local university, where I studied French intensively. But right after returning home, I stopped studying French almost altogether. So my French is very rusty. But the basics of the language I still remember, and that knowledge has always been of great help in deepening my knowledge of English and other European languages and cultures.
Could I ask you to share your experiences abroad, if any?
Casual talks are welcome. We've already talked on several topics deeply.
I had never been abroad just until recently, and the only occasion I had was only for a few days. So I've been in Japan for almost entirely my life up until now.
I'm very introverted and even if I visited a foreign country I would stay indoor doing some indoor activities such as reading books. Because of this characteristics of mine, although I'm interested in visiting foreign countries, I'm not that motivated to visit foreign countries. But I'm interested in the idea of moving to another country. As I've mentioned in the other thread, I feel more comfortable in talking in English and I've been dreaming of moving to a foreign country. But I know that is not that easy.
Do you want to visit any foreign country? If any, which country? Do you want to move to another country if possible? (If you don't feel like answering, you don't need to answer those, or any of my, questions. You are writing with your identity open, and I regard your privacy highly.)
Talking about other foreign languages, I'm thinking of learning Chinese next. No any particular purposes in mind, though. I want to see if I can learn any other language faster than I did with English. But at the same time, I want to improve my English further. My grammar and vocabulary are especially poor. I have been watching YouTube videos in English and I started watching American dramas in English, but I haven't started reading books in English. Maybe that's something I should start doing next.
By the way, thank you for putting your nickname. As for putting your nickname, any way is fine with me. Only OED is fine if you find it a bit too much to put your nickname fully. Putting some number is also fine. Putting your nickname once a week, after your ﾜｯﾁｮｲ changed, is also fine. Please make yourself comfortable.
(This is just a hunch, but maybe we will want to consider moving to another place in the future if we find something we don't like about here. I want to mingle with other people. I wonder if other people start coming here or not. I know that this board itself doesn't have much population.)
21The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/28(日) 06:28:51.57ID:hGd57ZrS0
Boy, am I impressed! So you've never been abroad more than a few days and you don't seem to have had long-lasting relations with foreigners, and you've managed to write English that well, huh!
I assumed you'd been abroad for at least five years -- and when you were rather young too.
As for my full nickname, I've used it once here at the English learners's BBS here on 5-channel too, say, five years ago or so. I used it for eight months, during which time they kept attacking me day and night, ten times or even more, every single day. Since I'm not insensitive and healthily stupid enough to manage to stay here that way, I stopped using the nickname here.
But now I'm not much of what I used to be. Even though I'm still rather weak and sensitive, I'm old and don't care about things any longer.
Besides, whether I use my nickname or not, they've always recognized me and kept abusing me anyway, since I came here for the very first time, say, seven years ago or so. The nickname "OED" was given to me by someone here because I didn't hesitate to cite quotations from the quintessential Oxford English Dictionary (not the single-volume ODE but the 20-volume OED, mind you). So they started calling me OED about two weeks after my first visit here.
Somehow, whether I write in English or Japanese, I seem to write in instantly-recognizable phrasing. Besides, other than myself, there don't seem to be anyone else ready to answer almost every question from English learners -- in an exhaustive manner, quoting all kinds of authoritative books and dictionaries. That's what seems to make me readily recongizable.
22The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/28(日) 06:42:16.17ID:hGd57ZrS0
But here, I'm not bragging about me. I trust that you understand that. It's just that in Japan there don't seem to be more than just a few people as highly motivated, highly learned, and altruistic as I am to teach English completely free of charge and anonymously. Here I do sometimes use my nickname but not my real name. Even on YouTube or anywhere else, I don't use my real name.
Most English teachers, or would-be teachers, seem to have no or little interest in bothering to share the knowledge that they claim to have accumulated over their decades of study free of charge and anonymously. When they do share some of their knowledge, they do so only when they know they can get rewarded in some way, like getting credit or financial reward, through publishing books or papers under their real names.
But I don't like that. I don't need more money than the bare minimum needed for me to manage to eat decently.
I wish I were much more knowledgeable and richer to be able to inspire millions of people throughout the world completely free of charge every single day on YouTube or somewhere else. Although I'm a downright pessimist and misanthrope and wish that the human species woulld go extinct, I also happen to love people from the bottom of my heart and wish I could work day and night for the benefit of humankind. I admire Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and truly religious, altruistic people who live like beggars while working for poor and unhappy people. I admire those who die in war-torn countries while doing some good. I'm much more of a coward and selfish person than those them. So I don't think I'll ever get to become anyone like them. But I myself have been doing what I have been able to anyway.
23The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/28(日) 06:56:50.48ID:hGd57ZrS0
By the way, although my identify is open in a way, I don't mind your questions. Ask me anything. If I am still hesitate to answer some of your questions, I'll tell you so in so many words and tell you why I prefer not to answer them. Other than that, ask me anything and I'll answer all your questions.
But I may forget to answer a question or two that you may have raised. If so, ask me again. And I'll be glad to answer them.
As I said before, I've been in Iraq for two and a half years for work when I was 26 to 28. Then I got married, and my ex-wife and I put our savings together and went to France to study French for 18 months. I myself had saved a large amount of money from the work abroad, and my ex had also saved some from the work she had had as a corpporate employee in Japan.
24The OED Loves Me Not (ﾜｯﾁｮｲ a339-wm0+)2019/07/28(日) 06:56:58.54ID:hGd57ZrS0
So you were asking me whether I wanted to go abroad again. If it were ever possible, I wish I could live in the USA *and* Britain for a total of ten or even twenty years. I would like very much to study everything there, especially linguistics (the study of all languages, including English and many other languages, and non-Indo-European languages as well), literature, world history (especially of the history of wars and racial discrimination).
If I ever could go abroad for a short stay, I wish I could go also to Vietnam to see how the locals view things in the world in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
But I'm rather poor and I can't be bothered to work hard enough to save enough money to go abroad -- let alone live there. What's more, both my parents are in their mid-eighties and could die any minute. As their eldest son, I think it's my duty to be beside them. I don't live with them, but I've chosen to live at a 15 minutes' walk from where they live.
I already want to move to another place. lol I took a look at the Chat in English thread for the first time in a long time and I found again that there are not many people there, and maybe there is almost none who writes anything meaningful in English here. (In Japanese, however, it seems that people are discussing things normally.) I think it's natural to some extent, because once you come to a point where you can start communicating with people in English, there is no reason to stay in a place where almost all the participants are Japanese.
I'm going to reply to your comment later. I have some things to do now. (We were talking intensively, but maybe we should shift to a more casual and relaxed manner. And that what you started doing.)
I don't think many people would dare to talk to either of us. When anyone does speak up, then at that time alone each can identify themselves to the other.
By the way, what do you do for a living? Or would you prefer to keep it a secret? If so, I'll understand. I'm just curious because such a great writer in English is very, very rare among the Japanese native speakers, so I just wanted to ask.
I mean, everything about you is mysterious. I just want to know anything and everything about you. Of course, if you don't want to talk about anything other than substantial issues such as those about life and society and other serious social or philosophical matters, then I'll follow suit.
wait, why we have this thread if it's not for practice purpose? If you just wanna talk in english, you can go to any english forums on internet, or even those 大使館 category of 5ch.
>>27 That's a good idea. I'll go back to anonymous state, too. (Someone gave a message here. Maybe I'll put my nickname when appropriate.)
>>28 I write computer programs and that's how I make a living. I'm not making much money, but I'm living with my father and I don't spend much money. (My mother already past away from a disease.) I don't use English for my work. But I hope I can use it for my work in the future.
As for my writing ability in English, I don't attribute it to my English skills. My English skills are not high and no different from those of others. I wouldn't pass Eiken first grade if I took it. But when I write something in Japanese, people say I'm a good writer. But writing has never been my thing. To me, to express myself in a written format requires lots of mental energy and concentration and it's very tiring. And I'm not good at expressing myself verbally either. I like thinking. (More precisely contemplating.) I just wait for something to come to me and I just try to express it out. Possibly it might be a bit like carving a statue out of a piece of wood. You just try to see a statue hidden in it and release it. (I'm exaggerating too much, sorry. I'm not that great in any sense.) I just want to express out what I have in my mind. Maybe you are doing the same thing. Due to my poor English skills, it's not always very easy for me to express myself in English. Often times I don't know how to say what I want to say. I want to improve my English skills, and I believe it will give me a sense of freedom more. (My thinking is limited by my language ability, and I want to improve it not only for my future work but also for myself.)
I should have first replied to your previous message, which included a mention to my overseas experiences and relationships with English speaking people, before giving you a partial response to your last message. Your comment intrigued me and I did so.
Even thought I have never been abroad except for a few days of stay, and I've never had a long-term, or short-term as well, relationship with a native English speaker, I had some relations with some non-native English speaking friends. (I still have some.) I mostly just talked to them on Skype. I had some occasions to see some of them in person and spend time with them. But overall, the amount of time I have spent with or talk to them is not big. However, if you have someone in your mind who you talk to in English, it will help you a lot to improve your English. In that sense it has helped me a lot, I think.
Going back to the previous topic of my writing ability, actually this is virtually my first time trying to communicate with someone in English in a written format. I wanted to start writing in English and I was trying to find a good place to do so when I asked a question in the previous thread. I switched to writing in English, and to my surprise, I found myself being able to express myself kind of well in English in writing without ever having practiced writing in English. My speaking in English is poorer than my writing even with all the time I have had conversations with people. (Maybe it means speaking is harder than writing. Maybe my writing ability in Japanese and my practice of speaking English helped me.)
I started learning English by myself when I was around your age when you went to Iraq. You are older than me and I believe it wasn't easy to acquire English ability when you were young. Nowadays we have the internet and YouTube and stuff. Learning languages must have become a lot easier than before especially English. You must have had a good command of English back when you went to Iraq. This fact alone makes me admire you. Going to France with your wife to study French. How wonderful it is! I want to write more, but it's already become long. I'll stop here for now.
>>29 I haven't been able to find any English forum where you can talk about just anything. Most English forums are very topic based and you can't write just about anything. If you happen to know any good forum, I'd appreciate it if you share it with me.
I took a look at some boards in the 大使館 category in 5ch. But they seem to be very depopulated. We have some threads here where people can talk in English, so I believe this thread is not against the rules here.
Wow, the better I get to know you, the more impressed I get. Truly you're amazing. So your experiences abroad are quite limited (only few days) and you haven't had such long-term relations with English speakers either. And these interactions with me (which started only several days ago) are the first time you've ever communicated with anyone by writing in English!? And you're a computer programmer and you've never used English at work, huh!?
You must be a genius! But maybe you're the kind of guy that wishes no one would congratulate and praise you this way. (I've met some people who're that way.)
As for me, ever since I was 12, I've been totally absorbed in the study of English (together with other foreign languages) and the cultures of different countries (together with a bit of knowledge about their histories, arts, politics, economics, and things like that).
I went to college as a major of English (English linguistics and literature). At 22 I graduated and became a high school teacher of English. Two years later I went almost insane and quit the job and, after a half-year hiatus, I got admitted to a Japanese construction company (what is called a general contractor). There I worked for almost four years. Out of those four years of employment, I stayed in Iraq (an Arab-speaking country) for two and a half years. There I was working with 50 Japanese, 50 Chinese, and 50 Arabs.
Together with a lot of boring tasks, I was supposed to be a Japanese-English translator as well. Since my listening comprehension ability at that time (when I was 26 to 28) was not yet high enough, I was a lousy interpreter. (Besides, my tendency to get nervous when in contact with anyone, whether Japanese or foreign) was a huge handicap for me when it comes to trying to become a good interpreter.
On the other hand, I proved to be a rather good translator of commercial and technical documents. I had always been, and I still am, a great lover of language and reading books. Whenever I read and write anything in any language, I have always displayed a rather high proficiency.
When I turned 29, I quit the job at the Japanese company and got married and went to France with my ex and stayed there for 18 months. I studied French desperately. I studied, studied, studied, studied like someone who has really gone insane. I had always hungered for knowledge, and those 18 months were really precious to me. They were my hard-earned days for quenching my thirst for knowledge.
When in Iraq, as I said before, I was working with lots of Chinese and Arabs. So I lost no time in tackling their respective languages. I studied Arabic and Chinese every single day, using cassette tapes and course books and dictionaries. At night I studied those languages (together with French) and during the day I tried to communicate solely in their respective languages. I quickly learned to speak rather well, which surprised all my colleages, whether Japanese or foreign, and that amazed me as well. It's not that I'm smart. It's just that I love knowledge and I had always been hungry for knowledge, having been born as a son of parents who left school at age 15 or even 14. Even when they were 12 or 13, they were too busy trying to help their parents try to earn their living, so much so that they didn't have enough time to attend school regularly. They had to skip school very, very often.
Naturally my parents didn't have the means to understand my thirst for knowledge. They did know somewhat what it is to be hungry for knowledge, but they were not as intensely, maddeningly in love with learning as I have been. Add to this, they had to quit school at their tender ages, so that attending college was a luxury. So, wishing to go on to graduate school or even abroad for study was a crime.
So, all my life, at least until I was 40 or 45, I had always been suffering from this intense sense of Original Sin because, although I was a sort of a son born in a family of proletarians, I was knowledge-oriented. In my formative years, the times were those of labor movement and Mao Zedong and Pol Pot the Cambodian and Lenin and Stalin.
The vehement streams of the times made me feel as if I was fundamentally sinful because I was hungry for knowledge and beauty and, deep in my heart, I had this terrible urge to pursue beauty and knowledge.
>>33 makes sense. I too noticed that the internet across the sea doesn't seem to do chit chat on forums. I think people do that on actual chat and chat apps. So maybe you can try some discord channels?
And holy shit this guy had quite a life. I'm starting to feel ashamed in comparison for I pretty much accquired my english through watching tmnt on youtube, playing steam games and reading about memes.
>>37 I didn't know what "tmnt" stood for. I googled it and found it's for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." And you played those games and things like that and you've learned to write English that well already, huh? Impressive. You guys are all great.
I don't know who you are yet, but you're quite welcome here. I hope lots of other guys will pitch in.
For the past seven months I've been into the life and music of Karen Carpenter, the lead singer of the musical group Carpenters. She died in 1983 of complications stemming from anorexia nervosa and she's been famous, or rather, infamous, for that. But her music has always been popular all over the world. There are numerous fans in Japan as well.
As one of her recent fans, I've been watching innumerable videos on YouTube where she performs. I've been seeing documentaries and interviews on her life as well.
Not only that, I've been reading several books on her. Of all the books on her life and music that I've read so far, by far the greatest is this:
Randy L. Schmidt, "Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter," 2010
It's a book containing 300 of real text, with 50 pages of notes and appendices. Has anyone here read it? Or is anyone into Carpenters music or Karen's life at all?
The more I listen to her, the more I get to appreciate her music and persona. The more I try to delve into her life, the more mesmerized I feel. She's just fantastic in every way. And that's why I've been trying to translate and analyze about 120 of her songs on my YouTube channel. I hope I'll get to do her remaining songs (perhaps 50 of them) in the near future. I want to analyze her life in a series of my videos as well.
I have been setting up my laptop PC. I bought the PC a while ago and I quit the setup in the middle. I finally transferred to the new PC. What a tiring and complicated task... I must make it simpler.
>>39 You have been working on such a big project. I checked the book you mentioned at Amazon. It seems to have lots of positive reviews. Carpenters is one of the musicians I have been wanting to start listening to, but I'm not used to listen to Western songs -- actually I don't listen to music in general much, whether Western or Japanese. I'm a single processor person and my mind is almost always occupied by something from activities I'm having -- and when I tried to start listening to Carpenters some years ago, maybe it was 10 years ago or so, I thought it was a bit too early for me to start listening to Western songs with lyrics. My brain didn't seem to process English sounds very well and I got kind of annoyed. Perhaps my brain treated English sounds as noise rather than meaningful sound. Or it might be just that I got frustrated because I couldn't catch the lyrics. (I don't listen to Japanese songs either. I think I'm more inclined to English songs in terms of my taste, but in terms of my knowledge of them I know next to nothing about English songs.) Recently I found myself started enjoying listening to instrumental music, which wasn't the case before. Possibly, through my study of English, my brain got used to listening to certain kinds of sounds. Maybe now I can enjoy listening to Western music. That's what I have been thinking and hoping lately. I think Carpenters is a good start.
Come to think of why I don't listen to music much, maybe it has something to do with my childhood. I wasn't given many things, and music was one of the things I didn't have when I was a child. I was very poor at music in general when I was in school. But recently, for some reason, I have a positive thinking and I actually started practicing piano some days ago. I want to see how far I can go with music. This is my first musical instrument I have practiced.
I missed lots of chances to reply to, or talk about, what you have written. Hopefully I can start talking about some of them, one by one. I'm not going to hurry about it.
By the way, I have been writing my posts somewhere else and copying it to a 5ch browser. This board has a limitation on the number of letters each line can contain, and it's tiring to insert line breaks manually. (Also it's not very easy to make the post look tidy by inserting line breaks manually.) I'm using a Linux command, fold, to insert line breaks. With -s option, "fold -s" will do the job. I created a front end interface and I'm using it instead of using the command directly.
I wanted to edit, rather I actually edited, the very last paragraph of my previous post, but I accidentally put the original writing to the command and as a result my edit was lost.
This is only a tiny thing, but this place isn't a very perfect place for writing English. (In addition to that, the 5ch browser I'm using doesn't have the functionality of spell checking. My front-end tool has it. The tool is a web app and web browser offers it by default.) Also, I don't know how posts here look to other people. This is how it looks on my screen. (Just in case. Please be careful when you upload screenshots. It may contain personal information.) And this is how it looks on my web browser. They didn't look great by default and I changed the settings. That it doesn't look fine by default is another minus point here. It's not very newbies friendly. But again they are tiny things and overall I'm more or less satisfied.
>>40 So you've been having a hell of a time struggling with your new PC, huh? Seeing that even you a computer-savvy guy has to have such a hard time with it, I can imagine how it would affect someone else. As a complete idiot with computers, I wouldn't even dare to touch any such thing even for a split second.
As far as Western songs, even when limited to songs in English, I've always been having a hard time struggling with them.I It's always been my impression that songs and poems in English are by far the hardest to understand (and appreciate) of all forms of creation in English. English songs, especially pop and rock songs, such as those performed by such ubiquitous singers as Carpenters, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Lady Gaga, are definitely far harder to appreciate than newspaper and magazine articles, novels, movies, and TV dramas.
>>40 But Japanese learners of English seem to be misled into believing that somehow English pop and rock songs are easier to tackle than novels, nonfiction, movies and things like that just because the former are far shorter and heard everywhere and seem to be known to everyone, including Japanese people.
They therefore casually start trying to understand and even translate Englsh songs they happen to like and display their product in their blogs and elsewhere. The problem is that most of all those atttempts are a sheer failure, if I may put it that way. Obviously they haven't even read through a single full-length novel in English, and yet they naively believe they know English well enough to be able to understand and translate the songs correctly enough.
But that's just ludicrous. As for me, only until recently, say, until several years ago, I had never even dared to tackle English songs although by that time I had read hundreds of long novels and nonfiction books in English and watched a total of perhaps thousands of TV dramas and movies in English without the help of subtitles in Japanese.
These several years, especially for the past seven months or so, however, during which time I have been working on trying to translate, analyze, and explain each and every word, phrase, and sentence and all grammatical issues contained in the lyrics to my porential YouTubers, I have come to understand the language and appreciate the profundities of the English songs that I happen to be working on. In the process, I have to consult numerous sources, including Internet websites and the OED and other large dictionaries.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with using PCs, yet I always struggle to set up my environment. It's not only about the OS, but also about all the application programs I use. I doubt normal people enjoy the same extent of freedom and control with using PCs as I have with them. I'm not familiar with maintenance works with a car. I need to consult experts whenever I encounter a problem with my car, and I just pay money they ask to have the problem fixed. I don't want to depend on people and me having little independence when it comes to cars is frustrating. You can enjoy all sorts of things if you can use a PC. But it's also time consuming to get familiar with using a PC. You can change the settings to make it fit your needs, but it's endless. You need to find a good balance. I like the sense that I have when I get familiar with something, whether a skill or a knowledge. I feel as if I have more power and freedom. But it can be a sort of liability when you want to bring it to a new environment. I want to make my life simpler, and I want to find better ways with my PC.
I've encountered some times people recommending using English songs for new learners to learn English. Maybe it's a good idea, for they might get familiar with English sounds, but I've never thought of the difficulty in understanding English lyrics. There are some things that are counter intuitive. New learners of English often think that normal conversations among neighbors and friends are easier than English used in news programs. But I think conversations among people, especially among teenagers can be very hard to understand. It's good that I didn't dare to try to tackle English lyrics in my early stages of learning English. I may have been discouraged by the difficulty of understanding it.
>>46 Yes, it was a very good thing that you didn't tackle English songs or poems in your earlier stages of English study. English songs and poems are really hard for adult nonnatives, at least for Asians and other peoples whose native languages are far from English and other Indo-European languages because:
(1) Poems and songs use "poetic license," that is, poets and songwriters sacrifice logic and naturalness of phrasing in order to put the need for rhyming and rhythm first. An ideal poem or song would be one written with logical correctness and natural phrasing and yet with beautiful rhyming and rhythm. But that's not always easy. Poets and songwriters often have to resort to unnatural phrasing, by using expressions and words never used in everyday conversation or business world or anywhere else. They also sometimes have to break some grammatical rules. That is precisely why English native speakers on English-study forums keep asserting to us nonnnative learners of English that it's not a good idea to learn correct English by reading or trying to understand poems or songs.
(continued) (2) Poems and songs are written with extreme succinctness. Songs, in particular, are typically written in lengths short enough for people to finish singing within five or even three minutes. But still, they are required to convey a lot of profound, complex feeling or idea or both. Ideas and feelings required to be expressed in such songs are very often -- or even at all times -- even more complex than the same length of text in a novel or nonfiction or newspaper article or other fact-based writing. Poets and songwriters therefore typically have to make intellectual and intuitional acrobats to express any one idea or feeling, trying to condense a tremendously heavy feeling or idea in an extremely small number of words, which are nevertheless supposed to be written in a language that should at least on the surface sound as if easy enough to be understood by teenagers. They should never sound like a pholosophical work or an academic paper. And, most important of all, these pieces of writing must definitely be artistically beautiful, even reaching the point where they make the readers and listeners cry.
That is, I think, poems and songs are far, far more difficult not only to write but also to appreciate. No wonder I had never managed to appreciate any poem or song fully, whether in Japanese or English, untill only several years ago, even though by then I had read numerous novels, nonfiction books, and even some books on philosophy, psychology, and other areas.
I found it quite tiring to write something in English here partly because I'm not used to talking in English and partly because of my poor English skills. I thought I could use voice typing functionality on some websites and on tablet devices to help me write in English. I'm writing this with the help of voice typing functionality on Google Documents. It seems it works. I need to correct some errors I make during the speech but it's far easier than typing everything in English manually.
Composing sentences with voice feels quite liverating. If you haven't tried it maybe you should try it.
Now that I can write sentences a lot easier, I'm going to start replying to your previous posts.
>>21 I don't quite understand why some Japanese people attack other people just because they are different from them. We have this saying “出る杭は打たれる.” I think this saying represents our mentality of Japanese. Each country has its own sayings and they seem to affect their people. In Korea, they have sayings such as “溺れた犬は棒で叩け”, “泣く子は餅を一つ余計にもらえる.” In Russia, I heard that people don't smile as much because of a saying they have. I'm not trying to criticize cultures of each country. Rather, I don’t like letting illogical sayings affect my behaviors. Maybe those who attacked you found they couldn’t match you in English skills and knowledge, and they couldn't admit that you are better, they decided to attack you. Maybe there were other factors. I don't know. Learning a language doesn't mean to acquire only a set of knowledge, but it also means that you get familiar with the cultures they have. You might become less concerned about the saying “出る杭は打たれる,” and you might start having mindsets similar to those of foreigners. Maybe you might start acting a bit different from other Japanese people, which is not accepted easily by those whose mentality is represented by the saying “出る杭は打たれる.”
Talking about recognizing people by their own habits of writing, there were times when people said my writing resembles that of somebody when I posted something in Japanese. I read a lot and I think it affects how I write. Maybe it might also be the case with you. Possibly those who read a lot might tend to acquire a certain way of writing style.
>>22 I see that you have a very high proficiency in English. No doubt about it. At the same time I kind of understand why they don't bother to teach people English for free. In my opinion it’s not that they are being selfish but it's that you are being generous. You could make some money using the time.
But there might be other factors other than being selfish or generous. I guess possibly they are not confident enough with their English skills. It might be too tiring for them to try to help other people for free in their English study.
I don’t intend to impose my views on you, but maybe you should consider using the time you are spending on helping other people here on something else. Maybe you could have some fun with the time. Maybe you could try out new things on YouTube which might lead you to a way to make some money in the future. (Yeah, you are already doing it. Maybe that’s something I should consider doing when my English becomes better in the future.) My point is that you are being very kind here. (I understand that you enjoy helping people here, though.)
Let me leave a message to >>1, who I presume is so called a YouTuber. I don't think you're interested in monetize your Youtube account in the least, raking up ad revenues and such, so basically you can post whatever videos you want, whenever you like.
But here's my two cents. I'd say you might want to give the intervals of posting videos and the length of them serious thought. Everyone is busy so it'd be better to make your videos shorter so that viewers find it easy to watch them all the way through, which gives viewers a sense of accomplishment.
Popular Youtubers are more strategic about how they keep viewers interested in their videos, so they take extra care in regards to the length of their videos and how often they upload videos. If their target audience are business people, for example, then they keep the length 15 minutes or shorter so that business people can watch them on the train while they commute. If you post videos almost every day, then keep the length 5 to 10 minutes or so would be good idea, because keeping up with 60 minute videos posted every day is almost impossible.
Maybe while you shoot those videos, you lose track of time, and your knowledge of English is so immense that to make the videos short is almost impossible. But by taking the target audience of your account into more consideration, I think you can get more subscribers and fans.
Sorry if I sound rude or pushy or anything, which is not my intention.
I’m 1 and I'm not a YouTuber, but I found what you have said very interesting. Actually I have the same opinion on that. It's a good idea, I think, to know how frequently you should post videos and how long you should make them. There is a popular YouTuber named Daigo who says similar things as you’ve said. But he seems to have been trying to maximize the total amount of money he earns from his videos instead of the total amount of satisfaction subscribers get from his videos. It's understandable as he's doing it as his work, though.
If I were to post my own videos on YouTube, I want to make them easy for subscribers to watch and catch up with.
I want to make a living using my English, but I personally don't want to involve the Japanese language in my work with English, because whenever I try to involve the Japanese language, it affects my English. I stopped using Japanese English dictionaries as much as I can for this reason. At the moment becoming a translator or interpreter is not my option because they require using the Japanese language. And becoming a YouTuber seems to be a potentially good option to someone like me because you don't need to use Japanese in your videos if you don’t want to. I know that becoming popular on YouTube is not easy, though.
>>24 I want to move to another country but I come to face the reality that it’s not easy to do. The thought that I might not be able to move to another country for the rest of my life gives me a feeling that I’m stuck in my life. I'm more or less satisfied at the moment with staying in Japan, but I don't know about the future. It seems to me that Japan will likely to lose its momentum. Now we are facing the problem of the aging society and declining population. If Japan will lose its economic strength in the future, combined with the problems mentioned above, Japan might not stay as comfortable a country to stay in the future as it is now.
Thinking about moving to another country makes me feel depressed instead of making me feel motivated.
Maybe I should forget about the idea of moving to another country and try to get satisfied with the life I will likely to have here in Japan. I don’t have the feeling that I'm in control of my life and I don’t like it. Sorry for ranting.
Maybe I should try to change the society in Japan but I have already come to a point where I don't associate myself with other Japanese people very much. Maybe I have been suffering a bit of identity loss.
>>34 To my eyes it seems you are a more rare asset than I am. Actually I strongly believe that. I know for sure that I’m not a genius. I’m not trying to be humble. That’s the truth, sadly. In terms of English proficiency, you can find lots of people like me. But when it comes to my thoughts, they might be a bit different from those of others due to my past experiences. I struggled a lot when I was young. But everybody should think their thoughts are different from those of others, so I’m no different on this. One thing I think I’m a little different from other people is that I read more than the average people do. Maybe my reading in Japanese is affecting my writing in English. (I know that you also like reading books.)
Going abroad decades ago when you were in your twenties is already something, and having studied not only English but also other languages makes you even rarer.
I'm interested in polyglots, who speak multiple languages. I have studied several languages for about half a year to one year when I was in my teens back when I didn’t have access to the Internet yet. (I forgot almost anything I learned then, so please don’t ask me which languages. I just wanted to make myself familiar with the sounds of each language.) After I got access to the Internet, I watched lots of videos made by polyglots on YouTube. That made me want to become like them, but later I found that English alone is not easy to acquire, and I decided to focus on English first. I think we have something in common here that we both are interested in learning languages, but you are far more advanced on this.
About you having showed a high proficiency in several languages, I have no doubt about that.
>>53 I'm the YouTuber you were talking about. I'm not the one who posted >>1.
Thanks for your advice. I know the length and frequency of my posts don't suit many potential viewers.
But here I'm not quite interested in becoming popular or reaching many viewers. In fact, if once in a while one or two viewers find one or two posts of mine interesting, that'll be enough -- at least for now, anyway. I will therefore be content if only five or ten out of all my videos (which number more than 300 now) lure one viewer each. Although very few and far between, both Japanese and English speakers leave a comment on some of my 90-minute or even 120-minute videos, saying that they've learned a lot.
As far as videos on English study are concerned, most Japanese viewers them are rather on an intermediate level. These Japanese people on an intermediate level -- or even on what they might call an advanced level -- don't seem to be comfortable enough to listen to and read lots of information communicated in English.
I've met many Japanese who profess to be on a professional level of English proficiency, who seem to have been using English on a daily basis in their business, some of whem seem to be Japanese-English translators, and who say they have passed several impressive tests of English.
But how many of them are actually comfortable enough with English to process huge quantities of information in English? How many of them read a book or something in English every day? How many of them have read at least a hundred books in English? How many of them can see a two-hour-long movie or documentary in English and get to understand at least 70 percent of what they say? Very few.
I know that most of my videos are designed for the selected few. In a way, I may be being rather selfish here. It is because, although I was saying that I wanted to serve people, I am actually trying to serve only those selected few, only those who are the most highly motivated to study. Those who don't bother to watch videos more than 30 minutes long don't have to interact with me. If they can't even watch videos more than 60 minutes long, then how can they follow lectures 90 minutes long at university or anywhere similar? Without those lectures, how can anyone learn anything of substance?
People like me won't ever be popular. I know that. I've always known it ever since I was a child. I wouldn't even care if I had to die for humankind, but then again, I don't ever want to interact with the lazy -- those who believe they're smart and highly motivated, but who are actually only interested in making money and becoming someone knowledgeable or skilled enough to impress people. I hate them. I'm only interested in people who pursue beauty for beauty's sake and knowledge for knowledge's sake and who, if they have to serve anyone, are ready to serve them altruistically, not for money or to impress them.
>>55 I'm always ready to move anywhere. If you find any appropriate place, tell me. I'd be glad to move there. But so far, every place seems to have its advantages and disadvantages. And this particular site seems to have its share of shortcomings all right, but all things considered, I sort of like it here -- at least for now, anyway.
By the way, you've always been saying that it's primarily to mingle and communicate with people that you want to write in English.
As for me, as I said before, I've sort of given up on most of my hope for potential communication with people. I mean, if you forgive me for my drastic phrasing, I believe that everyone -- without a single exception -- has always been engaging in monologue. No one has actually succeeded in communicating with others.
But of course, as a human, only too human, I have my own share of desire for interaction with people. Why? Because we're all genetically programmed to long for interaction with others. We're starving for love and friendship by nature. But then again, no such communication or interaction is possible. We humans are capable of understanding themselves alone. We each are not able to understand anyone else. But we do manage to enjoy this lifetime-lasting illusion that we have somehow been capable of some kiind of communication, warmth, love, and friendship. But that is all an illusion.
And this is precisely why I feel rather content in uploading tons of 60- or even 120-minute videos on YouTube without expecting to lure more than one or two viewers. On YouTube, I believe, everyone has been monologuing, not communicating actually.
Many people will probably respond, "But some YouTubers do enjoy a large following and many of their subscribers leave tons of comments in their comment fields." Yes, I know that. But just look at each such comment. How many of those commentators actually leave messages that tell the original poster or their fellow commentators anything of substance? They themselves have always been talking to themselves without expecting even to be understood. In fact, most of them can't even write properly, whatever language they may be writing in.
Even those who do write long enough comments in proper language -- how many of them in fact manage to follow the original poster for years and communicate with them in earnest to the point where they would even meet them in person and befriend them and even get married with them or start a long-term, real relationship? If I may use another set of drastic phrasing, how many of them would even want to die for the original poster if they profess to love them dearly? No one. Absolutely no one.
And the story doesn't stop there either. Even if one of such people communicating in earnest with the original poster or anyone else for that matter actually gets to start a long-term, person-to-person relationship, will that person manage to even sacrifice their own life for the one they think they like or even love?
I myself have once thought I loved someone dearly to the point where I thought I was ready even to die for her. But even that love faded ten years later. Many people seem to believe that you have to nurture your own love if you want to make it last. Yes, I know that. I would want to say to them, "Don't state the obvious! I know far better than you!"
All my life, I've been pondering with tremendous seriousness over these issues of love, friendship, communication, and human interaction. Maybe I'm too serious. Most people seem to consider them much more casually. It seems that if only they think they're enjoying talking with someone, and if that someone too seems to be enjoying the talk, then they seem to believe that they've managed to establish a good relationship, or at least temporary communication anyway.
As for me, I delve further. It's really easy to pretend to enjoy communicating with others. We're programmed to pretend doing so, whether consciously or unconsciously. We're afraid of *not* enjoying something. Naturally we do pretend, even though most people seem to be unaware.
Okay then, but many people do seem to enjoy talking with others from the bottom of their hearts. But then again, how many of them are really certain that the other person at the other end of the conversation is actually enjoying it? How many of them are really positive that they share something?
I've been blabbering. Sorry. No one is obligated to read my lengthy messages of monologue seriously, much less respond.
Come to think of it, it seems I derive the sense of certainty from my attitude of being honest with myself.
It seems that I see life itself is a temporal thing. Since life itself is a temporal thing, everything in it is also temporal. No friendship, no love is eternal. And I'm fine with it. It doesn't necessarily mean that I don’t enjoy temporal things just because they are temporal. I like playing games such as shogi, and I know it’s a temporal enjoyment, and it’s fine with me.
Isn't it enough that you are enjoying something? Do you need to be sure that the other person is also enjoying? Isn't enough that if you are being honest with yourself and the other person says he is also being honest with himself and both of you are saying that you are enjoying something?
Yes, of course, there is a chance that the other person is not being honest with himself and that he's not enjoying the activity. But it's not your business. It's his business. You may get hurt from the dishonesty of him. But again, it's not your business but his business for him to be a clown.
I recommended you to try to always be honest with yourself.
You wrote that you enjoy our conversation.
> On the contrary, I've enjoyed talking to you
Maybe you are being a clown here. I don't care about it. It's not my business. It's your business. I just know that I always try to be honest with myself, and I’m fine with it. I don’t need anything else.
(I recommend try not to write any single word that is not of your true feelings. If you have a habit of saying or writing something not of your true feelings, it harms you eventually because your subconscious knows that you are telling a lie to you.)
I might have sounded as if I was angry or disappointed, but it's not the case. It seems to me that my being honest with myself gives me a sense of relief and security. I just want to say that if you can ever become honest with yourself, you might get the sense of relief and security just out of it. That's what seems to be happening to me. (I don't worry about if the other person is enjoying being your company or not. I just trust my honestly with myself.)
No offense, but it seems to me that you have been suffering not from factors of other people, but from honesty and trust within yourself. We see the world through the lens of ourselves. If you can't trust yourself and be honest with yourself, how can you trust those of others?
Come to think of it, maybe it’s just that I get the sense of certainty from my being exceptionally honest with myself. Maybe other people are suffering, as you say, from the lack of certainty within themselves. I’m not following a path of a life of a normal person. Fortunately for me I'm following a kind of that of a philosopher. I'm not working for a company. I just cut ties with people if I don’t find I enjoy them. I'm in such a lucky environment where I can almost always be honest with myself, not only internally but often times externally also. Possibly this can be a factor in my case.
If I'm allowed to be critical here, it seems to me that you are being afraid of the possible rejection from people, and in order to try to avoid it you kind of give up the hope to be accepted from other people from the beginning.
That’s what I felt reading your post, especially this part.
> People like me won't ever be popular. I know that. I've always known it ever since I was a child.
Maybe this applies to your stance with love and friendship. Maybe you are not confident on your part, and you are afraid of the potential failure of a friendship or love. If you don’t open up to people, you won’t get hurt as much, at the sacrifice of not being able to get any such things. Maybe this is a psychological response you are having.
There is nothing wrong with not trying to be popular on YouTube. I won’t aim it either if I were to make videos on YouTube. But I just felt that I would be more neutral. I know that characteristically I'm not the type of guy who becomes popular anywhere. I don't like standing out. I'd rather want to stay in the background. I won't ever forcefully try to become popular, but at the same time I won’t overly give up within me the possibility that people might like me. It’s not my business, but it’s their business and I have no control over it. (I won’t care about something that much over which I don’t have control.)
I’m being too intrusive. I just wanted to help lighten what you have within you. You haven’t asked me, and it’s not a good thing to start trying to help people without being asked. Sorry for that.
The impression I received from watching your videos was not bad at all. People may like you and you may become popular someday. I just thought that you don't have to deny that possibility from the beginning and you can just be more neutral.
One more thing. Here in Japan, people always try to overly be humble, often times in a negative way. And also, it's safer to be defensive in a place where you are vulnerable from possible attacks by people. This is such a place, and possibly you are just trying to be defensive to protect yourself.
>>62 I have a similar impression on this place. But again what I don't really like about this place is that we don't have many people here. Actually we are the only two of us. I feel it's a bit too risky and vulnerable to depend on the existence of you too much.
We had another guy yesterday, but I’m not sure if he ever writes again or not. His English seemed to be good, probably better than mine, which was good. But I'm not interested in seeing good English. I'm more interested in the content of a post. But here is a place where people share information about English study. Their main purpose of people coming here is for learning English itself, not for communication with others. We have another chat thread named “Chat in English”, but it seems no one in the thread holds any meaningful conversations with anyone else. They seem to be just content with writing a single sentence of English, apparently they have just learned from they English study. That's not the kind of people I'm looking for.
I wonder if you were satisfied with this place before you met me. I wonder if you are satisfied with this place without having me. In my case, I wouldn't be satisfied with this place at all If I didn’t have you here.
It seems there is no one other than ourselves who dare to try to communicate with people with decent English and with normal manner or behavior. I have been lurking here for a long time, but it seems to me that people here are generally angry or frustrated for some reason. Many of them are, for some reason, insulting or attacking each other all the time. Maybe because of the frustration they have from their English study?
>>70 I'm not happy here at all. Before you came along, I was feeling totally alone. I felt as if I was an adult among a bunch of kindergarteners. But then again, all my life, ever since I was a child, I've always been in a similar environment. All other people, including my own parents, felt to me like kindergarteners. I naturally don't want to insult any of them, but this is the way I have always felt.
You've been urging me to be honest to myself. But I doubt that a day will ever come when I can get to really behave and feel really honest myself.
Why not? Because if I really had to be honest to myself, I might have murdered both of my parents, or become a terrorist and destroyed a large number of people who happened to seem to me like my enemies.
I could have become an anti-USA terrorist. Or I could have become a kamikaze or something and a suicide bomber. I could have murdered one or two persons who happened to be abusive, bullying types at a workplace where I happened to be working.
I could have also kicked up with full force the large stomachs of a few pregnant mothers I happened to meet on the street because there were times when I really loathed parents who atrociously wanted to drag their upcoming children into this crazy world.
I'm watching your talking about China’s oppression of the Uyghurs. Back in 2008 and 2009, people in Tibet tried to raise their voice against the Chinese Communist Party and to the international society, followed by Uyghurs in 2009. I was supporting them by making videos on YouTube. I was exporting some Japanese TV programs aired in Japan on the human rights issues in Uyghur and on their leader in exile in the US to the rest of the world by putting English subtitles. And I was also importing videos made by foreign people into some Japanese websites, putting Japanese subtitles in them.
I’m still very concerned about such issues. I’ve almost never talked about me having done such things in the past, because some people have different views from mine and some people even try to attack people just because they have different views. I don’t even feel like talking about such issues with Japaese people.
Your video is quite lengthy, and I won’t watch it till the end. But it was interesting to know that you have such a concern. (It is my first time to have encountered any Japanese person talking about the issue in English. There are lots of Japanese YouTubers who speak English, but they don’t talk about such things.)
>>71 I understand. Actually, I have the same impression on this board except for you and potentially some other people.
>>62 I have been saying that I want to communicate with other people also. It's because for me having inputs is more important than having outputs. I want to listen to other people. With having no one else, except for you, I can't do that here.
For me, environments are really important. You might not be able to change the environment which you are in, but you can move to another environment if you are not happy with your current one. (This might be another form of being honest with yourself. Staying in an environment where you don't feel happy doesn’t make you happy.)
>>72 I think it’s better for you to be honest with yourself than to try to forcefully ignore or suppress your true feelings. You don’t need to be harmful to other people in order to try to be honest with yourself. You can just stop doing things you don’t want to. I personally stopped doing things I don’t want to long time ago, and I don’t seem to have much internal conflicts inside me.
>>75-76 Wow, so you're the third person who seems to have been around all along. You're really inspiring. You say you're more preoccupied in input than in output. I respect that.
Me too, maybe, I'm into absorbing lots of information. Besides, if you want to display one unit of information, you should have absorbed, perhaps, 10,000 units of it.
So, naturally, at least I am basically very busy reading and watching lots of things before I start writing or saying anything.
When it comes to answering questions raised by Japanese learners of English, I am ready to answer them at all times because English is the language I've been delving into for the past half decade.
When I feel tempted to make comments on any issue that I've been studying casually for only five years, for example, I hesitate a lot and find myself unable to say anything because those five years of study are too little for me to say anything of substance.
>>73 So you've been doing all that about human rights issues, huh? That's admirable. As for me, social issues are rather new to me. I mean, most of my life I've been much too preoccupied -- or rather obsessed -- with conflicts and turmoil in my own inner world, my own psychology. That's why I was rather into issues of literature, psychology, literature, and linguistics. These issues were desperately serious and urgent for me all these years (for the past half decade actually).
In the meantime, however, I was also concerned about such social issues as war, rape, women's liberation or empowerment, and labor issues as well. These issues were something I desperately had to address. My own father has always been much into labor issues, and was actually the leader of a labor movement for more than three decades. Labor movement, communism, socialism, and related issues have always been tormenting me. This, however, doesn't mean that I'm a socialist or communist. It's rather that I can't ignore these labor issues.
As for women's issues, my own mother has always been complaining of their female status in society. It was when I was ten that she sobbed bitterly in front of me when she was alone with me at home. With tears in her eyes, she was deploring how they women had to lead their monotonous lives condemned to their homes, having to prepare the three meals every day, having to stay home all the time without a single chance to go out for work, contributing to society, thereby learning something new. She went on to say that their husbands and all other men always made fun of them, calling them stupid just because they didn't know how things are in real life. She said that this was naturally inevitable because most women were doomed to stay home without being allowed to go outside, not even for a part-time job.
In any case, my parents were busy fighting each other, with the mother always aspiring to contribute to the outside world, while her husband always missed her when he happened to come back home early. Both of my parents had had to leave school at the age of 14 or 15. Even before that, they had no luxury to stay at school just like most other pupils even at age 10 or 12 because they had to help their parents earn their living. As a child, my mother had to skip school for extended periods of time just to help her mother (her father had died when she, my mother, was two) with their farm work. Although a bright student my mother had no luxury to get an education beyond the age of 15.
Not interested in intellectual things by nature, my father was always jealous of his wife's intelligence despite her having had to leave school very early. In fact, he was madly jealous of everyone in the world who showed any hint of intelligence or intellectual interest. He hated to study anything diligently. He was into mah-jong and TV and other leisure activities whenever he was not at work. But he was slightly more intelligent than most other workers, and he excelled at verbally convincing his fellow workers about labor issues. So he managed to become leader of 1,000 workers, organiizing them to fight the capitalists.
At all kinds of verbal -- and sometimes, physical -- violence, my father was really good. He had his own share of talents, which were rare among most other people. It's just that he was not good at intellectual things. In fact, he just could not put up with seemingly tedious, monotonous hard work at memorizing things and reading lengthy books, trying to process tons of information. But at doing things seemingly spectacular, like fighting those wicked capitalists, my father was better than anyone else. That's the area where he showed his talent.
But my father was the opposite of me. He in fact was jealous of his own father. He was from a family of seemingly intellectual members. Most other members of the family would make fun of him for his seemingly lower intelligence and laziness at intellectual work. My father's father was a teacher (in those days, say, 80 years ago or so, teachers were highly respected in every way). Not only that, my grandfather was one of the disciples of Kano Jigoro, one of the first leaders in the judo world. My grandfather therefore excelled at persistence. He could put up with just about anything, even with the pain he had to endure after having a tooth removed at his dentist's office without anaesthesia. In fact, my grandfather was inquisitive by nature and had wanted to experience the pain that one had to undergo from a surgical operation without pain-killer. So, he went to the dentist and insisted that the latter remove his tooth without the medicine. Coming back home later on, my grandfather said, "Wow, the pain from a tooth removed without anaesthesia is surelly great, isn't it?" Such was my grandfather.
In any case, as a child my father had always been jealous of his own father. He thought he had never managed to surpass his own father. In his view, a son is lucky if he has a father worse than he is. A son is miserable if he has a father so great that the son can't ever go beyond.
My father was and still is in fact jealous of all people who showed any interest in intellectual activity. He just can't tolerate it. That's precisely why he behaved as if he hated me. Although not highly intelligent (my IQ is only 109, by the way), I've always loved -- in fact, head over heels in love with learning. And he seemed, at least seemed, to hate my guts. He always claimed to love me dearly. But he seemed to love me only when I pretended to be just like him. As the eldest son, I had no recourse other than to behave, talk, and pretend to think in ways not too remote from my father -- and from my mother.
The third person hasn't come yet. It’s me, the guy from the twilight zone.
I have been trying out a language learning app. It seemingly has lots of users and they have been writing about their life and stuff with often times some photos attached. But the conversations among people in the app seem to be shallow. Posts disappear soon from the top page and people’s attention goes from one post to another quickly. Having been using the app I felt more isolated than before.
>>78-81 What impressive writing skills you have and how elegantly you express your thoughts! I still get amazed and impressed.
I started understanding the complexity of the situation you were in. I believe I had a hard time with the dysfunctional family of mine, but now I think yours is worse, especially when you and your father have almost the opposite personalities and your father has his own issues with his own father, which affected the relation between you and him. You can’t resolve it easily because it’s his problem, not yours and his.
I may talk about things in my family. I may not. It’s not to try to compare mine with yours -- there is no point in doing such a thing -- but to just show my case. But since I don’t see any point in me trying to talk about my family in detail, maybe I won’t. But I’ll write about this one particular thing briefly. My father doesn’t seem to have high enough intelligence to understand me in the slightest, even though he was a high school teacher and he, as a teacher, was in a position where he taught people (students). He seems to have believed that he is more intelligent than I am because I have always been out of his reach and he couldn't understand me at all. I have never had my IQ tested and I don’t know how intelligent the average person is, but I would assume his intelligence is slightly lower than the average. (But I could be wrong here. Maybe his one could be slightly above average.) One of the significant differences between my case and your case is that my father doesn’t get jealous of other people, including me, very much even if he finds them more intelligent than he is. To be precise, he just doesn't seem to understand who is more intelligent. (In this sense, your father might be more intelligent than my father.) This difference between my father and your father is significant, I think, and I feel for you even more for this.
I won’t write anything more at the moment about what you have written. I don’t think I can say, or I should say, anything more.
(By the way, it’s hard to believe about your IQ. And I question the accuracy of such tests. Human intelligence has lots of factors and I don’t think it can be measured fully by such simple tests.)
>>84 Yeah, I know IQ can reflect just one aspect of human intelligence, which must involve far wider ranges of human intellectual activities than those PhDs who may have developed the well-known measure of intelligence. But still I know that many of those who told me their excellent IQs were really, really intelligent, not in all fields to be sure, but in ways where I don't excel at all.
Despite its share of imperfections, however, IQ must still be one important measure of intelligence anyway.
By the way, thank you very much for calling my writing elegant. As a matter of fact, you're not the only person who's called it elegant, whether in Japanese or in English -- or even in French when I was working hard on the language. Elegance in fact is something I've always pursued in every field of activity that I have been tackling.
When I was madly in love with the Romanian language, about 17 years ago, I wrote many short poems in Romanian. I knew how clumsy my Romanian was, but lots of Romanians loved reading them. They congratulated my Romanian language proficiency, which was low but high enough for a Japanese who has never been in Romania. I stopped studying the language several years later, and my Romanian got extremely rusty. It's the story of my life. I've been learning ten or even more foreign languages but English is the only foreign language in which I can truly function now.
I would have loved to *look* elegant too, he he. But looks are not what I put so much emphasis on, so I can forget about it. If only I'm not ugly enough to scare most people, then I should be content. I'm not a singer or actor who's supposed to appear in front of large audiences, anyway.
The app is like a social media. I’m so used to the anonymous atmosphere in 5ch and I’m not intending to make friends there, but maybe it’s about time for me to change..
I’m not following a fancy colorful life, and I don’t know how to attract or please people by my posts. Maybe I should try to write something funny. (Maybe I should put some comical elements into my posts.)
It’s a language exchange app, and I’m not really into the idea of language exchange. I just want to use English all the time and I don’t want to involve Japanese. Maybe language exchange apps are not my thing and I should go to Twitter or something instead.
I don't know if any one of you guys takes any interest in the song "Hotel California" by Eagles.
Although it's such a famous song, I hadn't tackled the lyric of the song until five years ago or so.
From then until four months ago, I sometimes pondered over it and I made up my mind to produce a YouTube video to tell how I interpret the enigmatic lyric.
Here is the result:
(171) The Eagles' Song "Hotel California" (a Song Review)
The above is a presentation in English. Elsewhere I uploaded another video in Japanese where I translated, explained, and analyzed each word, phrase, and sentence and their grammatical aspects as well.
Both of them are much too long as always. People may not be tempted to view videos longer than 30 minutes, much less those 90 minutes. But how else can I ever analyze any such profound and interesting song?
I have been lurking on some sub reddits. It's interesting to know what people from various countries think about things from different perspectives. I should have started visiting English websites earlier. I remember how I felt when I first met Japanese forums such as 5ch. It took me some time to get familiar with them. Now I feel the same way with English forums. I think it'll take some time for me to get familiar with their culture and customs there. But I'm kinda excited to get into a new world.
As for the language learning app, maybe it's not my thing. The posts there are for practicing purposes and tend to be shallow. Maybe I should dive into a native world in order to obtain what I want.
As for me, I don't expect too much from trying to communicate with ordinary people. Well, here I'm NOT saying I'm EXTRAordinary. I'm just another ordinary guy.
When I do want to "communicate" profoundly with anyone, I read books written by famous dead poets, novelists, scholars, and other people, and watch videos of geniuses, whether literary, musical, or other. True, it can't be mutual communication. It can only be one-sided communication, from those geniuses to me. But how can I say anything good enough to those geniuses, who must be far beyond me?
Here again, I'm not saying that people who are called geniuses or famous are the only people worth my attention. But among the seemingly ordinary people lurking or writing just short texts (even those texts 100 lines are very short as compared to full-length books) here and there on the Internet, it's really hard -- or even impossible -- to find someone really worth my attention.
In forums where you write or speak to each other, therefore, I just relax and practice how to think, write, and speak. Besides, when you try to communicate with someone, you're actually not communicating in the true sense of the word. Everyone is confined, and doomed to a desert of desperate loneliness of monologuing all their life. Even those who assert that they have numerous friends have actually been talking to themselves, not with others. People never get to understand each other, never actually get their messages through to each other. Besides, no one is smart or creative enough to come up with any ideas or feelings to share with others. I'm no exception. As a human, we are confined to these confines of a solitary cell for eternity. We are born from dust, and will go back to dust, totally alone.
I'm very input based and I prefer reading books to talking to people myself, I actually find quite a few similarities in what we each want. I want to go a step further and replace everything with its English counterpart as much as possible. At the moment I'm using 5ch, which is a Japanese forum, and I want to replace it with an English forum. Moving to another country is not easy. But I want to do what I can do while being in Japan. I already stopped talking to Japanese people some time ago. But at the moment I'm still using Japanese websites. I want to change it.
Also, for some reason, having external inputs triggers me to think, even if the input is not from highly intelligent people. (It's not easy to have someone intelligent to talk to. I have to make compromises on this point.) I'm an input based person in that I can't think properly if I don't have external inputs.
I think what I want to have is a place for having output activities. I'm doing most input activities in English already, and what I lack is a place to have output activities in English.
Have you tried YouTube and Twitter for your output purposes? I like Twitter basically, although for the past month or so I've been rather inactive there. But when I feel like it, I write a hell of a lot there.
As I've been saying, I'm into YouTube these days. I've always liked YouTube as a means of educating myself by watching videos on International politics, movies or movie clips, documentaries on celebrities, people of letters, and international affairs, along with numerous other issues.
But, since I'm a complete idiot when it comes to computing, I had long stayed inactive in contributing my output until about three years ago or so. Then little by little I struggled to learn how to use the medium to contribute my own videos. Now I regard it as by far the best means of educating myself. I don't expect people to see my videos. Obviously I'd be thriled to death if some of my videos manage to allure numerous followers, but I don't expect too much.
After all, as I said again and again, I don't think that real communication is impossible. Even the most popular YouTubers and tweeters must be all alone, without real contact with their audiences. Almost all members of the audiences remain silent, just liking some of the original posters' videos or tweets or posting one- or two-line comments. That's all.
Even if some of us do manage to allure millions of followers, then what? That too wouldn't amount of a hill of beans in this crazy world, as Humphrey Bogart says in "Casablanca."
What I *do* expect from my activities on YouTube is nothing but the following:
(1) To learn or study something new every day, such as about politics, geography, languages, movies, music, literature, and stuff like that by viewing videos there.
(2) To educate myself, to train myself by trying to organize my ideas and feelings as well as possible, to articulate and analyze my thoughts as effectively as possible while producing my videos.
Producing videos on YouTube triggers me inevitably to focus with extreme meticulousness on what little knowledge I have. After all, even though I don't expect many people to view my outputs, there is no assurance that not a single really knowledgeable person will get to see a little bit of one of my videos. If any such intelligent person does watch it once in a blue moon, then I would like all my videos to be conveying information as correct as possible - to the best of my ability.
Consequently, while producing any video, I have to be extra careful not to make mistakes. I do make mistakes and I do have the right to make mistakes once in a while. But too many mistakes or make a major mistake is intolerable. Besides, if I keep producing videos carelessly, I won't get to improve myself. By being active on YouTube, I do want to keep improving myself. I want to keep educating myself. Otherwise, I wouldn't stay there. If YouTube is merely about entertainment, then I wouldn't come there in the first place. Neither YouTube, nor 5 channel, nor Twitter, nor any other single activity in my life for that matter, is about entertainment. I may get to have myself amused while engaging in all these intellectual struggles, but self-education and training are what my life -- including YouTube and 5-channel -- is all about.
By the way, I don't know who you guys are, but I do appreciate your occasional posts here. Although I know you basically focus on input, rather than output, I wish you would contribute more posts, which would inspire me a great deal. Throughout my life, including here on 5-channel, I 've been starving for intelligent comments like those you guys have been sharing so far here in this thread.
I believe YouTube and Twitter are among the best places to output your thoughts. Twitter has the limitation on the length of each post, so maybe having a blog might also be good. As for me, I still don't have the guts to start posting videos on YouTube, and Twitter seems to be a bit too directional.
And, come to think of it, it seems that I want to have a casual place also. I want to write about anything from daily stuff to philosophical stuff. Most of them don't deserve to be an independent article or a video. I don't have anyone to talk to in Japanese, I'm not looking for it, but instead I'm looking for places or people with whom I can talk in English or where I can do my daily activities in English. (I'm extreme on this. I don't watch Japanese TV programs and I don't talk to people in Japanese as much as I can. I even switched the language I use here to English.)
I started watching The Big Bang Theory, which had been one of the dramas I wanted to watch and about which someone was asking in the ask anything thread. I started watching the drama on Amazon instead of on Netflix since Netflix didn't have the first season of the drama. Subtitles are embedded in videos on Amazon and you cannot turn them off. I made a small program to hide them.
The Big Bang Theory is a so-called sitcom. I didn't like it when I tried watching Friends, another sitcom, a long time ago. But I'm enjoying watching this now.
Many American dramas have characters who have foreign accents. I understand their intention but I don't like it very much because it affects my English. My English is not very firm and it can be easily affected by foreign accents.
I've watched a documentary program on the Tiananmen Square incident. Someday in the future I need to think about it more deeply and write about it, along with the world war.
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 ;oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D30TShAJQe8Q&has_verified=1
These monks and many other Vietnamese were ready to literally sacrifice their lives for some cause they believed in. Many people today may laugh at such conduct, but I believe they're admirable.
Michael Jackson has always been yet another celebrity I wanted to delve into. He fascinates me in every way. He was by far the greatest, most powerful entertainer -- but possibly with dark secrets. Even if those accusations of his possible child sexual abuse are true, that doesn't deny the value of his art. Whether he's a molester or not, I always wanted to know the truth.
Michael Jackson's maid reveals sordid Neverland secrets | 60 Minutes Australia
I've just seen this video. It was very intriguing. I don't intend to naively jump to conclusions here. There will have to be many more investigations before anyone can make a conclusion.
I've just finished watching a great documentary on Michael Jackson's alleged child sexual abuse. It's divided into two videos:
"Leaving Neverland" Part 1 2019 HDTV ENGLISH Documentary
Although it's very long, it never tires you because it's beautifully made. The first two hours of video focus on what a great guy Michael was. The remaining two hours reveal the alleged darker side of his.
>>129 While I admire them and I respect their will, seen from a metaphysical point of view of myself, ending your life for the physical world doesn't seem to be a good idea to my eyes. Such people must be very good people, too good to lose. Lots of monks sacrificed their lives in Tibet also, which made me sad.
I've watched the whole episodes in season one of the Big Bang Theory. They use lots of scientific terms and they speak fast (maybe at a normal speed for native speakers, but fast for me), which I like, but due to my limited English skills my comprehension of their conversations were far from perfect. I'm going to watch them again once I've finished watching till the latest season.
>>132 Just another place for chatting. This board is for English learners and not for native speakers, as a result I found many of the posts in other threads were being made for practice purposes. I just wanted to focus more on the content of the posts. Your comments are welcome regardless of your English level as long as you want to focus on the content of what you want to say.
Last night I was watching a YouTube video, rather I was listening to it, on my tablet when I slept and this morning I found my tablet was out of battery. YouTube doesn't allow users to watch videos with screen off. Neither does Netflix. I want this limitation be removed.
I came to know that Jim Watkins is now the owner of 8chan. I tried to access 8chan yesterday, but the site was down. It seems that Cloudflare decided to end providing its service to 8chan because of the mass shooting that happened the other day. I don't know if it's a good thing or not for us to have such websites. Nowadays I came to think that such websites are having more negative influences on our society than positive ones. Even though I'm using 5ch, which is similar to 8chan, I sometimes wonder what the online world will become like if we abolished such websites, and I wish for such an online world.
Having a place where you can express your thoughts freely is a good thing, But people seem to tend to go too far. In real life it's not always the case that you can have such a place. It must feel suffocating if you don't have any place to freely express your thoughts. I wonder what is a good balance and what is a good way.
I'm 5ch people stick to some threads which they find interesting. I wonder if they do similar things on Reddit. It seems that they just create a new thread whenever they come up with something they want to talk about then they soon abandon it. I wonder what they do when they want to talk about something over a long period of time.
One of the reasons why I like a thread like this thread, which has a long life, is that you can come back to where you left off and continue talking. Maybe it will give you a feeling that you are keeping up with the conversation, and maybe it will give you a feeling that you belong somewhere.
The more I focus on the differences in people, the more isolated I feel.
I want to understand the differences, and through which I want to understand myself, but in the end I want to seek for integrity and unity. I wonder if that's achievable or not.
Often I find myself unable to express what I want to say due to my limited English skills. It feels suffocating. Maybe it's about time for me to start studying the language more seriously using learning materials such as grammar books.
I wonder how would I feel if/when my English becomes more dominant than my Japanese. Would I become to feel reluctant to think in Japanese? Japanese immigrants to an English speaking country must have had such a point. I'm just curious.
>>123 >>I have been thinking of starting reading English books.
What do you mean, "starting reading" English books? Do you by any chance mean that you haven't been reading English enough books in English so far? Seeing you write in English that fluently, I thought you've been reading numerous books in English already.
>>145 I don't know what exactly you mean by the "silent period." But if you mean a period when most others remain silent in a forum like this and you're practically the only one writing, then I guess the situation is more or less the same everywhere whether in cyberspace or real life. Most people don't have enough to say.
Even when they do talk, their comments are one- to two-liners. People sometimes do write five or even ten lines. But they too are almost empty in content, and after you reply to that comment, then the other one shuts up again. People have always been that way and I've stopped expecting anything from others. I basically believe that the world is nothing but a world of monologue.
Yesterday I watched yet another series of documentaries on Michael Jackson. He's a true enigma. I suspect he really did molest numerous boys aged seven to 14 years old or so, but most of them were huge admirers of Michael. So, even those few of them who later on started to accuse Michael had to take a lot of time and inner turmoil, maybe ten years after the molestation took place, before they actually took action.
Even if the superstar really did do all that to those children, he must have suffered a lot, as well as the kids. Normal people, non-pedophiles, don't have to suffer in that department. But Michael had to. Michael was genetically programmed to be a pedophile, if he really was one. And he was the world's number one superstar, with huge amounts of money.
No wonder people went cray about him, including young attractive women and young boys as well. I myself can't blame him too much for probably been tempted to be intimate with some of those admirers.
>>146 I have read 2 or 3 books in English. I'm sure that I've read 2 English books, and I'm sure I've read a very short English book. I have tried reading some other English books, but I have never succeeded in it. That's the only books I've ever read in English. The two English books I've read were just normal general so-called self-help/self-development(?) books. Normal length.
My laziness gets in the way every time I come to think I should read English books. I can read Japanese books very fast and it takes more than 10 times the amount of time if I read the book in English. Not every book is worth reading spending lots of time in it. Most books I come across are not very good, weather it's an English book or a Japanese book. I don't know if the book is good enough to carefully read until I actually read it. It's kinda risky to start reading English books without knowing if I find it worth the read with the amount of time I spend on it. This sense of risk keeps me from reading English books. Plus reading books on digital devices hurts my eyes, and buying foreign books at overseas shops cost money. (I wish they had English books at the library.)
Another big mystery to Michael Jackson is the possible long series of surgical operations on his face. Obviously he underwent a great many of them. I have a hunch that he had at least a hundred of them. And all those operations must have combined to give his facial skin and other tissues an excruciating pain. How he must have suffered! He must have taken huge amounts of pain-killers all the time, perhaps hundreds of such tablets every single day. Some of them must have been seriously dangerous.
In the final stage of his life, nearing his death due to his overdose of a very potent, hence possibly very dangerous, drug, he hired a full-time physician. The doctor is one of the most excellent in his field of medicine and very popular among his patients. Michael hired that excellent, popular physician all to himself, 24 hours a day in his later years. The physician may have given Michael a huge dose of this potent drug upon his request. Then he died.
I still don't know enough about all that, but with what little I know so far, strongly suspect that Michael, in a way, asked his full-time doctor for some kind of mercy killing on him, unable to endure any more pain in the aftermath of all those surgical operations and of all those accusations in connection with his alleged child sexual abuse.
>>147 By the "silent period" I meant the period when you can't express your thoughts freely due to lack of knowledge of the language. Babies have a silent period for the first 6 months or so after birth. Language learners have a hard time talking to people because they can't express themselves or they can't understand what other people are saying because their language skills are not good enough. I have been lurking on some other places, and I still don't have the guts to start writing there. (I guess possibly there are some people here who want to join us but are not confident enough with their English. But this place don't have a large population, so I don't know.)
In order to overcome the "silent period," you need to either accept that fact that your English is not good, or to wait until you become confident with your English. I think I don't have the guts to accept my inability to express myself in English.
The above is communicating with people. But there is also another domain, which is to communicate with yourself, or in other words, think in the language. It's suffocating and frustrating to find that I can't think in English as well as in Japanese. We all have passed this stage with our native language when we were little. I feel like I'm going through the silent period again with English this time.
I don't know which is a better idea, whether to start using the language as soon as possible or to wait until it becomes to feel natural to you.
>>149 Unbelievable! So you've read only a couple of books in English, all of them rather casual, not very serious, and yet you've managed to learn to write in English that fluently, huh? You must be a genius. I'm not kidding.
As for me, I've read more than 700 books in English, perhaps even more. (I stopped counting them when I reached the 650-book mark. After that, I stopped giving a damn about how many books I'd have read. I started to pay attention to the quality and level of what I read.)
When I say 700 books, I am assuming that the average number of pages per book is 300. And this number of books doesn't include books half or only partially read. Books partially read are counted as zero. Numerous magazines and newspapers I've been reading too, but when I read such stuff, I usually don't read them from cover to cover, so I count them as zero books. So, in principle, when I say I read more than 700 books in English, I mean I read them through, from cover to cover. If I count all the partially read books and if I combine two half-read books as one full book, and if I count five books, which I read only partially, as one full book, then the number of books I've read will amount to 1,300 books or so. But here, I'm not bragging. All I'm saying is that it takes such a huge amount of "labor" to learn to read, speak, write, and understand English. It took me at least that much time and energy anyway. And still now I am very much dissatisfied with my English ability. Maybe I'm stupid and untalented, but my lack of talent and low IQ (which is 109) are not my faults. If I really want to become a really good communicator in English, I think I would have to leave Japan and stay at least 20 years in an Anglophone country or read five times as many books in English.
And as a professional translator of business and technical documents, I have been writing English for four to 14 hours every day for the past 37 years (sometimes slow, sometimes very busy). In the past five years, though, I've become rather old and I don't have to work as hard as I used to when younger. So I do much less translation and I read what I want to read and I speak about what I want to on YouTube and so on.
>>151 Well, as for me, when I was 16 years old or so, that is, about four years after I started to study English at school (at the age of 12), I was already beginning to speak in English, at least trying to do so. In those days, we had very few people from abroad in Japan, particularly in non-Tokyo areas. Besides, as a man, I had even fewer opportunities to speak in English with anyone. Women, on the other hand, enjoy far more chances to speak it with foreigners, who are constantly looking for Japanese partners to enjoy friendship -- and possibly romance -- with.
By the age of 22 or so, I thought I was comfortably speaking in English about just about anything that happened to come to my mind. But that, as I look back on it now, was far from enough. By the time I reached that age, I had read 120 books in English all right. That was the best I could have done by that time, considering my limitations. Without going to an Anglophone country and without good friendship with any native speaker or any foreigner at all for that matter, and without the Internet or YouTube and without easy access to movies, the only means of keeping in contact with anything communicated in English was through reading books in English.
What you wrote about Michael Jackson is very interesting. I know only a little about his surgeries and scandals, but very superficially. It must have had lots of psychological factors behind what he went through, and that's something that can happen to anyone as long as you are a human, if not to the same extent. I've heard of some people who had one surgery after another without ever getting satisfied with the result of it or to fix some new problems the previous surgery has caused. This kind of thing can happen to anybody, I think. (I don't know about the pedophile, I don't have it, but I don't know if I develop something of the sort in the future or not.) He indeed seems to have had too much to hold. It's difficult to even imagine how big it was.
Toru Matsumoto (松本亨), an NHK English conversation teacher decades ago, said at the age of 50 that he had read 2,000 books in English. He then added that that was not enough at all. He said he should have read as many as 5,000 of them. He always stressed the importance of reading things in English if you wanted to be a good communicator in English. In those days at least, reading must have been crucial. But I strongly suspect that reading still today remains by far the most important aspect of language study. Not only in language study, but also in all other intellectual fields, reading should occupy by far the most important position. That's what I strongly suspect.
>>152-153 > And still now I am very much dissatisfied with my English ability. > If I really want to become a really good communicator in English, I think I would have to leave Japan and stay at least 20 years in an Anglophone country or read five times as many books in English.
This testimony of yours makes me realize the difficulty of acquiring a language. From where I am, your level of English is not even mesurable, and yet you say it would take 20 more years living in a foreign country to reach your desirable level in English.
A long way to go for me. I want to eventually make English my dominant language. It looks very hard, but I'm going to give it a shot.
I keep track of the books I read. Almost all the books I've read are, as I've mentioned, written in Japanese. I can guess what it is like to read 700 English books. Admirable. (Even if it was in Japanese, it's something.) I want to achieve similar things in the future. The number of books one can read in life is quite limited. 700 books, or 1300 books if considered partially read books, might look a lot, but compared to the number of books available that are interesting or worth reading, it's small (that's what I feel), and with my slow reading speed and my English ability I would need to give up lots of books I can potentially enjoy reading. I have read only a couple of English books. A long way to go.
>>154,456 Having been determined at such a young age seems to be something. I was like other normal Japanese people who started studying English after having become an adult. Learning a language has definitely become a lot easier today than in the past. We have the Internet and lots of English materials available. Nowadays I see some Japanse online who were born and raised in Japan and have become fluent in English, at least in pronunciation. (Maybe we will start seeing more in the future.) Achieving such a level must have been far more difficult in the past.
I, too, think that reading is something special regarding our intellectual activities. I want to have access to that activity soon.
>>158 Thank you for the correction. You are right. I appreciate it.
There is a website called Lang-8, which was once popular but now depopulated (that's what I heard). I wanted to use it, but I didn't. Having your sentences corrected must be a good way to improve your writing skills, I think. I appreciate people correcting my sentences, but my writing must contain too many grammatical errors. (I spot some myself.)
>>161 That might help. I heard that if you are using an EL display, making the display darker significantly reduces the amount of electricity it uses. Unfortunately my tablet has a normal LED display.
People are saying that Cloudflare might stop hosting 5ch on its DNS servers. There is a possibility that 5ch may become inaccessible in the near future.
These several days I've been reading and seeing this and that on the Internet concerning Michael Jackson. I've just finished watching this 90-minute documentary on him. This was exciting and informative.
The Death Of Michael Jackson - Whose Fault is it? _There will Never be another Star Like Him
The following 90-minute documentary on Michael Jackson is truly great. It's beautifully done not just in giving thoroughly-researched information but in artistry as well.
New MJ Documentary: March, 2017 (Man in the Mirror) with Earnest Valentino
Without knowing how he really lived and what exactly happened to him, I had always sensed something profound in the way he looked, behaved, talked, danced, and sang. I was right. I really had sensed his existence intuitively without knowing who he really was. Just like Karen Carpenter, Michael Jackson was a true superstar with complexities and profundities that never cease to obsess people.
I have a suggestion to Mr. OED. From what I gather, you know a lot about English grammar and have skills needed to explain it to English learners. The way you provide sources and explain in detail cases in point is mesmerizing.
So why not try that on your Youtube channel? YouTube is all about interactions. So just take the most of the two way communication features on the video platform. You prompt your viewers to ask any questions related to English, and you answer them, like you do in Q &A threads here.
As long as you post videos there, it's better to have large audience and earn some revenue, and you deserve it. Become a go-to person for English questions on Youtube. Don't be a run‐of‐the mill Youtber when in fact you're a jewel. Develop a solid reputation that you can handle any English question, which I know you can. Some YouTubers who are good at English speak about how to study English, their study history, but to my knowledge if limited, no one answer English questions like you do here.
You can handle really difficult questions so that's what separate you from those self-proclaimed advanced English learners. For Youtubers, it's important to nurture your community, find demands of audience and meet up their expectations. That's what you should care more.
I imagine from the number of your subscribers, that if you urge viewers to ask English questions, no one does so at first. So the second best is that you just start to answer questions posted somewhere like Yahoo Chiebukuro. Don't mention 5channel though, as it doesn't necessarily have good reputations and some are allergic to it. The most important thing as a Youtuber is nurture you community and increase your fans. Your quality answers would show viewers that you're someone to rely on when in trouble. It does take time to make yourself high profile on Youtube but that's worth a try.
Another idea is, to think that virtually there's no national boundaries on Youtube as long as you speak English, you can focus on English speaking people who're interested in Japan. Hey, Tokyo 2020 Olymipics is coming up! what a timing!
You introduce about Japan in English, say on another channel as It's not a good idea to make focuses blurred. Two main pillars of your channel could be ,1) to teach English and 2) to introduce Japanese to English speaking people. Mingle with Youtubers who are interested in Japan and lead their fans to your channels.
The good news is that the most popular foreign tourist destination is not Tokyo but Osaka, where you live. The reason is that there's Kansai International airport and you have Kyoto and Nara around. Osaka plays a role of a hub when they travel in Japan, whether they go east or west. Meet them in person if possible and make your life even more colorful. Once you talk with them on Youtube, no need for icebreak, You and they would be already bodies when you first meet them in person.
The best news is that you don't even have to pay me consultant fees even if you successgully increase your viewers following my advice. I wouldn't refuse to be getting paid if you insist though. I woudn't mind Amazon coupons, either.
>>167>>168 Wow, I'm surprised to know anyone was still interested in this thread. I had given up on it long ago because no one seemed to be coming here any longer.
Thanks for your considerate suggestion. But I'm afraid I'm not interested in soliciting questions. I'm not interested in earning money for that either. For money, I've always been working as a freelance translator and if I want to, I could get even more customers. But I don't want to work too hard.
Then why have I kept on answering questions on English all this time? Here and elsewhere on the Internet, it was not obligatory for me to answer a specific question. Although I tried to answer all questions unanswered or that no one had given definite answers, the principle was that I was free to answer or not to answer a question. And that's the beauty of it.
These days, though, I become less and less interested in answering these questions on English grammar and comprehension. Why? Because I'm beginning to realize what has always been obvious: that people are basically, that they don't want to pursue truth.
All they want to do is get the results quick. They don't need truth. All they want is money. I they can't earn money with their English proficiency, then they want to impress people, making themselves look and sound as if they're intelligent, good at English, versed in a wide range of disciplines.
As far as the number of posts is concerned, there are almost no posts other than operatives' As a result of the operatives continuing to distort information, the English board lost its trust and became depopulated It is now a waste board.
When uploading videos on YouTube, I have never once even thought of earning money or answering stupid questions about English grammar. If I ever want to live up to anyone's expectations, I would want to inspire professionals, not beginners. If I ever do think of talking to any student, I would want to talk to serious students who never stop studying -- not to become someone impressive in the future or to earn money but for the pure pleasure of knowledge and of sharing it with others for altruistic motives.
Of course, I am aware that we have to eat. In order to eat, we have to earn money. Basically I have had to earn money by using my English ability. But that has never been my final end. I've always been pursuing something beyond that.
I've always wanted to contribute to society in some way or other, not by making money or selling anything or manufacturing some stupid cars or machines or selling stupid houses or anything. I wanted to contribute something more mental -- if you know what I mean. I've wanted to bring some source of eternal joy to people by sharing my knowledge with them.
But sadly, almost no one wants anything such. All they want is to find out how to learn to speak and write good English quick with the minimum amount of effort. To such people, I have nothing whatsoever to offer. I've never even for a split second been anyone remotely similar to that.
YouTube and all other websites already have thousands of so-called English experts who are ready to teach them how to learn to speak and write good English in the shortest time with the smallest amount of effort.
On YouTube, I'll go on doing what I've always been doing. To share what I know with others, who may be in the absolute minority, perhaps one out of every thousand or even one out of every ten thousand. I don't want to answer questions that serious students would usually not dare to ask but would keep trying to explore through their own effort. Never once in my life have I had anyone who would answer any of my millions of questions. I have answered all those questions on my own by finding them by reading hundreds (or even more) of books in English and watching thousands of movies and dramas in English.
In short, I hate lazy people. The lazy usually want to get the results quick. They study hard for several years all right, but to become someone that can impress people or to earn money. That's all. When they've attached some status with the help of their knowledge or skills, they don't study any more -- at least not as hard as when young. I hate those people's guts. They absolutely don't deserve to talk to me. I wish they were dead. Or rather, I wish I were dead. I have no business living here in this depraved world.
If I remain active anywhere on the Internet, it's because I enjoy saying something to confirm to myself that I have learned a certain area of information or attached a certain level of knowledge. I would be thrilled to death of course, if one out of a thousand viewers would take interest in any of what I had to say.
As far as the number of posts is concerned, there are almost no posts other than operatives'. As a result of the operatives continuing to distort information, the English board lost its trust and became depopulated. It is now a waste board. There is no writing other than the operatives' faked stories. You opratives look so miserable.
As far as the number of posts is concerned, there are almost no posts other than operatives'. As a result of the operatives continuing to distort information, the English board lost its trust and was depopulated. It is now a waste board. There is no writing other than the operatives' faked stories. You opratives look so miserable.
As far as the number of posts is concerned, there are almost no posts other than operatives'. As a result of the operatives continuing to distort information, the English board lost its trust and was depopulated. It is now a waste board. There is no writing other than the operatives' faked stories. They operatives look so miserable.
>>173 >>If I remain active anywhere on the Internet, it's because I enjoy saying something >>to confirm to myself that I have learned a certain area of information or ●attached●
