Gratuitous Hello Kitty
I recently watched Eddie Izzard’s hilarious take on Latin being a silly-billy language. “It has a nominative, a vocative, an accusative, a genitive, a dative and an ablative…. Quad the f—k?” As I spend this year learning new languages I’ve noticed that Latin is not alone. There’s lots of silly languages. Since I’m in Japan right now, we’ll start with Japanese. After all:
- It’s really five different languages
- With ten different words for every number
- And squiggly pictures instead of an alphabet
First some caveats, since I know this post will go microbial or viral or whatever. My intent is to amuse, not offend. Japanese is no sillier than any other language. I don’t discourage anyone from learning it. The quirks are what makes it fun. I’m having a great time living in Japan, speaking in Japanese, meeting wonderful people, and eating all your sushi.