[78-L] X-word puzzles and 78s

[Malcolm Rockwell]

Yes, and what's worse is the written language evolves as well. So a 
katakana character from 1910, although virtually identical to one from 
1950, may have an entirely different meaning due to the evolution of the 
spoken language.
M

*******

On 7/17/2014 7:16 AM, Mike Harkin wrote:
> Interesting!  Are you saying that Japanese of 100 years ago is as different from contemporary as Elizabethan (or even Chaucerian) are different from modern English,
>
> requiring glossaries, footnotes and such?  Modern Japan-
> ese is daunting enough!  Middle English is a comparative
> doddle.
>
>
> Mike in Plovdiv
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>   From: Malcolm Rockwell <malcolm at 78data.com.invalid>
> To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2014 7:39 PM
> Subject: [78-L] X-word puzzles and 78s
>   
>
>
> Tying my the previous post on crossword puzzles and language even
> tighter to 78rpm discography (how obscure), when I was researching
> Hawaiian recordings made and pressed in Japan translation was ever
> problematic. Titles from the 1950s were easy to do. But the further I
> went back - to the 78rpm Nipponophone era c. 1918 or thereabouts - the
> harder translation became. The Japanese language and it's written forms
> had changed so much that I needed to find someone alive who was around
> in the 1920s to read not only kanji, but katakana. Couple that with
> trying to locate someone not only familiar with the idiomatic Japanese
> of the day but with the idiomatic English of today made my task
> virtually impossible. To translate some of the earlier language directly
> I not only would have to have learned modern Japanese, but Japanese as
> it was spoken and written in 1900.
> And I thought English was bad enough!
> Malcolm
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