Tempura

"Tempura" 　天ぷら ／天麩羅　is of course, a Japanese dish.

"Tempura no" in Japanese means "of Tempura."

"Tempura na" in Japanese sounds like "Tempra-ish" though grammatically not correct.

Every time I hear "temprano/temprana" in Spanish, which means "early,"

I cannot help thinking of Tempura 天ぷら

As you may know, "temprano" is for a masculine noun and

"temprana" is for a feminine noun in Spanish.

A noun that ends with "o" is almost masculine in Spanish.

A noun that ends with "a" is almost feminine in Spanish.

Isn't it easy to understand ?

You cannot spot Dutch "de" words (masculine/feminine nouns) and

"het" words (neuter nouns) so easily.

What I do is to treat every unknown words as masculine.

Then I will get better odds than 50 %.

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

My Kindle was broken

My Kindle was broken... by a traffic accident.  Sad.

I am OK, partly thanks to my Kindle, which was in a bag that is hit by a car directly.

Actually, lower half of the screen is OK.

But you can not scroll a page with a Kindle, can you??

When I bought the kindle, My son was immersed in Harry Potter.

And so did I.

And I thought it might be fun reading Harry Potter in English.

And with a Kindle, I might enjoy reading Harry Potter in a commuter train.

So I bought the Kindle.

Then I realized that they do not sell a Harry Potter e-book.

Pity.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading Steve Jobs and other books in a commuter train.

And now I am sure I need another one.

How about these characters?

There exist no "f" sound in Korean.

For imported words, "f" is represented by "p"

For example, "waffle" becomes "wapple."

I think this sounds cute.

However, sometimes it is inconvenient.

Korean characters consist of a consonant part(s) and a vowel part.

For example, like this.

카 [ka], 키 [ki], 쿠 [ku], 캐 [ke], 코 [ko]

If you reverse left and right of the consonant "ㅋ",

It look like "F", isn't it?

Then [fa, fi, fu, fe, fo] sounds can be written like this.

In Japanese, a character ヴ [v] is used only for imported words.

In Italian, letters j, k, w, x, y are used only for imported words.

May be it is high time to introduce a new character representing "f" in Korean.

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

Doing dishes may be dangerous

From a bus heading to a jungle for a tour when I visited the Borneo island,

I noticed  traffic signs saying "afwas" from time to time.

The signal was red and it was obvious that it meant "dangerous."

Still, every time I saw the sign, I was not able to stop thinking of  doing dishes
like Pavlof'v dogs.

"afwas" in dutch means doing washes.

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

I don't want to say I am busy

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

Tons of work to do.
Actually, I feel like I cannot afford to spend my time writing a blog entry.

Japanese : 忙しい　[isogashii]
I don't like this Kanji character, which means "no spirit".

Chinese ： 忙碌 [mánglù]

Korean： 바빠 [pappa] Sounds cute.

Dutch： druk

English： busy

Afrikaans ： busy
This does not sounds like Dutch but sounds like English.

French： occupé

Spanish and Portuguese ： ocupado

Italian : occupato

Vietnamese：bận rộn
This one really sounds like busy.

cha cha cha cha

The Cha-cha-cha is of course the name of a cheerful dance.

In Japanese, チャチャチャ　[cha cha cha] sometimes represents
sound of hand claps for example when encouraging a favorite player.

In Korean, 자자 자자 [ cha cha, cha cha ] means
"Let's go to bed, Let's go to bed."

If you pronounce it more plosively,
찾자　찾자 [ cha cha, cha cha ] means
"Let's make a search, Let's make a search."

(J120326)
--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

Pierre de Fermat

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

Fermat's Last Theorem is so simple.

There exist no X, Y, Z satisfying
X^ｎ＋Y^ｎ＝Z^ｎ
for natural number n more than 2.

But the proof had not been provided for almost 360 years.

Mathematics was his hobby.

He made his living by working as a lawyer.

He also enjoyed literature and languages  in his spare time.

He was proficient especially in French, Greece, Latin,

Spanish, and Italian.



--ref
PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS J. Tabak

pastel

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

Of course, pastel is a stick or crayon with soft gentle color.

In English, French, Dutch, Vietnamese, ... it is pastel.

And also in other languages,

Italian: pastello

Japanese: パステル　[Pasuteru]

Korean: 파스텔 [pastel]


However, in Spanish, "pastel" means a cake.

In Brazil, "pastel" means a deep fried pastry with filling in it.

Yum-yum.

Yes/No

--To read this post in Japanese, click here.

In Korean, "네" [ne] means Yes.

In Dutch, "Nee" [nei] means No.

When I first started learning Korean
after having lived in the NL for a while,
saying "네" [ne] when I meant yes was extremely difficult.

In Korean, "예" [je] also means Yes.

This may be easier for English speakers
since it sounds like English "Yes."


English:  yes/no

Japanese:  はい　(hai) /いいえ (iie)

Korean:  네 (ne)/아니오 (anyo)

Chinese:  是 (shi)/不是 (bushi)

French：  oui/non

Spanish：   sí/no

Italian:   sì/no

German：  ja/nein

Dutch:  ja/nee

Russion:  да/нет