** Richard the Great wrote -

> 'Nuance':
> a nice terminally polite 'term' that only the Japanese can and so uniquely
> like to refer. Imagine how long it actually took trying to figure out that key
> "English" word that the Japanese were actually trying express in fractured
> Japanese-English; 'nuance', and then, the sudden dawning of enlightenment when
> I did! "OOOOhhh, 'nuuu-ance'; very interesting."

Uh huh. I remember eventually giving up after about an hour of a Japanese skipper
trying to delineate the subtle difference in pronunciation that distinguishes the
Japanese words for flower and nose, both of which sound like "hana" in Romanji.
Good ole Cap't Yoshida had a great time initially while I stumbled through telling
him how nice his nose smelled, but even he became frustrated at my obvious
inability to grasp the subtle nuances. Japanese may be an easy language in some
ways, but the inherent subtleties require a great deal of work for those who do
not speak it natively.

- Jack



Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jbowling at direct.ca