00:11
We're doing an actual English podcast, so since we started it, I have decided to keep track of,
you know, random English questions that I've encountered. And this happened when I was
listening to a very popular English podcast. I'm not going to name it, but it's definitely
somewhere. It's the podcast that sort of I got inspired by to start our podcast because I was
like, well, we can do better. Well, not really. Not better, but we can make it more tailored for
the scientists, the researcher community, right? So I love this podcast in general. I don't listen
to it for English improvement purposes because I think my English is all right. But I like listening
to them because just good vibes. Yeah. But friendly. Yeah, exactly. Good friends just
chatting out. So one of the guys, like bilingual, right? And he's, you know, for all intents and
purposes, he's completely fluent in English. It's been a while since he moved to Japan,
so I think there's a little bit of vocabulary struggles or something occasionally. But
honestly, like, you don't really hear it, right? But I caught him saying, I have an image,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I have an image of blah, blah, blah. And I'm pretty sure,
given the context, what he wanted to say was, I have an impression that blah, blah, blah.
日本語だとさ、こういうイメージがあるよねっていうときにイメージっていう言葉を使うじゃん。 So そのことを考えながら英語で喋ってると I have an imageってなっちゃうのかなって今気づいて。
But in English, it makes no sense. Unless there's actual image, there's an actual visual
component that you're imagining. You're visualizing some image. Unless there's that,
right? Because the way I would use it, for instance, is like, no, but I don't even say
that. I'd say I would imagine that blah, blah, blah, right? It's not. Yeah, that makes more
sense. Like, I would imagine that's what's happening in this situation. I wouldn't say
I have an image that that's what's happening in this situation. Unless again, like, I actually
have a visualized vision where like, I, yeah, and most of the time, I think what he meant was,
03:08
I have an impression that, I don't know, like, I have an impression that he's a confident person,
or I have an impression that American people are outgoing, right? It's not, I have an image
that American people are outgoing, because American people being outgoing, it's not a vision.
It's not an image. It's just,
right? Yeah, it's so like, yeah. Who started this? Who started this Wasei Eigo? I am so mad because
it's so, like, some Wasei Eigo, it's so obviously different, right? Like, buffet and Viking. Like,
I don't know where the word Viking came from. Like, is it Viking? Or is it like Viking? I don't
even know that, right? And, and even if it's Viking, like the Norwegian pirate Viking,
that makes that has nothing to do with the fact that you can eat everything that's being served.
I don't know what what they're trying to what they're trying to get it. And, and, and if it's
biking, like, bicycle biking, that still doesn't make any sense either. It doesn't make sense.
So, like, you know, so some of these are like, famously different and very different. We don't
get confused. Very obvious. Yeah. Right. But like,
it's not just him where I heard it. Like, I heard it somewhere else as well. Talking to a Japanese
person who's fluent in English. And like, I have an image.
It's so insidious, this, this kind of mistake and this kind of errors. But it's also like,
just because that's not how we use it. It's very obvious to native speaker. Like, wait,
what do you mean you have an image? element, even if it's grammatically completely correct.
And maybe, you know, if the native speaker who is on the other side of the conversation,
exercises a tiny bit of imagination, they can probably understand what they're trying to say.
Right. That's another problem I have. Like, when you speak to native speakers,
native English speakers, I feel like they lack the imagination to read between the lines.
Right. Or like, trying to understand what the other person is saying.
Like, I don't know, maybe they're just not used to
06:04
being on the other side of like, maybe they're just not used to, you know, being speaking in
the second language and having to hold a conversation and feeling like you rely a lot
on other people reading the gap between your lines. And also, it may depend on the person's
situation or environment. In some cases, native, even native people work with non-native
students, researchers, and then they have this
like, ideas of connecting the dots. And then they're really good at understanding what they
want to say. Right. Yeah. So some people are good at, some native speakers are good at that.
And I feel like some others are not. And yeah, that's a whole different issue. But I do feel
like this is where sort of like, catches you off guard. And like, this is not to say that this kind
of stuff doesn't happen to me. Right. Sometimes, sometimes I'm like editing this podcast and
realize, I'm like,
or like plural agreement is not there, like a singular plural, like I get it mixed up because
I'm not really thinking about it. And well, in Japanese. Yeah, I struggle a lot with, you know,
and the evening writing. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the part that I like completely 100% rely on.
Like grammar checkers. Yeah. Like, get it right for me. I think I get it. Like maybe 70% of the
time, right. But the scientific writing is a little bit different than, you know, normal writing. And
um, so so there's, there's another element that kind of confuses me. But like, yeah, every time
I'm writing paper with my boss, like, that's the part that I get fixed the most. He's like,
he, he does in a, yeah, like in a correct places. Yeah. He's German, though. So I don't know, maybe,
like, maybe there's articles, you know, articles, the articles, the articles,
like, maybe that exists in German. So it for him, it's very obvious. But in Japanese,
there is no concept. So like, it's, it's really like, wishy washy. And we also don't care too,
too much if it's singular or plural. Like, I don't think it's that critical. Right? Whereas
many Western languages, the grammar conjugation is completely different if it's plural or single,
09:00
um, singular. And so for them, not having agreement on this is very
but for us, it's like, well, that's such a minor mistake. Yeah. And another thing that's that I
realized, I'm working with Chinese friends is in Chinese. And I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I think there's no distinction between he and she. It's just the second person, right?
Yeah. So sometimes, they would refer to somebody else in a conversation is like,
oh, Julia, he was saying this and that. I noticed that too.
Yeah. But like, that's not, that's not them being rude. It's just that they don't have in Chinese,
there's no difference. Yeah. But it is also extremely awkward. When you're trying to be
conscious of different people's pronouns, right? Because some people, nowadays, you can,
you know, choose your own pronouns. And you know, you can be he or she or they or whatever in between
and and sometimes they don't mean to misgender this other person. But they accidentally do because
they're just not in their language, in their primary language. I mean, thankfully, I haven't
seen any, like, major issues with that. Like it usually, they usually catch themselves do like,
oh, I meant she, right? Yeah. But it's another interesting sort of grammatical errors that
reveals something about your own primary language. So maybe, maybe like this whole,
the whole image thing, the, the, I have an image, question mark thing, like, maybe I should let go,
maybe I should just like, let that happen and be like, you know, that's, I get I know, I know what
you're saying. And like, that's most of the time, like 100% of the time, I understand when people
are saying I have an image of blah, blah, blah, even if it's not technically image. So like,
maybe I should just let it just drop it and, you know, not worry about it. Maybe I should let it go.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, it's learning English, learning any language, I guess it's hard. It's
difficult. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us
at Eigo de Science on Twitter. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
