the questions of our times: formality and vampires

[rm]

This, thanks to a discussion started by weirdquark. Please do visit the comments where you will learn many things including the many ways formality is structured in different languages (something my questions did not fully take into account, and I apologize for that), werewolf pack dynamics considerations, and whether there are vampires in France.

[Poll #1601631]

Comments

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit freaked at the prospect of putting my half-Japanese, blue-eyed for now baby daughter into a yukata at some point. It bugs me that it bugs me, but there you go. It is what it is, and there are a lot of layers there. I hope that we get an environment soon that makes it easier for kids like your daughter, in all parts of the world.

(When I have to refer to it in general I usually just say "hanzi/kanji/hanja" but if I'm talking individually I'll do it by circumstance aka that's kanji in the icon because the context is Japanese. Just my personal way of trying to be as inclusive as possible! And yeah, I hate trying to explain these things in English. I see "Makoto" translated as everything from "friendship" to "loyalty" to, like, "calmness" or some crap. It's not riiiiight.)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to work out some of the weirdnesses that my daughter can expect before she's old enough to ask the questions or experience the issues. My son is far more typically Eurasian looking, and that stuff I'd worked on long before he was even thought of.

Your workaround is pretty much mine, in practice. I only do the geeky [] version when I'm sick of typing out the whole.

Makoto...it's one of those things that leads to the "inscrutable, exotic" tag. Alas. (As if there weren't terms in other languages that are hard to translate into other cultures.) I like WWWJDIC's translation best. (Truth/sincerity)

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

Man, "sincerity" is a pretty great match, actually...!

[trinker.livejournal.com]

It's my favorite J-E dictionary for a reason.