Japanese Selavy

You may not understand what an undertaking this small blog really is. Each morning, I write my entry and translate it into ten different languages. I am not that versed in some of them, so it takes quite a while. Trying to master Japanese has been difficult as I've only begun recently and I can't give it the time it requires. So for my many Japanese followers, some of this may not make absolute sense. It may make no sense at all. But you've got to love a fellow for trying, no?

If you go back to the last sentence, you will see some of the trouble. I barely speak English. Take the word "got" for instance. It is probably the most incorrectly used word in our language. I should merely have said "you have to love a fellow." Whoops. Split infinitive. Should have merely said. Merely have said. And so on. I don't know how or when "got" got to be a common parlance substitute, but it surely has. Has gotten to be.

Good. Now that can haunt your day. If you want more fun, look at this, especially the usage note.

Usage Note: The use of get in the passive, as in We got sunburned at the beach, is generally avoided in formal writing. In less formal contexts, however, the construction can provide a useful difference in tone or emphasis, as between the sentences The demonstrators were arrested and The demonstrators got arrested. The first example implies that the responsibility for the arrests rests primarily with the police, while the example using get implies that the demonstrators deliberately provoked the arrests. · In colloquial use and in numerous nonstandard varieties of American English, the past tense form got has the meaning of the present. This arose probably by dropping the helping verb have from the past perfects have got, has got: We've got to go, we've got a lot of problems became We got to go, we got a lot of problems. The reanalysis of got as a present-tense form has led to the creation of a third singular gots in some varieties of English, especially African American Vernacular English.

Maybe I should stick to the other languages. It is in other countries that my blog is really growing. I suspect that many of those readers don't understand what an undereducated fellow I am. It is like the charm of going to another country where the language is foreign to you. Everybody seems brilliant because you can't understand a word they are saying. Truly, it is one of travel's greatest pleasures.

I encourage you to think of this as a foreign country. Don't listen too closely. Just let the words fall onto you like raindrops, like the sound of the windshield wipers thumping on an old bus in rural Mexico. Like gusts of wind coming again and again in growing whispers. Just a rhythm. Just a sound.