3/15/2016

A little happiness

"Do you want ham and eggs?"

I asked my 7-year-old son when I was preparing breakfast yesterday morning.

"Yeah, I want it."

He answered.

After the Karate tournament match, I try to add some dishes for him because my husband pointed out that he needs to eat more, especially obtain enough high-quality protein to be stronger.
Furthermore, I also love ham and eggs!


By the way, we usually call ham and eggs "ハムエッグ( ham egg)".

It is one of the English words coined in Japan.

Most of Japanese don't know that they are not proper English and believe that such kinds of English words are used in English-speaking countries.

< Wasei Eigo (Japanese-made English) examples >

サラリーマン sarary man = office worker

ノートパソコン note Pasocon = laptop

クレーム claim = complaint

コンセント consent =  wall socket

トランプ trump = playing card

ガソリンスタンド  gasoline stand = gas station

ナイター nighter = night game


While eating ham and eggs, he said:

"Oh! I am lucky! There are two slices of ham!"

"Really? I didn't notice to use two slices of ham. Good for you."

He was glad innocently and ate it up.


After I finished working, I picked my son from the children's house then came home because he told me that he wanted to come home soon.

I walked to the nursery school to pick up my 5-year-old daughter.

On our way home, she skipped happily.

I asked her:

"Did you have something good today?"

"Yes! I played with my friend. I enjoyed it very much!"

I thought that I used to skip when I was a child but I have not skipped at all recently.

Both examples were only a little happiness, but if we can feel small happiness, it would pile up and become bigger happiness.



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2 comments:

  1. Hello Kumi-san,

    It sounds as if you will be doing a lot more food preparations if your son is going to be a Karate master. I hope your plan with your husband pays off in making your son more able to compete at Karate.

    When I was a child we had a book called "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr Seuss. It was a very funny/odd book from what I remember. I had the words of that book in my head while writing this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6vhc3RTQ20

    I am sure if I could have eaten green eggs and ham as a child I would have done so exactly because they were green :)

    Here are a list of some of the issues found in the post:

    Part 1:

    This line:
    After the Karate tournament match, I try to add some dishes for him because my husband pointed out that he needs to eat more, especially obtain enough high-quality protein to be stronger.

    Should be:
    After the Karate tournament match, I will be trying to add some dishes for him because my husband pointed out that he needs to eat more, especially obtain enough high-quality protein to be stronger.

    Reason: I added I will be trying because it sounds like from your sentence that you will be adding extra food (that is high in protein) in an on going basis into the future.

    This line:
    Most of Japanese don't know that they are not proper English and believe that such kinds of English words are used in English-speaking countries.

    Should be:
    Most (Japanese/Japanese people) don't know that they are not proper English phrases and believe that such kinds of English words are used in English-speaking countries.

    Note: In the above sentence it is true that we would not say "Ham and Eggs" as "Ham Eggs", we would however almost certainly understand the meaning. It is surprising how many self made English words the Japanese constructed.

    My favorite is the one for ミルクホール[Milk Hall]. We no longer have Milk Halls/Milk Bars in England since the 1950. But we do have the small shops which sell sweet drinks and ice creams. I am not sure what we call them officially today but juice bars/cafe seem to be used now. Normally I can usually understand the meaning of the loan words but that one always made me have to think for a while.

    These Translation words:
    サラリーマン sarary man = office worker
    ノートパソコン note Pasocon = laptop
    クレーム claim = complaint
    コンセント consent = wall socket
    トランプ trump = playing card
    ガソリンスタンド gasoline stand = gas station
    ナイター nighter = night game

    In general when you want to say that a specific word can have more than one meaning I would use commas (,) between them rather than =. As = implies that they mean the same thing when some of those words clearly are not similar in meaning for example:

    コンセント consent = wall socket

    The above line implies that consent and wall socket have similar or equal meanings. Which is not true. Using a comma would change the meaning to say that コンセント can mean consent (or/and) wall socket:

    コンセント consent, wall socket

    Question: In the dictionary I use コンセント only shows the definition for wall socket. So do you think it would be okay for me to ask the dictionary owners to add the word for consent also. Or is consent a rare use word.

    This line:
    "Really? I didn't notice to use two slices of ham. Good for you."

    Should be:
    "Really? I didn't notice that I used two slices of ham. Good for you."

    This line:
    He was glad innocently and ate it up.

    Note: The above line sounds a little strange, its meaning is clear but could be better written as:

    He was oblivious to my plan and innocently ate it up.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Part 2:

    This line:
    After I finished working, I picked my son from the children's house then came home because he told me that he wanted to come home soon.

    Should be:
    After I finished working, I picked (up my son/my son up) from the children's house then came home because he told me that he wanted to come home soon.

    This line:
    "Did you have something good today?"

    Should be:
    "Did you (do something good/have fun) today?"

    This line:
    Both examples were only a little happiness, but if we can feel small happiness, it would pile up and become bigger happiness.

    Should be:
    Both examples were only little examples of happiness, but if we can feel these small moments of happiness, they can combine and become bigger happiness.

    Note in English as far as I am aware we don't have a specific idiom to express the above sentence the nearest example I can come up with is:

    Find happiness where you can.

    So one way to rewrite the original sentence would be:

    Both examples were only little examples of happiness, but it is good to find happiness where (we/you) can.

    ReplyDelete