Chapter 332: The Day After Tomorrow Is Sunday And A Holiday
It feels like there was a similar misunderstanding before...
Oh, right, I remember. It was when I was confessed to by Ilyena behind the school building.
I found out about it later from Ilyena's stream.
She apparently misunderstood what I said and ended up debuting as a VTuber.
Well, at the time, I never imagined she was talking about me.
It seems that our connection is based on this kind of "misunderstanding."
<...Words really are difficult.>
<Indeed! Shall we return to talking about language?>
Oh, no, that's not what I meant.
This misunderstanding is leading to even more misunderstandings. Well, I'm glad the topic is changing, though.
<If I remember correctly, we were talking about how the meaning of words can easily change depending on context in Japanese, right?>
<That's right. We call that "high-context." It also relates to the significant impact of context.>
≫The meaning changes with context, huh (space)
≫...I've got it!
≫Iroha-chan is tiny today, too!
<Hey, who just commented that!?>
≫Iroha-chan, this is also context effect (space)
≫Misunderstandings are scary
≫No one even said that Iroha-chan's height or chest size is small, though (text)
<Don't unite only in times like this!?>
<Exactly! Iroha-sama is small and cute today, too!>
<Thank you! But that doesn't help at all, does it!?>
With a sigh, I removed the wordplay text that had been left on the streaming screen.
Perhaps noticing this, Ilyena says,
<Earlier, we were talking about homophones, but in Japanese, there are also cases where the same characters have different readings, right?>
≫And there are even more readings beyond this...
<Another similar pattern is "sei", which also has many readings.>
[A flower-arranging pure girl, whose livelihood was working with raw silk, made a living. Her upbringing was not easy. Unfortunately, from the moment she was born until now, she has been pure through and through.]
<Even Japanese people would struggle to read this, right?>
<Indeed. "Sei" has various readings, too, and I think there are 158 in total.>
<Please, give me a break! Iroha-sama!? I think it's getting too complicated again!>
<I did it unconsciously!?>
≫Th-thanks... Ilyena, nice save! (space)
≫Well, it was totally fine? No problem? Phew~
≫↑There’s smoke coming out of your head
<Uh, um... To summarize, I mentioned earlier that it's common for words and characters to change with time, and that applies to pronunciation as well. Readings also change over time.>
<Nothing stays the same. This kind of thing probably happens in all languages.>
<Yes, indeed. For example, in English, when the same sounds continue, they can change. Words themselves can change, like L becoming R, or R becoming L.>
<By the way, English doesn’t have counters, right?>
<Well, it's a bit different from Japanese counters, but it's not that they don’t exist at all.>
<Oh, really?>
<For example, as mentioned in the comments earlier, you can say "a piece of cake."
<I see. That’s... certainly "a piece of cake" compared to Japanese!>
Ilyena says jokingly.
Is English easy, or is Japanese hard?
That’s something that might be open to interpretation.
I shrugged and smiled wryly in front of the monitor, thinking about that――.
***
※Reading answers:
[The flower-arranging pure girl, whose livelihood was working with raw silk, made a living. Her upbringing was not easy. Unfortunately, from the moment she was born until now, she has been pure through and through.]