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ttog

Recently I was scouted as a one-day assistant on master’s thesis defence at my university. My job was to guide the master students in and out of the classrooms where their evaluators were waiting for them. Like Vergilius who guided Dante Alighieri through his Divine Comedy. Most of the graduate students in my faculty are foreign students. I took the liberty of talking to them and discussing their dissertations and their career plans. The scientific fields are chosen based on the applicability of their results My argument is solely based on my personal observations, but it seems that there is a trend for choosing a scientific field when it comes […]

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ttog

When you speak Japanese with your Japanese friends you can’t avoid this question: “What Japanese do you like most?” or as they say it 好きな日本語はなんですか？ (Suki na nihongo wa nan desk ka?) I am always at a loss. What do they want me to say? There are different dialects in Japanese language, there are different idioms, different characters, onomatopoeia, polite speech, not very polite speech – it all qualifies as Japanese. So how exactly should I answer this tricky question? I’ve asked my Japanese friends and here is what I found out: The answers may contain but are not limited by a word or phrase with the a pleasant meaning […]