Remember your moras, kids

I was having a convo with a bouldering owner today in Osaka when we started talking about his friend who is a world class climber. To my ear I asked the following:

“あの人は有名 (ゆうめい)?”

Turns out I said:

“あの人は夢 (ゆめ)?”

So yeah don’t do that. Turns out not practicing speaking until I got here leads to some interesting moments

11 comments
  1. On a separate note, I think “その人” would be more natural in that sentence.

  2. My son and I were talking about 有名 v. 夢 tonight when he was watching some show and he got confused.

  3. My name is Gary, and when I first was learning Japanese while living in Okinawa 20+ years ago, I introduced myself as 下痢 instead of ゲーリー while at a bar with a Japanese buddy and his non-english speaking friends. I only made that mistake once, was quite funny after a few beers though.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like