Job Discussion Forums

[R]

Would somebody mind translating the following tiny sentence? It's the first word I'm having trouble with.

"ojouzo desu ne!"

Cheers!

[TokyoLiz]

[Guest]

This phrase is used to give someone a compliment about being good at something. jouzu means skilled. The o is just polite. Japanese people use it to praise foreigners on the smallest knowledge of Japanese.

eg:
foreigner: konichiwa
Japanese: Nihongo jouzu desu ne.

[Shonai Ben]

Hi Rob.
As the posters above mentioned it means skilled or you are skilful at something.
Actual spelling in romanji is jyouzu.The use of "o" before a word is to be very polite.
For example: o genki desu ka? Are you fine?

Hope this helps.

[R]

That's brilliant, thanks! I could work out bits of it but for some reason I couldn't quite fit it all together. It appears, er, that I was being complimented on my Japanese! Oh, the irony!

Thanks again for your answers,
Rob.

[Shonai Ben]

Can't say that I've ever been complimented on my Japanese.Most of the time it's a struggle to communicate but I get by.I find that most people are so surprised that I can utter a few sentences in Japanese that they seem to go into some kind of shock and don't even hear me.They were expecting English,not Japanese.

[Sunpower]

SB - Beacause you probably speak, like most foreigners, strange Japanese.

[Shonai Ben]

Yeah,you're probably right.Sometimes I have to repeat myself several times to be understood.Do you find that you have the same problem in Taiwan?

[R]

Given that my 'Japanese' communication takes place enirely by email, something pretty hilarious is probably going to happen the first time I actually open my mouth and try to speak the stuff. I really must find somebody I can practice with...

[Shonai Ben]

Are there any Japanese restaurants nearby that you could drop into and practice ordering a meal?
Just a suggestion,but probably not a good one.

[BenJ]

I noticed in China that regardless of how well you may or may not be speaking Chinese phrases, the people will not understand you straight away, purely because of your appearance. This was highlighted when two fellow teachers, one white and fluent, the other Chinese American and not very fluent would go out with me. The Chinese people would automatically look to the Chinese American teacher and understand his partial Chinese but look quizzically at the very fluent teacher whenever he spoke.

[R]

Ben - there is a restaurant but I can't afford to go there at the moment! They also have a shop full of tasty Japanese food, and I went in there. During a long conversation with a girl who was working there, we failed to established whether what I was holding was a pot of flying fish roe or not. Come to think of it, the only successful conversation I've had in Japanese was a few seconds later, when I held up a white vegetable wrapped in cling-film. It went like this:

Me: "Daikon?"
Her (nodding): "Daikon."

So you see the converational opportunities that are already opening up to me with this new languag!!

Rob.

[guest of Japan]

I think those situations in which we have a hard time communicating are often because we don't speak the expected conversation. I always notice older Japanese women have a difficult time ordering in McDonald's, simply because they have random questions and the cashier is usually expecting a simple exchange. I also have met many people who refuse to go to Subway because they don't understand the system of ordering.

Of course I've had some experiences where the person didn't understand me simply because they were so nervous about speaking English with me that they didn't notice I was speaking Japanese.

And yes, I speak my fair share of strange and butchered Japanese.

BenJ, maybe, just maybe, your friend with the broken Chinese had better intonation than your friend with the fluent Chinese. I can't talk about life in China with any certainty, as I only spent two weeks there.

[BenJ]

yeah i know i was being quite general but it was pretty obvious at that time - both of the other teachers were typical yanks, just that one looked Chinese. However the white teacher had been living and workign in China for 2.5 years and speaks and writes(as I have been told by other Chinese people) excellent Chinese. Just an amusing situation really. Similar to the konichiwa comment, just saying hello in China gets you an ecstatic response.

[Sunpower]

SB - Yeah, I'm quite shy about speaking what little Chinese I know.

I get flustered pretty easily.

I know what I'm trying to say but I can't get the right tone out and so they don't understand me.