Quote:
Originally Posted by YuriTokoro
Hi.
Could you correct my English?
'She said, “I feel queasy.”'
Years ago, when I had just started working in the pharmaceutical department of a hospital, the senior nurse came into the pharmacy and said, “I feel queasy”.
Hearing that, you would think that she was suffering from nausea, wouldn’t you?
Well, she said it in Japanese, and the words she used were “mukamuka suru.” That means both “I feel sick to my stomach” and “I feel offended”, so I first thought she had had some sort of conflict.
I said, “What’s up?”which meant “I’m prepared to listen about your worries.”
She didn’t realize I was misunderstanding her, and kept repeating “I feel queasy.” for several minutes. I waited for her to confide in me. Then she said, “E ga itai.”
I was in a crisis! “Itai” means “have a pain”, but I didn’t know what “e” was. I thought it must have been a part of a human body I didn't know about.
“I should have studied harder!” I regretted my misunderstanding because I had earlier mistook “nose bleeding” for “a small amount of bleeding” during a phone call from a paramedic. (Both words have the same pronunciation in Japanese medical terms.)
I said, “Which part?” with some hesitation. She repeated “E ga itai” for about 20 minutes.
And then, she told me that she had eaten too much. I finally realized what she was saying.
“You have a pain in your stomach?”
She angrily looked at me. Her eyes seemed to be saying “How many times do I have to tell you?”
However, “stomach” is “i”. Not “e”. Never!
She just wanted some stomach medicine.
Afterwards, I found ot the senior nurse was famous for her dialect. Many people had problems understanding what she would say. This made me wonder how possible it was that she was unaware of her dialect and how it confused people, but I didn’t have the guts to ask her.
Thank you!
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Sounds like quite a challenging person to understand, Yuri. Your post is also interesting in how it shows there are misunderstandings even with people supposedly speaking the same language. I have the same problems trying to understand British television programs. They are speaking English of course, but the cadence and speed along with possible slang terms makes it all but impossible for me to understand and enjoy the program.
As for the post itself, the majority of revisions had to do with changing or inserting prepositions to clarify what concepts are being explained in a sentence. Some revisions were changes in wording, the most notable being "diffidence" changed to "with some hesitation". I made this revision with the understanding that "diffidence" can mean performing some actions (in this case asking the woman a question) when you are not sure the action is correct in the first place. "With some hesitation" was used in its place in an effort to retain the same basic meaning with simpler wording.
Good work, Yuri!
