When it comes to personality, some people seem to have been put on the planet to make life easier for everyone else:

 
Cooperar: (Spansih, Central America) to go along willingly with someone else to one’s own disadvantage. 

Abozzare: (Italian) to accept meekly a far from satisfactory situation. 

Ilunga: (Tshiluba, Congo) someone who is ready to forgive any abuse the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time 

Flattering
 
Vaseliner: (French) to flatter (literally, to apply Vaseline) 

Happobijin: (Japanese) a beauty to all eight directions (a sycophant) 

Radfahrer: (German) one who flatters superiors and browbeats subordinates (literally, a cyclist) 

Fawning 

The Japanese have the most vivid description for hangers-on: kingyo no funi. It literally means ‘goldfish crap’ –a reference to the way that a fish that has defecated often trails excrement behind it for some time.

In every language, there seems to be certain “unmentionables” – words of such strong affective connotations that they cannot be utilised during polite discourse. In English, the first of these that come to mind are, of course, words dealing with excretion and sex. We ask movie ushers and petrol station attendants where the “lounge” or “rest room” is, although we usually have no intention of lounging or resting. “Powder room” is another euphemism for the same facility, also known as a “toilet”, which itself is an earlier euphemism.

Indeed, it is impossible in polite society to state, without having to resort to baby-talk or a medical vocabulary, your true purpose for needing to use the “rest room” (it’s not where you “wash your hands”).

Money is another subject about which communication is in some ways inhibited. It is all right to mention sums of money, such as “ten thousand dollars” or “two dollars and fifty cents”. But it is considered bad taste to inquire directly into other people’s financial affairs, unless such an inquiry is necessary in the course of business. When creditors send bills, they practically never mention money, although that is, of course, what they are writing about. There are many circumlocutions: “We beg to call your attention to what might be an oversight on your part”; “We would appreciate your early attention to this matter”; “May we look forward to an early remittance”…

The fear of death carries over, quite understandably in view of the widespread confusion of symbols with the concepts they symbolise, into fear of the words having to do with death. Many people, therefore, instead of saying “died”, substitute such euphemistic expressions as “passed away”, “gone to meet his maker”, “departed”, and “gone west”. In Japanese, the word for death, “shi”, happens to have the same pronunciation as the word for the number four. This coincidence results in many linguistically awkward situations, since people generally avoid “shi” in the discussion of numbers and prices, and use “yon”, a word of different origin, instead.

While studying Japanese at university, I was looking forward not only to learning my first non-European language (having studied French, German, Latin & Greek at school and university), but also making a stab at an entirely new alphabet (or as our sensei told us to call it, writing system). It was only after our first lesson that I became a little more apprehensive, when I learnt that they employ three separate writing systems simultaneously.

First of all there are two phonetic writing systems: hiragana, which is used to ’spell out’ Japanese words in short phonetic units (for example, sensei (せんせい), meaning ‘teacher’, consists of four hiraganas: se (せ), n (ん), se (せ) & i (い).

The other phonetic system follows the same rules as hiragana, but is used to spell out ‘loan words’ (Japanese words borrowed from English or other languages) or to emphasise Japanese words (for example, in signs outside shops and bars). This writing system is called katakana, and while it follows the same pattern of phonetic sounds, the characters look different, consisting more of straight lines when compared with the more curvaceous hiragana. For example, the Japanese word for ‘icon’ is the same word, but transliterated into the more limited Japanese phonemes to match the sound of the original term as closely as possible - in this case, aikon (アイコン).

These two writing systems were manageable for a gaijin (’foreigner’) such as myself: regular practice reading and writing the characters and recognition exercises coupled with my own enthusiasm helped me become fairly proficient in both writing systems in only a couple of weeks, but it was the third writing system that bamboozled me - kanji.

Kanji are characters of Chinese origin, first imported to Japanese shores by articles from China. These characters are far more complex and intricate than the kana systems, many requiring upwards of 20 individual strokes to draw, and are used primarily for nouns, adjective stems and verb stems, replacing what would otherwise be phonetic characters. Most kanji have several different ‘readings’, which can subtly alter their meaning, as well as usually completely changing the way you say them. The main drawback when learning kanji, however, is that you don’t know how to pronounce them unless you either have the furigana form of the character, or have been briefed in advance of the different readings. To add insult to injury, there are over 50,000 kanji in existence; although only around 2,000 are in daily use.

While the Chinese students in my class had very little difficulty recognising the root meanings of many kanjis, as well as being able to write them with amazing speed and accuracy, every facet of every kanji exercise was a huge challenge for somebody with my background, trained purely on Roman and Greek alphabets with very little talent for drawing complex shapes.

For those starting out in Japanese reading and writing, the only advice I can offer for unlocking the mysteries of kanji would be the same advice given to me by my sensei - gambatte!