Cell Phone Sommeliers on the Way? 159
Japan is reportedly toying with the idea of educating and licensing "sommeliers" to help potential buyers wade through the vast sea of options available for a new cellphone purchase. "Japan's communication ministry is looking to the private sector to manage the potential nightmare exam and certification process, with children's online safety highlighted as an important part of the plan. Mobile sommelier sounds like a pretty sweet title, we can totally feel how an HTC TyTN II might be paired with an earthy unlimited plan followed by the soft nutty finish of a 200-minute a month daytime calling package."
Re:Where's TFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where's TFA? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where's TFA? (Score:3, Informative)
sommelier? (Score:1, Informative)
"sommelier
A restaurant employee who orders and maintains the wines sold in the restaurant and usually has extensive knowledge about wine and food pairings."
Why don't they use something that is related, in English, or at least a bit more understandable, do the Japanese speak French? Probably some English lit major justifying his/her degree/salary. These are probably the same people who make up all that management speak, like instead of chart or table they use 'matrix'
Any of these would have been much more understandable: specialist, expert, buff, genius, nerd, advocate, certified authority, professional.
Re:Sommeliers vs. Sommeil? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sommeliers vs. Sommeil? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, if we trust the results of a google search, it comes from a coarser latin a very long time ago. No idea if it's true, but here's a link [alphadictionary.com]. From the linked article:
Cheers
Re:Pretentious wankery (Score:2, Informative)
Sommeliers train for a long time to understand the entire wine-making process from beginning to end, and all the factors that contribute to a good wine.
A true sommelier isn't someone who nitpicks about whether it is "sweet" or "honeydew" favour in the wine. A true sommelier can tell you how much rain fell in 1968 in a particular region of Western France and how it affected the acidity of the soil in which the grapes grew.
That being said, I agree with the parent that such things will not help "joe average" in the cell phone market and likely have no place.
Japanese Retail Smiles (Score:5, Informative)
1. Japan is very far ahead of us as far as cell-phone technology is concerned. They've had fully-functional video phones for at least a year or two, for example (as in, you can communicate via real-time video).
2. Japanese retail is much more about service than most US retail. We just want to get in and get the product, but the Japanese are all about greeting you at the door, pleasant smiles, and all of that.
Therefore, a sommelier isn't all that strange in the context of Japanese retail. It's strange to Americans, but to the Japanese, it must make sense, otherwise they wouldn't bother.
Re:The Communication Age (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too many features (Score:2, Informative)
Re:sommelier? (Score:4, Informative)
They do, but it isn't what you would think. Here's some fun examples (note double vowels means to hold the sound longer):
Japanese: Depaato
English: Department Store
Japanese: Supa
English: Supermarket
Japanese: Terebi
English: Television (TV)
Japanese: Pasokon
English: Personal Computer (PC)
All of these words are derived from English words but have been kana-butchered because Japanese does not have all of the sounds English has and some are even shortened forms of the full words. For example "pasokon" which you would hear sounded like "pah soh com" is really from the first parts of "personal computer" being "perso" and "com".
Some words actually sound pretty close to their English equivalent:
Japanese: kohi (pronounced co-hee)
English: coffee
But when written in katakana or even romaji you sometimes wouldn't figure it out the actual English word as an English speaker. Only until they show you the object or describe what they are talking about do you suddenly make the connection.
So they do use English and other foreign words (not related to English) as any language is allowed. But even if they did, the word probably wouldn't sound exactly like it did from the originating language.
You could also say similarly of English which takes and borrows at will. In fact English will even allow you to force words to be used in different contexts than are technically sound. For example words like "guestimate" are used more commonly to express estimates that have no basis or technical reasoning. You may have issues trying to use that type of verbage (verbage--yet another made up word) in published works but for communication it is just fine. Additionally we still takes words like rendevous from other languages (French) despite using it in English. So are we speaking French or English? Well English obviously.
I had the same complaints about the languages my parents spoke because sometimes they would alternate between the native language and English. So I would hear certain English phrases thrown in at random times and get frustrated and ask why they wouldn't just speak in one language or come up with a valid translation or expression of their thoughts in the other language. The answer is they switch between languages because sometimes it is easier and quicker to express a thought or concept in one language versus another.
I also get an awful lot of complaints from my Spanish speaking friend who says we (American) English speakers tend to butcher the pronunciation of many borrowed Spanish words. For example the word "churro" in Spanish is specifically pronounced "chu ro" but English speakers tend to sit on the "r" sound and say something "chr ro".
So language (in general) is a funny thing. But of course you would have learned that in your required foreign language studies classes that you didn't sleep through, right?
To end, I'm going to leave you with one last Japanese kana-fied English word. But I'll write it in romaji without correct spacing (there are no "random" spaces in Katakana words) so you can read it. Some hints: the word is actually taken from 2 common english words combined to express a concept and the first portion "ai" is sounds like the English pronoun "I" or "eye" but is commonly written with two katakana.
Japanese: ai su ku ri mu
English: ?