Would it be so wrong

[james_davis_nicoll]

To try to convince people that Japanese SF novels tend to be shorter than Anglospheric SF novels because Japanese has fewer words than English? And a lot of Japanese consists of words borrowed from other languages.

Comments

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

Certainly, I think you are free to try to convince people of anything you please, but I'm not certain there's a reasonable case to be made for cause and effect here.

I would guess that the length of a story would have more to do with the length of the sequence of events, and the level of detail you describe, than the number of words in your vocabulary.

I do see an argument that there might be a Japanese tendency to be as elegantly spare in their storytelling as they are with, say, their architecture.

I'm currently slogging through Hard Boiled Wonderland, and I have to say that I don' find all that spare, or all that elegant. It's a style of storytelling I've also seen in English, and I don't much like it there, either.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

Ah. I see that I've taken the bait -- although I was not exactly "convinced".

I'm not certain there's a reasonable case to be made for cause and effect here.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

People in North America (and probably elsewhere but NorAm is what I deal with most of the time) often believe insanely stupid, clearly incorrect things about people from Asia and people who appear to be from Asia. A reasonable case does not have to be made.

Re: I'm not certain there's a reasonable case to be made for cause and effect here.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, I'm getting it now.

For example

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Gregory Benford:

"These two vast, ancient societies [China and India] withstood the centuries by keeping down innovation, so life was much the same from one millennium to the next. Centuries slid by with little to mark them beyond the feuding of maharajahs."

Re: I'm not certain there's a reasonable case to be made for cause and effect here.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

I can't help but to think that "People often believe insanely stupid, clearly incorrect things about other people from other societies" is probably just as accurate a statement. In fact, I suspect that believing one's culture to be uniquely stupid is as ignorant and arrogant in its way as thinking that one's culture is uniquely superior.

This Conan O'Brian ad seems relevant, although I can't pin down exactly why:


Somehow, it strikes me as simultaneously implying the cultural superiority of the Orient (India, yes?), while purveying the Tarzan myth that western white folk can beat quaint natives at their own game, except possibly bargaining.

(That said, I love this ad, particularly the shot of Conan at his loom.)

Re: I'm not certain there's a reasonable case to be made for cause and effect here.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am not saying "People often believe insanely stupid, clearly incorrect things about other people from other societies" isn't generally true, just that I tend to deal with a specific version of it.

Really specific. The Anglospheric SFnal and to a lesser extent only because so much of it is set in secondary worlds with extremely limited cultural palates, not because of any inherent superiority of the writers involved Fantasy version.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, of course their rule of thumb for accomplishing elegance is that each word in their language may only be used a limited number of times in each work.

No repetitions in haiku, are there? Thought not.