Re: [News] Japan's New Export

I'll probably never see a reply to this, as you hate crossposting, but 
ah well. We do discuss a fair amount of manga on RAAM.

Peter Van Huffel wrote:


> > Well... The Japanese would. Actually, they might. They also tend to use 
> > "komikkusu" as well as "manga" and I'm not sure they make any difference 
> > of consideration.
>
>
> I know that, as I've said many times myself in the past ten years. But I 
> really dislike the Japanese habit of importing and mutilating words even when 
> they have a perfect alternative, just because it sounds exotic. Nothing 
> different from people putting a kanji tattoo on their skin.

Well, then, sucks to be you. It's a perfectly natural element of any 
language (at least, languages that aren't artificially stifled.) 
Japanese does it, English does it. From all I understand, most other 
languages do it.

Now, English tends to be much better than Japanese at it, if only 
because of the phonetic setup of the language.

> > Ultimately, you're wrong. Manga are comics. Comics are manga. We use 
> > different words just to make communication easier. We say "comics" 
>
>
> Yeah, and wine is beer and beer is wine.

Ooh. Bad example, my friend.

See, wine is made by the firmentation of grapes. Beer from the 
firmentation of grains, and done so in a manner that introduces 
carbonization to the resulting liquid (while this happens for sparkling 
wines, too, it's not a necessarry part of the process. I don't know of 
any flat beers, though.)

Manga, and comics, are both made in relatively the same manner: They are 
a sequential series of pictures, on a page, with word balloons used to 
depict characters' voices, etc.

Your argument about their dissimilarity is PURELY based upon country of 
origin. Such is definitely not the case for beer and wine.

> > Well, it's probably not an entirely salient point, but in the six years 
> > I lived in England, they used the word "comics" to describe all their 
> > own, non-American, um... comics.
>
>
> I wouldn't use the UK as an example for whatever form of sequential art. I do 
> not live in the UK (50km from its border) and do not pretend to be an expert 
> on the comic/manga scene over there, but unless I'm very mistaken, the UK is 
> pretty much a wasteland on that area. Compare the original production on the 
> european continent, in Japan, in the US to the UK and you'll understand what 
> I mean. I know *many* more artists from the rest of the world than I know 
> artists from the UK.

So, um... because you don't think the UK is a hotbed of comics 
creativity, they shouldn't be considered differently? It -is- a 
different culture than the US. Except for an odd vagary of the same 
predominant language, why shouldn't they be granted their own word for 
whatever comics... sorry, sequential art, they produce?

More to the point. "comics" is, AFAIK, an English word (checking. Yes. 
English, with latin and greek roots.) Yet the US does not have an 
official language. English has predominance, but Spanish is spoken first 
by a sizeable portion of the population. There's also many other 
cultures, particularly here on the West coast. The people are very often 
American by nationality, but whatever country of origin they come from 
by culture.

So, if one of these naturalized (or even second generation) Japanese 
people produces a sequential art, gets it published, and it's steeped in 
their own culture, is it a manga or a comic?

> > saying "mangaka?" And keep applying this slippery slope until we all get 
> > to the point of just speaking Japanese?
>
>
> There is no slippery slope. It's actually quite simple, as I have developed a 
> logical rule for it. I do not say that it's canon, but think about what I'll 
> explain below:
>
> 1) If there's a perfect equivalent of a word in your own language, you use 
> the word in your own language.

And we do. The Japanese produce sequential art. The English word for 
sequential art is "comics" so we use that.

> 2) If you have to put an adjective or other kind of descriptor before the 
> "equivalent", you have an indication that there isn't a perfect equivalent 
> and thus using the foreign word makes sense.

I tend to use "American comics" and "British comics" (especially when 
talking about Transformers, but I digress). Does that indicate that 
"comics" isn't sufficient to describe them, and that I need to find a 
word in the original language to describe it?

Oops, it's already there.

> > I'd honestly -like- to, but it's not exactly an easy language to learn. 
> > (Not for lack of trying, either.)
>
>
> Finding formal education is the most important thing IMO. I did and am happy 
> to have done so, because I probably wouldn't have been able to do it by 
> myself.

Well, yes, I've had 3+ years of formal Japanese education.

Damien Roc