The joy of correcting papers

[spacealien_vamp]

My students are giving show-and-tell speeches as their first major presentation project of the year. Most of them do fairly well at writing the speeches, but occasionally there is one who produces a speech that is completely incomprehensible. If I can't see the Japanese original, I simply can't figure out what she is trying to say.

This gibberish is generally too painful to inflict on anyone else, but the one I got today was just precious. Try to figure this out: "mi Nichiwa Daks feces doh."

Miniature Dachshund

Comments

[megory.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. I'm impressed. I would never have guessed.

[mangaroo.livejournal.com]

feces doh???

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

feces doh???

That's what I want to know. 0_0

How in the world did you ever figure it out? Context?

[spacealien-vamp.livejournal.com]

How in the world did you ever figure it out?

Luckily, I had the original for reference. Unfortunately for the student, she had written incorrect katakana: ミニチワダックスフンド (minichiwadakkusuhundo).

Thus, she spelled "miniature" as "mi Nichiwa." The Daks came from dakkusu. The sounds hu and fu are written with the same character in Japanese, so she interpreted the フンド (supposed to be hundo for "hund") as fun do. The word fun in Japanese means "feces." That left her with a random do left over, which she just wrote as "doh."

[devimustang0929.livejournal.com]

wow