Minasan, conichu,

Kioa, what, what, what a namaya,

so gise go to go to a chute

Hanasutto or maimas. No, you are not having a stroke and know this podcast is not gradually morphing into an

exclusively Japanese language podcast but I promise there is a reason why I spoke to you in Japanese at the beginning of this episode

and that's because we are back to talking about names.

We're talking about the meaning of the idea of a name and how significant it is in the Bible,

but also in the theory of language and the history of thinking about words,

and this is all part of our series on translation and the nature of language

and the many, many insanely cool questions

that you guys have been asking me about how language works. We've been on a series I started it a couple weeks then we had a break when I

interviewed Isabel Brown and now I'm back on this beat because it's just I have so much to say about this and what I said at the beginning

I think in Japanese is hello everybody today we are going to talk about names and onomatopoeia.

Today I think we are going to talk about names and onomatopoeia which is words that sound

like what they mean.

I've been practicing studying Japanese for like a couple years now and I have to say it's one of the hardest linguistic things I've ever done might be the hardest

language I've ever learned with the possible exception of Latin before I had learned

any other languages and I'm just now getting to the point where I kind of feel confident like coming up with my own sentences and saying things in Japanese.

I'm sure that I mispronounce like every word in that sentence and please do not take

what I've just said as like the correct way to speak Japanese because I may well have

made huge mistakes. I know I have listeners who do speak fluent Japanese and can write in and tell me everything that I got wrong, but I think that I said I'm going to talk about words, names, and automatopoeia, and there's a reason why I did it in Japanese, because Japanese

has revealed something fascinating to me about the nature and the philosophy of names that I want to add in here

...