More on the adventure thing, Ray Dalio (of Bridgewater) write in his book on principles that he preferred the high risk life: he'd prefer high risk and losing it all than going through a mundane life without risk. He argued something similar- that at least it'd be an interesting story. From a financial perspective, I can see where he's coming from.

I suppose I can sympathize.

On the other hand, from family experience with the whole chemotherapy thing... The experience is an "adventure" and gives me a story to talk about... But I think I prefer the mundane life in this case.

Maybe adventure is worth having if it offers chance of a better life? Not sure.

_________________
be immersed

Btw, this thread is taking a different direction than I expected. My concern with contentment wasn't so much about missing out on an adventure.

I fear more about missing out on self-improvement - or opportunities to learn and become new things. Since I'm somewhat satisfied, I fear improvements will stop. On the other hand, being unsatisfied may lead to less happiness.

Maybe there's a balance to be found between satisfaction for present contentment and dissatisfaction for the future to become better.

_________________
be immersed

Not that humans are genetically determined, but there are people (particularly men) with a genetic disposition towards risk taking. Perhaps Dalio is one of those. In terms of group survival, most people are risk averse, so having a certain percentage of risk seekers in the group is probably a good thing.



Financially, I think that the stats are against him. In general taking on a moderate degree of financial risk pays off. As a cautionary tale, consider LTCM, which miscalculated their degree of risk, despite their expertise.

Edit: People who get great returns tend to be those who take great risks. But it does not work the other way around. Those who take great risks tend to crash. Beware of selection bias.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I have confidence that you will find a good balance for yourself.



Consider children. Does their happiness or contentment hinder their learning?

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Tryss,

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Bill,

EdLee, the book katakana is correct.

In Japanese, they typically produce katakana independently of the native language pronunciation - it's all about the spelling. And the spelling here is clear: sa-pi-en-s

So based on the spelling, the book title is correct, regardless of how the word should be pronounced.

If pronunciation were ever a concern, マクドナルド would never be a word :-p

Another good example is ウイルス. That's "virus", though I'd never guess it from pronunciation. But breaking down the spelling, it's vi-ru-s, so I guess you can infer the origin.

Note, there may be exceptions. But many times, you're in for trouble if you're counting on katakana being close in pronunciation to a foreign word.

_________________
be immersed

When I was living in Tokyo, a lot of Japanese liked to throw in strangely pronounced English terms, which usually confused me. Using romaji, one was hasto rabu. Another one, which caused a waitress a lot of frustration — Didn't I understand plain English? — was koohii zeri. Koohii I got, coffee. But zeri?

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Why are you guys putting comments in hide tags?

Repeatedly clicking the 'show' icon is making me depressed.

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Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Kirby, thanks. To each language its quirky rules.

Have some koohii zeri and think of your hasto rabu.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Bill, what's a coffee jelly ? Coffee flavored jelly ?

As far as I can tell, they make it with agar-agar. The consistency is more like jello than jelly. I saw it up close, but never had any. It looks like dark coffee. The cafe served it with whipped cream.

Edit: Here is a link. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Coffee-Jelly

The Japanese palate can be quite varied. I have never tried mayonnaise topping on my pizza, either.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Kirby,Interestng theory. And exceptions noted. However:
lightsaber ライトシーサー (google translate).

Because different (Latin-based) languages may have slightly different pronunciations given the same spelling, I'm not convinced it's "all about the spelling". Need linguistic research here...

croissant クロワッサン (google translate) note the silent 't', per French.
jeans ジーンズ (google translate)
Jean Valjean ジャン・バルジャン (google translate)
Sean Young ショーン・ヤング (Wikipedia)
Sean Connery ショーン・コネリー (Wikipedia)
Dean Martin ディーン・マーティン (Wikipedia)

Star Wars スターウォーズ (google translate)
Station Eleven ステーション・イレブン

major league メジャーリーグ
master マスター

Darth Vader ダース・ベイダー

Björn Borg ビョルン・ボルグ
Björk ビョーク

Siobhan シオバン

Seems all the above examples are based on the pronunciation of the original language, and not the spelling, no ?

My guess is サピエンス is based on the Latin pronunciation, not the spelling.

Coffee jelly: elixir of contentment?

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

FWIW, three hopefully encouraging thoughts:

1. Given all you and your family have been through recently, just having gotten to a point where you are sufficiently satisfied with life that you are concerned about being complacent seems like quite an achievement.

2. You seem to be using the words "satisfied", "content", and "complacent" synonymously. I'd argue that the first two are a bit different than the third. The third connotes a will-full unawareness to a threat or opportunity. I think one can be satisfied without blinding oneself to either. Complacency is not just satisfaction, but satisfaction as an indulgence. That hardly seems to describe your state of mind.

3. A friend who is a therapist once told me that he laughs (inwardly of course) when clients come in concerned that they may be narcissists. As he put it, a true narcissist would never worry about being narcissistic. I think similarly, someone worried about being complacent is not likely to be complacent. Complacent people would never do that.

No, the spelling is never the criterion, unless the word is never heard pronounced by Japanese. The varying ways of transliterating what is the same sound to us are usually due to which language the Japanese have borrowed the word from. Historically British English was the main source, and even today is often preferred even when a word is popular in America, because the British vowels are closer to Japanese. But there were also very many borrowings from Dutch and German (especially in science, medicine, academics) and very many other languages have been mined, too. I had a kasutera cake the other day - the word came from Portuguese castella in the 16th or early 17th century.



This is almost exactly how MacDonald is properly pronounced, with or without a kilt - as in "Donald, where's your troosers" (try this title and Andy Stewart on youtube to hear it by a native).

As was obvious from another thread, Americans (but not Canadians IMX) need to learn the world is much bigger than the USA. I still blink with amazement at my first experience with US Immigration. I was on my way to Uruguay via Miami. Asked where I was going to I said, "Uruguay" to which the uniformed lady said, "Which Uruguay?" Five wasted minutes later I found she had meant basically, "Which US state, as several have Uruguays?" And the Americans think we are the quaint ones?|

Sapiens. The a is short in Latin. That's not much problem for Europeans but the American a in many dialects has elongated out of all proportion so that their pronunciation of Japanese dan now sounds to us like darn, and rarely sounds like anything familiar to a Japanese (just as a western pronunciation of go never suggests the game of go to an ordinary Japanese - you are more likely to end up with golf).

People like me in Britain had to learn Latin in school so we would naturally pronounce homo sapiens with a short a (and in two syllables as the i is short, too - in Japanese it has five syllables/moras). The Japanese would copy that (either from British English, German or Latin direct). However, the derived words such as sapient are pronounced over here with Ed's 'sei' sound, i.e. long.

Of course, Japanese sometimes has to make choices because it lacks certain sounds. Homo sapiens is easy for them, but homo erectus has to be altered slightly to ho-mo-e-re-ku-to-su (which also shows spelling is not the criterion).

Quite a few PhD theses have been written on Japanese transliterations of western words and it's easy to overlook how long they have been a major part of the modern language (though not all Japanese understand the words, by any means). It's no modern fad. Not even the creativity of the genre is new. My own favourite, from my student days, was bakkushaan. See Joaz's favourite button if you don't know it.

When I was living in Japan, the only pronunciation of the English name, Tom, that I heard was based on the spelling: tomu, which sounds like a long o to our ears. But when I was there years later I heard tamu, which sounds (almost) right.



Back in the days when flight attendants asked you your destination, one man who was going to Oakland, California, said he was going to Oakland and later fell asleep on the plane. When he woke up he was over the Pacific Ocean headed for Aukland, New Zealand.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

When the internet was still an infant, I think every single '.' in www.yahoo.co.jp wasn't ドット but ピーリオド ?Schattenparker
Warmduscher