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WotD: Rude awakening
OK, OK, so I’m playing with the words here.
No, rude awakening does not mean you wake up in a bad mood.
It means that you are unpleasantly surprised to realize that you are wrong.
For example, back in May 2019, Taro Kono, on behalf of the Japanese government, requested all foreign media to begin writing Japanese names in the Japanese way – family names first.
Japan wanted to be treated like China and South Korea.
Imagine that.
It must have been a rude awakening for them when no English language media, not even the Japan Times, met their request.
Japan has spent too long being buddy-buddy with the States to change the world now.
Yes, Japan is a powerful country and the only Asian country in the G7, but it’s not powerful enough to change the English language.
As another example, when I came to Japan more than 20 years ago, I worked with an American who thought everyone would speak English in Japan.
He got a rude awakening when he stepped off the plane, and nobody would say a word in English to him.
It irked him to no end.
One night while we were enjoying a few wobbly pops at a local bar, he became frustrated when he couldn’t read the menu.
Of course, he was a bit drunk, but he asked me, “Why don’t these people speak English?” I just told him, “Hey, this is Japan, dude. If they spoke English, you wouldn’t have a job.”
I should also mention this person brought American chocolate to ‘share with the children.’
Everyone ate it, but they didn’t like it.
Japanese chocolate is better.
That was another rude awakening for him.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
