Comments on: How To Get To Planet X: Their Can’t Ain’t Your Can’t

By: There Is A Magic Silver Bullet | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

There Is A Magic Silver Bullet | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 01:37:14 +0000

[…] People will often delight in telling you that some problem “can’t” be solved — you “can’t” learn kanji; it “can’t” be easy; humans “can’t” fly. I know this because I’ve been one of these people; there’s a perverse pleasure and security in certainty, even negative certainty — indeed, in the most recent Batman movie, Bane tortured Wayne with the hope of escape from the dungeon. The suggestion was that straight up despair would be better — easier to deal with emotionally; this may well be true. […]

By: Neoglitch

Neoglitch — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:48:41 +0000

Wow… I made a HUGE mistake in that comment. I didn’t mean to say “what I’m trying to do”.
I meant to say: “what I’m doing“.
“Do or do not; there is no try.” – Some green elf weirdo 😀

By: Neoglitch

Neoglitch — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:38:05 +0000

If someone ever tells me that what I’m trying to do is impossible, I’ll just reply with:
“Yeah, it’s impossible… for you.”

By: Miss Languages

Miss Languages — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:37:36 +0000

Ha, making a perfect American R is something anyone can do. It might take a few years for someone to master sounds perfectly depending on the time they devote to practicing and the coach they have, but it’s possible.

By: Karen

Karen — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:52:12 +0000

I agree 100%. I’m not studying Japanese exactly (I practice writing kanji for fun, but that’s about it), but I’m an accent reduction coach for foreign learners of English, and I have a lot of experience with teaching Japanese speakers to make a perfect American ‘r’. A couple of years back I ran across a newspaper article that said it’s impossible for Japanese speakers to ever learn to make a perfect American ‘r’. Probably the author had asked some English teacher who had never been able to teach it successfully herself. Glad nobody told me that before I started doing it — and I hope no Japanese English-learners ever get exposed to that nonsense and get discouraged. Sounds like there’s similar nonsense in the other direction concerning English-speakers learning Japanese. I like your attitude about it.

By: Mr Dax

Mr Dax — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:40:18 +0000

I am only going to paste this quote:

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” – — Elbert Hubbard

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:10:55 +0000

Somewhat related is the spiel some people vomit about how Japanese is a “useless” language and an utter waste of time to learn. They say you should learn Mandarin or Cantonese or Spanish or some random Middle Eastern language because they’re more “useful” and will earn you the big bucks in Corporate America.

Because learning for the sake of learning — and not simply to earn more money — is something only a fool would do, am I right?

Those people I auto-ignore with extreme prejudice. Interestingly, the people who tend to make this assheaded proclamation are usually monolingual and brazenly Anglo-centrist… Take that how you will. =/

By: ライトニング

ライトニング — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:27:01 +0000

Thanks a lot for the post, now I know exactly what to say to people who think my efforts are pointless 😀

By: ロジャー・スミス

ロジャー・スミス — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:47:56 +0000

I’m thinking Planet X might just be a metaphor.

By: Dangph

Dangph — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:35:06 +0000

When I read “Planet X”, I imagined something like a Star Trek universe. Planet X is just some planet that is hard but not impossible to get to. It’s surrounded by weird space anomalies or something.

By: dc0cc

dc0cc — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:51:21 +0000

Well – I think his point is that, out of your available resources, you should listen to those that are furthest along on that path. In the case of Japanese, there are enough people that went from A to X that you don’t have to listen to M. Whereas with Pluto – nobody is at X, so your best bet is to listen to the guy at M and then figure it out from there.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:07:57 +0000

“Their can’t isn’t your can’t.” My can’t isn’t really my can’t either. It just got Inception-ed into my head via other people’s limiting beliefs. Identify the foreign thought, eliminate it, get back to L2 comics.

By: ahndoruuu

ahndoruuu — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:35:08 +0000

You could say NASA’s opinion doesn’t matter in that they’re not going to help you get there. They’d tell you its impossible and to simmah dahn nah.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:21:11 +0000

I think you’re stretching the sentiment past the logical breaking point—following the argument, this means that if you’re trying to get to Pluto or Tau Ceti, NASA’s opinion doesn’t matter, which seems more than a little suspect.

Now, I do think there is an argument about the difference between physical travel with well-understood natural laws and the ability to do things like calculate with fair precision how much energy/work it takes to get from where person X has been to where you’re trying to go and something like language learning where the theory is all off in the weeds and imprecise, but suddenly the nice, neat, catchy slogan is gone.