Re: Word games!

On Friday, August 24, 2001, at 10:44 AM, Karapcik, Mike wrote:

>         This reminds me of a Japanese I used to play in Japanese class in
> college. It's name roughly means "tail-grabbing" or "butt-grabbing"
> (shiri-tsuka?).
>         Japanese language is based on a CV silibary, the exception being
> the
> syllable "n".
>         Basically, to play the game, someone says a word. It can be any
> word, including a conjugated verb, as long as it is at least two
> syllables.
>         The next person must *very quickly* come up with a word whose
> first
> syllable is the last syllable of the previous word. And so it goes around
> the circle, each person's word "grabbing the tail" of the previous word.
>         If a person blurts out a word that ends in "-n", that person is
> eliminated, since no Japanese words end in "-n". Someone is also
> eliminated
> if they cannot think of a word quickly enough.
>
Amusing.  :-)  But should that be "since no Japanese words *start* in
[syllabic] '-n'"?  Just wondering.

>         Another "word game" is "name the counter for...". In Japanese,
> nothing is counted directly. Everything is counted by a system of
> "counting
> words". In English, this is akin to our counting "sheets of paper", "pairs
> of pants", "slices/loaves of bread", etc. In Japanese, you count "'wings'
>  of
> birds", "'mouths' of people", and so on for everything. Some Japanese
> counters are "categories" of items ("pon"- scrolls or long cylinders),
> others are specific and possibly obscure ("wa"- wings).
>         Basically, you challenge the person next to you to say the counter
> word for any obscure item you can think of (staplers, hubcaps, ice cubes)
> .
God.  <wince>  I wonder if Korean has a similar name, since it certainly
has a similar insane system of counters that my mom tried and failed to
impart to me last winter.  On the bright side, it would be a good teaching
game....

YHL