Tokyo Governor SUED for Insulting French

[Yurt]

:rotflmao:

Tokyo Governor Sued for Insulting French

TOKYO - A group of teachers and translators in Japan on Wednesday sued Tokyo's outspoken nationalist governor for allegedly calling French a "failed international language," a news report said.

Twenty-one people filed the lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, demanding that Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara pay a total of 10.5 million yen ($94,600) compensation for insulting the French language in remarks last October, national broadcaster NHK said.

In their suit, the plaintiffs accused Ishihara of saying: "French is a failed international language because it cannot be used to count numbers."

"It's natural for different languages to have different names for numbers and different ways of counting them, so it's unacceptable for him to insult French in this way," Malik Berkane, who heads a French-language school in Tokyo, told reporters at a news conference.

The Tokyo metropolitan government refused to comment, saying it hadn't received word of the lawsuit.

French is the official language in about three dozen countries and territories worldwide and is one of the official working languages for international organizations such as the United Nations. In French, some numbers can be unwieldy to say, such as 90, which translates as "four-twenty-ten."

Japan's counting system can also be tricky. Adopted from Chinese, the Japanese numeric system ignores the western system of classifying large numbers every three digits. Though one thousand is the same, 30,000 would translate as "three-10,000," 4 million would be "400-10,000" and 4 billion would be "40-100 million."

Counting one pencil or one bottle of beer ("ippon") in Japanese differs from counting one sheet of paper ("ichimai") or one book ("issatsu").

Ishihara, one of Japan's most popular politicians, is known for his blunt nationalist talk, criticism of illegal immigrants and unapologetic view of the Japanese wartime military's atrocities in Asia. His remarks often rile Chinese and Korean residents in Japan

for people who don't speak french

Come on, this is funny!

Well, if they were in the states, this guy could not be sued, hence you never hear a crazy suit like this here. Politicians speaking in their capacity (or on the proverbial floor their respective chambers) have immunity from slander suits.

If I was this guys lawyer, and assuming that Japan has defamation laws, I would immediatly seek a motion to dismiss. There are a few absolute privileges/defenses when it comes to defamation and I would argue in this (of course knowing that this fact is not in dispute :funnyface ) that:

the statement was true! Hence, an absolute privilege to defamation and no suit.

 

[freeandfun1]

The French have been pissed off every since their language was replaced by English as the International Business language. There was a time not so long ago when all International Letters of Credit were in French.

 

[GotZoom]

I can count to ten in French. Easy.

oon (wow...tough)
doo (hee hee..perfect)
twa (careful)
qwarta (same name as a guy down on the corner)
chink (tsk tsk..don't say it)
six (they couldn't come up with something more clever?)
sep (as in septic..as in septic tank...as in place to put doo..like #2)
hoout (Hoout Packard?)
noof (I used to have a noof ball)
dicks (yes, they are)

 

[freeandfun1]

I can count to ten in French. Easy.

oon (wow...tough)
doo (hee hee..perfect)
twa (careful)
qwarta (same name as a guy down on the corner)
chink (tsk tsk..don't say it)
six (they couldn't come up with something more clever?)
sep (as in septic..as in septic tank...as in place to put doo..like #2)
hoout (Hoout Packard?)
noof (I used to have a noof ball)
dicks (yes, they are)

In MY French classes, it went like this... (I was about 7 and living in Lousiana at the time... I remember faro jaque faro joque...)

eun
deu
twa
kat
sang
sit
sept
weet
nuf
dies

Who can count to ten in the most languages?? lol

Korean 1
hana
duel
set
net
tasut
yosut
ilgope
yodul
ahope
yul

Korean 2
il
ee
sam
sa
oh
yook
chil
pal
gu
shi

German
ein
swy
try
veer
fumf
sex
seeben
oct
noon
zen

Spanish
uno
dos
tres
quatro
sinco
seys
sietae
ocho
nueve
diaz

Chinese
yi
er
san
sie
woo
loo
ki
ba
joo
shi

 

[GotZoom]

My French reference shows:

un
deux
trois
quatre
cinq
six
sept
huit
neuf
dix

 

[freeandfun1]

My French reference shows:

un
deux
trois
quatre
cinq
six
sept
huit
neuf
dix

As I mentioned, my lessons were more than 30 years ago and taught by the Lousiana public school system... probably more Cajun French than classical French...

 

[GotZoom]

As I mentioned, my lessons were more than 30 years ago and taught by the Lousiana public school system... probably more Cajun French than classical French...

There is a restaurant I go to sometimes when I am in Baton Rouge - can't remember the name. But I swear, if you look up the word Cajun in the dictionary, you would see a picture of her face.

Took me nearly 30 minutes to be able to understand her. She sounds so cool when she talks.

 

[freeandfun1]

There is a restaurant I go to sometimes when I am in Baton Rouge - can't remember the name. But I swear, if you look up the word Cajun in the dictionary, you would see a picture of her face.

Took me nearly 30 minutes to be able to understand her. She sounds so cool when she talks.

My mom is a Cajun... (or as she says, "Coon Ass"). I like how they pronounce Herbert... Haybear... makes the name much more palatable! lol

 

[NATO AIR]

I like Ishihara-san, he is a hell of a politican here in Japan. Always willing to speak the truth in the face of a whole lotta bs that the leftists in Japan put out. He was the one who raised the sunken North Korean ship that JSDF forces sunk earlier this decade, in order to show people in Japan the threat the North Koreans posed to the nation.