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The Cute Animal Pics/Videos Thread


Caya

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And that's all for real!  According to this article, "Councilman Clements ... was defeated in a landslide in November’s election.:D

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think this is a cue for my swan story and I apologise in advance if I have already told it on here.

My parents live in Scarborough, which is quite a famous English sea side town.

In Scarborough there is a well known park, it has walks over bridges set around an ornamental lake.

We were visiting there with some of Brian's friends from Manchester.

All of a sudden the friend's wife pointed to a sign on the bridge which said:  swans must not pass beyond this point.

She looked very puzzled and said to  me: but how do the swans know?

At which point I fell apart laughing: the sign was referring to the swan BOATS, not the real swans that were swimming along with them!

My pal was most amused that Yorkshire swans were so clever, they could actually read!

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My cat can almost definitely read. I put a sign on my wardrobe door saying, 'do not let Katsu inside' (katsu is my cat, as you might have guessed). I came back, and the sign had been ripped up and shoved under the wardrobe. So I opened the door, and, surprise, surprise, there he was. I think he ripped it up so nobody saw it!

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5 hours ago, SherLOCKED123 said:

I put a sign on my wardrobe door saying, 'do not let Katsu inside' (katsu is my cat, as you might have guessed).


You've got to tell us the story behind that name.  (Isn't it Japanese for "cutlet"?)

 

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2 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

You've got to tell us the story behind that name.  (Isn't it Japanese for "cutlet"?)

Sherlocked123 can speak for themselves, but as far as I know, ‘Katsu’ has many meanings depending on the kanji character used to represent it; one of the most common being “victory” or “victorious”.  It is a fairly common Japanese name.

 

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5 hours ago, Artemis said:

‘Katsu’ has many meanings depending on the kanji character used to represent it; one of the most common being “victory” or “victorious”.  It is a fairly common Japanese name.


Thanks.  When checking to verify that it did mean "cutlet," I had also seen the "victory" meaning online, but did not realize it was commonly used as a person's name.  So I figured (since cats like to eat meat) that "cutlet" made more sense for a cat's name than "victory."

@Artemis and @SherLOCKED123 -- you both seem to be somewhat acquainted with the Japanese language and culture.  Would you mind sharing how that came about?  I have a smattering of such knowledge myself, acquired partly from three (unrelated) friends who have lived in Japan, partly from reading a few books, and partly from a brief course in conversational Japanese.  I've never been there myself, though.

 

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1 hour ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

So I figured (since cats like to eat meat) that "cutlet" made more sense for a cat's name than "victory."

I had thought perhaps the cat was named after a fictional character, rather than for the meaning of the name itself.  But only Sherlocked123 can tell us!  🐈

1 hour ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Would you mind sharing how that came about?

I've always had an interest in words, and anthroponymy often leads me deep into the study of language.  I've picked up pieces of multiple languages along the way.  I developed an interest in Japanese specifically long ago, when I befriended a Japanese exchange student.  I learned quite a bit about the language and culture from him.  I bought some books as well, but I've not read them all the way through.

 

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Artemis is right about it meaning 'victorious' but it is also just a reference to the Japanese food chicken katsu. Me and my brother love Japanese culture, so we wanted to give our cat a Japanese name. Our first choice was 'Kuro', which is Japanese for black/night, (he has the most magnificent pitch black fur) but we decided on Katsu in the end.

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Somehow I knew he'd be a black cat, lol.  I donno why, that's just what I pictured.

 

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8 hours ago, SherLOCKED123 said:

we decided on Katsu in the end.


Aside from cutlets, it also looks like "cat" (at least if you mangle the pronunciation).

(For those not familiar with Japanese, "katsu" is actually pronounced "kah-tsoo.")

 

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5 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Aside from cutlets, it also looks like "cat" (at least if you mangle the pronunciation).

I was thinking the same.  I thought it might even be the Romaji spelling of “cats”, but apparently that is “kyattsu”.

5 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

(For those not familiar with Japanese, "katsu" is actually pronounced "kah-tsoo.")

I would like to add (because I can’t help myself :P ) that when ‘su’ comes at the end of a word, the ‘u’ is usually silent or almost silent, sounding more like a heavy ‘s’ or very quick ‘u’. Which is why in Romaji (the phonetic spelling of English words in Japanese), you will often see English words that end in ‘s’ with a ‘u’ tacked on at the end (as in ‘kyattsu’ above).

 

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22 hours ago, Artemis said:

I was thinking the same.  I thought it might even be the Romaji spelling of “cats”, but apparently that is “kyattsu”.

I would like to add (because I can’t help myself :P ) that when ‘su’ comes at the end of a word, the ‘u’ is usually silent or almost silent, sounding more like a heavy ‘s’ or very quick ‘u’. Which is why in Romaji (the phonetic spelling of English words in Japanese), you will often see English words that end in ‘s’ with a ‘u’ tacked on at the end (as in ‘kyattsu’ above).


Being unable to help myself either, I shall point out that:

1. Any statement that can be made in less than three pages of English about the Japanese language is a vast over-simplification.

2. The main reason that the English loan-word "cats" is written in Japanese with a "u" after the "s" is that Japanese syllables can (in theory) not end in a consonant (except for "n").  So the "silent u" is appended, so that the final syllable is "-tsu."  I'm assuming that the "y" and the double "t" in "kyattsu" were introduced to distinguish it from "katsu."  And I'd bet that the plural form of "cat" was also adopted (and presumably used for both singular and plural, a grammatical distinction that does not exist in Japanese) in order to avoid confusion with some other native Japanese word.  I've seen that sort of tweaking done with other English-to-Japanese loan words.

3. Romaji can be used to represent any Japanese word (not just words borrowed from English).  It's one of four different writing systems used: 1. Kanji, the ideograms borrowed from Chinese, where each symbol represents a concept (such as "dog"), 2. Hiragana, the original Japanese syllable "alphabet," introduced well over a thousand years ago, 3. Katakana, a modified syllable "alphabet," used in much the same way as English uses italics, to represent foreign words, etc., and 4. Romaji.  Typical written Japanese uses a mixture of 1, 2, and 3.

My understanding is that Romaji is also used quite a lot nowadays, in order to use Western-style keyboards (or virtual keyboards, like on cellphones) in writing Japanese.  The word is first typed in Romaji.  Then (because Japanese has even more sound-alike words than English does) the software brings up a list of words (written in Kanji) that could be pronounced that way, and the user selects the one they want.  I am going to guess that this will soon lead to Romaji being used directly (rather than being translated into ideograms) by hip young people when sending text messages, etc.  It may eventually replace the other three systems in certain other circumstances as well.

 

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On 6/24/2020 at 5:57 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

1. Any statement that can be made in less than three pages of English about the Japanese language is a vast over-simplification.

Lol, true!  I just didn't want to overexplain or elaborate too much, since no one actually asked for the information.  I try to curtail my tendency to educate people on subjects they never wanted to be educated on (a 'fault' I'm oft criticized for).


Anyway, Carol and I will be teaching a Japanese language class on Wednesdays at 8/7c, if anyone's interested.  :P

 

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3 hours ago, Artemis said:

I just didn't want to overexplain or elaborate too much, since no one actually asked for the information.  I try to curtail my tendency to educate people on subjects they never wanted to be educated on....

You too, huh?  :blush:   Maybe one of these days I'll catch up with you in the restraint department.

3 hours ago, Artemis said:

Carol and I will be teaching a Japanese language class on Wednesdays at 8/7c, if anyone's interested.

:P

But if anyone actually does happen to be interested, I'd be glad to give a brief overview of the various uses of the all-purpose polite word, sumimasen.  (The teacher of my Conversational Japanese class told us if we were going to remember only one word, that should be the one.)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Any votes on whether that was A} photo of cat Photoshopped onto photo of chair, or B} chair put on its side, cat persuaded to sit on chair, and resulting photo rotated?

 

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12 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Any votes on whether that was A} photo of cat Photoshopped onto photo of chair, or B} chair put on its side, cat persuaded to sit on chair, and resulting photo rotated?

 

Nope. I vote that the picture is real, these creatures are both liquid and gravity-is-myth-er.

 

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@Van Buren Supernova -- you do realize that this photo

15130632-m31nwolqlyl31-1568642425-728-7e

... shows two different cats?  One (a black-on-tan tabby) is in the bag, looking out, and the other (an orange tabby) is outside it, looking in.

I apologize if that spoils your day (and shall refrain from saying anything about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny).

 

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On 7/8/2020 at 11:17 PM, Van Buren Supernova said:

Nope. I vote that the picture is real, these creatures are both liquid and gravity-is-myth-er.

I second that, or at least the possibility.  I saw my cat do that to my chair on multiple occasions, before he got too old and chubby.

 

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On 7/10/2020 at 12:55 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

... shows two different cats?

NOOOOOOOOO

 

Well, I think if you have a cat, an exorcist's number would be handy too.

25-Flexible-Cats-Who-Just-Wont-Obey-The-

70ndif0.jpg

tGRcGU8.jpg

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