Subscript5676

Preface: I’m no linguist. Just someone who speaks both JP and EN. But boy do I love thinking about stuff like this. I’m not going to answer your original question though, cause the short answer is really just no.

Subject omission in JP is somewhat interesting because it’s tied to their culture, but I’d like to sort of push back a bit on the thinking that it requires some thinking to figure out who the subject is.

Japanese is a context-heavy language, and this subject omission is an important cultural rule under that. But it does mean that the context needs to first be established between participants.

Suppose you walked up to a friend, waved at them, and said イギリスに行った (lit: went to the UK), most JP speakers would first think that you’re talking about yourself. But if, prior to this conversation, say the day before, you and this friend A were talking about another friend B, and B was deciding where to go and you went to the airport with them, then this friend A would be the only one to know that you’re talking about B.
But suppose it’s been a few more weeks before meeting with A. Then A might think you’re still talking about B, especially if you’ve not mentioned going overseas to A. Then a misunderstanding can happen, and the onus is on you to clarify who you’re talking about in the first place. You’d be thought of as someone who can’t “read the air” if you constantly leave the subject vague without considering the context you’ve thus far established with others.
Friend A can certainly ask for clarification if they know your tendencies, and within their own personal context. 「Bが？」 (t: B did?) they might ask. 「いや。私。」(t: No. I (did).) you might reply. Notice how I just used 私 with no particle; the particle is implied!

I find that a lot of newer learners have a tendency to really focus on this particular aspect of the language. I actually don’t find it to be something that speakers need to expend on a lot of energy on. You know who you’re talking to, and thus know and share enough context to carry on with the conversation. It’s also common to remind each other of which context is being talked about to jog your convo partner’s memory. If you have trouble remembering context, you can always play it safe and be sure to explain yourself, or check if your convo partner remembers it.

Oddly enough, I have a friend who got a bit turned off by this “feature” of Japanese and discouraged him from learning by a bit. He’s always had questionable memory, so having to sort of “remember context” is a bit of a difficult ask for him. I don’t think “remembering context” is a strict requirement to be a good speaker in JP cause it’d just be a quirk of his like it already is in EN. Us English speakers like to think we’re quite rid of context when we compare it to the Japanese, but how much we know each other is context too.

Also, a small comment: just saying 私 in reply to your example for 誰？ isn’t necessarily weird or robotic. It depends on your relationship with the speaker. If you usually use the polite form with the person, then yes, you should append with です.
Now, if you didn’t have the previous part where you’re talking about having a stomachache, then even to a close enough friend, it’s more natural to respond to the “Who?” with 私だ - not too different from EN in this case: it’s “Me” vs “It’s me”.
And when the sentence is お腹が痛い, you’re 100% talking about yourself. If you’re actually talking about someone else, it should be お腹が痛そう (looks painful) or お腹が痛いって ((person) said their stomach hurts).

One thing I commonly see in comments out of threads like this is the oversimplification of how the Japanese communicate. They might be polite and sometimes avoid mentioning the subject for convenience, but when you need tell someone to do something, you can do just that, with different levels of politeness.

• Polite: お願いできますか？ Can I ask you for it?
• Instructional (e.g. teachers): 宿題をしなさい。 Do (your) homework.
• Frank: お前がやれ。 You do it.

The Japanese is expected to be polite to strangers. But they don’t interact with people they’re familiar with in the same way, as it’s usually perceived as a distant way to communicate.

Edit 1: Formatting and grammar

Bug types being super effective on Psychic types is always so funny to me.

I have big brain and move big things with mind, but a bug bite, it scares me.

The definition makes the argument here really. If being functional means that the system is functional for only a select few, then to the select few, sure it’s functional, but to everyone else, it’s not. If public transit is meant to be “public” and not just a “transit”, then a system functional only to a few isn’t what I can consider to have met expectation of its own definition. I’m certainly being strict about it, and you are free to keep your perspective; I’m not here to change it. I used to live in an area outside of Selangor where buses vanished after being virtually nonexistent, and public transit in KL & Selangor hasn’t given me the slightest bit of sense that it’s reliable, even before I experienced a better system elsewhere in the world.

Some part of my reason of outright calling it non-functional is political: I’ve set the bar higher than just having a system that works for those lucky or rich enough to live near a train or bus station. Imagine if you don’t have access to the benefits of a public policy or system that only a few seem to enjoy, and these few people go around and tell others that the system is being functional. I’m not sure if that’ll sit well with most people, especially when it’s something that is or is close to a basic right.

From my original comment:

at least not 12 years ago

I’ve used public transport back 12 years ago to try get around places. It depends on what your level of acceptance is, but 30-40 mins for a bus in SBJ that’s constantly late isn’t what I could call functional. Taking more than an hour, using a mix of buses and LRTs, to make a journey that would’ve taken just a 25 min drive on a good day, can’t be considered functional. Perhaps it works more reliably in specific areas, but we can’t call a handful of bus routes a system, not when the larger system feels more like patchworks than a thoughtful solution. I’m not trying to deny your experience, but as someone who didn’t grow up around the area, in an era before transit tracking systems were more accessible, I had to rely on someone to sort of guide me through the patchwork, and even then, there’s just too much time spent waiting around, or you have to make a run after getting off a couple of minutes away, I remember running across a bridge just to catch another bus on time.

Too many Malaysians are too utterly subservient to their circumstances, only looking at what’s in front and around them and never question why they’re in that situation. “That’s life,” or, “That’s fate,” they say, as if being realistic is to only focus on what’s right in front of you, instead of understanding why something happened and devising ways to fix issues at the root of it. I’m ranting and stereotyping, so I digress. I don’t live there anymore, so forgive me if my image of the country and its people is out of date.

And I’m not surprised why local governments aren’t giving a flying crap to public transit. It’s also ineffective policy from the federal gov to just install bus routes without using carrots and sticks to pull local governments and the Rakyat (let’s use their term of choice) away from cars; either they’re being naive, or they are still more inclined to keeping the O&G and car manufacturers happy, in which case they’re simply virtue signalling.

And now that we’re in an oil price spike that may end up being a hill than just a spike, the reality that the country is overly reliant on oil is likely just slapping everyone hard in the face right now, with many not even knowing that there’s an option where they wouldn’t need to be slapped as hard. The federal gov has to step in with more subsidies, and with that, they’re gonna have to cut something else. If they aren’t using this crisis as an opportunity to promote the reduction in reliance on oil, then, once again, they’re either naive, or we know where they stand on cars.

I apologize if this comes across as too critical of the country, the government, and its people. I’m sure there are people pushing for changes. I’m just not hopeful about their chances.

You jest OP, but many in the major cities are already stuck in traffic literally every day, and I have no doubt many are doomscrolling while sitting there.

Malaysia bought so hard into car-centrism they basically don’t have a functioning public transport system anywhere, at least not 12 years ago, not even in major cities like Kuala Lumpur. I heard Penang is trying to change this a few years ago, though mostly only on the island, but I reckon it’s going to take them much beyond another 15 years for there to be any tellable change in people’s minds.

God fuck this timeline smh

I’m one of those people done in by the minio rugpull. I see RustFS there, but they’re done a lot of things on their licensing front incredibly similarly to what minio did. And that scares me.

I also saw a Github issue where someone was asking what’s their say on whether they’ll ever pull a minio, and their answer was basically, “We don’t plan to. Just trust us bro.”

I know what I’m not using.