Berkeley Diary
Masaki YAMAOKA
Feb/8/2006 My Findings of
Word
Lag(7) Tomar-e VS. Yield
We see road signs at
every site downtown. Some of them are the same as the Japanese road
signs and some of them are different from the Japanese ones. For
example,
the signs of "No Entry" at exits of one-way streets look like Japanese
ones. In both of them, the colors are red, the shapes are circle, and
white rectangles are on the center. (An English phrase "DO NOT ENTER"
is, of course, only on the USA sign.)
"No Entry" in USA
"No Entry" in Japan
One day, at an intersection
without
a traffic signal, I found a road sign which is a triangle turnd
upside down and looks like Japanese "Stop" sign. A Japanese word "Ž~‚Ü‚ê"
(Tomar-e, Stop) is on the Japanese sign, likewise, an English word
"YIELD" is on
the sign of USA. Then I thoght that it was an American "Stop" sign.
Actually every car stopped in front of the sign. At that time, I do not
know the meaning of the word "Yield". I misunderstood that "Yield"
means "Stop".
Another day after that, I found
the same "YIELD" sign as the road sign on a window inside a bus.
I was confused why this "Stop" sign is such a narrow space inside a
bus. Then after I came back home, I looked up the word in my
dictionary. When I found the word "Yield", I laughed spontaneously. I
realized the "Yield" word in the road sign instructed not to stop, but
to give way for another car. And the "Yield" word inside bus instructed
to give the seat to senior persons or disabled persons. Namely, the
sign
indicates the seat is "Priority Seat", and the word "Yield" corresponds
the Japanese word "Yuzur-e".
"Yield" in USA
"Stop" in
Japan