More on shrinking messages and training

Despite the fact that the Nikkei podcast is now far away into non-free mode, but worst, outside the so convenient distribution system of Apple, I still own a few copies of old daily podcasts. I want to link this with BNO news I was referring about in a previous post.

There is a conjunction of facts that are pointing at a possible shift of popular expression toward ever shorter sentences. In Japan, English language books are competing in the realm of "short phrases by the thousands" and there seems the depth of it knows no end. I am looking forward for a "15 000 short English sentences in daily life" with a DVD to stock the huge amount of audio file.

At least one publisher dared and launch last year (was it?) a 2900 phrases slim these days, but with a set of audio CDs containing not only the English but also the Japanese version. I am looking forward to more bilingual audio content like this in the future for the sake of portability. Publishers will get to it.

What has all this to do with BNO? The shortness of expression, and the verbal factor. The first part of the Nikkei podcast was a reading aloud of modified newspaper style of article titles into spoken language. Whereas most 140 news strings in BNO News are verbal sentences - that is fit to be spoken out - none of the Japanese written press titles I know belong to spoken language. If not experienced, I think a newspaper with spoken language article titles would make a big buzz in Japan. Don' count on anyone though.

BNO News - whether it's around here tomorrow or not - is showing the way toward something you may not be pleased with, but short titles short of any development will be enough a source of information for a majority of people sometimes in the future. Machine gunned newswire titles fd other wireless devices or beamed direct into readers eyes will match the limited memory retention and concentration span a standard urbanite will be able to display in year 2052.

Is the age of Tanka ripe? Is Japanese poetry structure to strike big after japanimation and sushi?

I don't now. I only know that utterances are shortening, in length of sentences and in length of time to wrap all it up.

The startup doing its presentation stint - you have 10 minutes - is your typical example. Only, now you only have 90 seconds.

Concision is a requisite in interpretation, the liaison stuff, and so hard to come with. From now on, you have to get ready and deliver.

The next best seller is a "How to speak in 140 or less signs sentences - A workbook".

Here, I am only half joking.

Japanese will loose voice competence more than ever. In 2053, Sony, nay, Rakuten Electronics that bought Sony 15 years before, will launch LetsTalk, a Tamagochi sized device that allows to speak via emoticons-to-speech or text with someone in front of you while keeping almost mute on both side. It will have a tremendous success. Everybody will start machine talking with anyone without meeting eyes.

And I am half joking.

You see, you can read aloud most of BNO News headlines and it makes for a good if not sexy sentence. You can't do that when BNO News Japan is released. get the unofficial Google News Japanese Twitter feed and you will get a better than ever picture of the problem. You don't speak like the titles. It requires a lot of energy to inflate a news title lacking active verbs into a correct if not sexy oral message. It will have tremendous accelerating impact on current trends of speeches in society at large.