Author Archives: Daniel

Airbag Expressions 3

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I’ve talked about how Airbag Expressions can be used to ask for something and also how they can be used to breach a topic. I also wrote about emailing with Japanese people and how stating your name is almost like an Airbag Expression. Here are a few more Airbag Expressions.

The following three Airbag Expressions are stronger that the rest I’ve introduced: 正直（しょうじき）に言うと, はっきり言えば, and 強いて（しいて）言えば. These all warn that you are about to state a frank and honest opinion, which is often frowned upon in Japan. You have been warned.

正直に is an adverb meaning “honestly,” and 言う is “to say,” so in English this is something like, “To be (perfectly) honest, ~ .” You might say something like 「正直に言うと、東京より田舎のほうが住みやすいと思います。」 “To be honest, I think it’s easier to live in the countryside than in Tokyo.”

はっきり means “clear” and 言えば is a conjugation of 言う, which you could translate as “If I were to say” or “When I say it.” If we make that into more Englishy English, we might use “To put it clearly” or “To say it straight.” I always remember this line from the movie Tampopo. The two drivers try Tampopo’s ramen at the beginning of the movie, and when she asks them what they think, the cowboy hems and haws, but Ken Watanabe comes straight out and says 「はっきり言えば、まずいです。」

The final phrase is the strongest of all. I’m sure many of you recognize the character 強 from the adjective つよい. Well, it’s also used in the verb しいる. This verb is used in its gerund form to modify 言う, just like はっきり and 正直に. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the verb 強いる means on its own, but it’s always perfectly clear what 強いて言えば means from context – 「強いて言えば、日本の英語教育が冗談（じょうだん）みたいです。」A quick Google search reveals this blog entry with the title 「強いて言えばココがヘンだよ！」

All of these phrases function grammatically in a very similar way to the previous Airbag Expressions, but they are warning people of something different and, depending on what kind of opinions you have, perhaps more shocking. Careful about which opinions you are revealing, but if you are going to reveal them, use one of these.

号外 – ♨

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Isaac made a fantastic comment on my facebook feed for this post, so I thought I’d share it with everyone:

"try ゆうびん　to get the 郵便マーク　(〒)
はーと to get ♥ or ♡
おんせん（温泉）to get ♨"

The onsen mark! I’m so jealous I didn’t figure it out myself! It’s such a cool and distinctive mark. I think I’ll blow that shit up:

 

Further Experimentations with いい

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Ever since I wrote this post, I’ve paid more attention to people’s reactions to my けっこうs and my いいs. To be honest, I started using more いいs than けっこうs and have noticed far less confusion on the part of the employees. I was generally using 「けっこうです」 or 「袋はけっこうです」- the most common situation where I have to refuse something – and often noticed that the person would respond with 「いいですか」I wrote that けっこう might be easier to understand from a non-native speaker, but I’ve started to think that might not be the case.

I’m using the same phrases just with いい. I’ll have to start mixing it up a little more to see the results. I’m still convinced it could be my intonation with けっこう – there are more syllables to mess up.

Cool Compound – 以上

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以上 (いじょう) is a very useful phrase. It’s a short phrase you can use to signal that you’ve finished placing your order at a restaurant or that you’ve finished giving a speech or your portion of a presentation. (以上です。) I guess in that case it literally means, “(Everything I want to say or eat) is above.” Something like that. I guess there’s no satisfying 直訳 really. You could say something like, “That’s all.” or “And that concludes what I have to say.” Those are probably closer to the way it feels.

It’s also used to express “greater than or equal to.” So you can say things like 二人以上 (Two or more people), 10分以上 (Ten minutes or more), and other useful numerical expressions.

Recently it’s been used in a new statistic during weather reports that shows just how sick the Tokyo summer is – 30°以上の時間. Normal statistics like temperature and humidity can’t express exactly how miserable it is in this city during the summer, and since they don’t use heat index, they chart exactly how many hours during the day it is 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) or hotter. Today it was 30 degrees by 9am and it didn’t come down until after 5pm. Gross.

The two-shower-a-day policy is in full effect.

Further Experimentations in 変換

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I wrote previously about how こめ can be switched to ※ with Japanese input systems. Well, I’ve discovered through a friend at work that there are a number of other tricks you can do with 変換.

Arrows – Type in やじるし and you can get these: →, ←, ↑, ↓.

Circles – Type in まる and you can make these: ○, ●, ◎, ◯, ◉. (The third is called a にじゅうまる, maybe the fifth as well.)

Triangles – Type in さんかく and you can get: △, ▲, ▽, ▼.

Squares – Type in しかく and you can get: □, ■, ◇, ◆.

Anyone know of any others? I’m using Kotoeri, the default Japanese input for OSX. Apparently it has some bugs. "kernel panic" is going to be my new catch phrase when shit goes wrong.

How to Find Stuff 2

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Anyone recognize the image? If you were thinking Wikipedia, you are correct. While online dictionaries such as ALC are handy, as are electronic dictionaries and even paper dictionaries, Wikipedia is more precise. Find what you want in English and then pray that it has an equivalent entry in Japanese. Not only do you get the word itself, you get a whole page full of Japanese explaining the history of the thing and, if that thing happens to be athlete’s foot, how to get rid of the thing. That adds up to a lot of practice reading and a huge bump in your vocabulary. Reading one medium-to-long Wikipedia entry per day would be a really effective study strategy.

Apparently athlete’s foot is 足白癬 (あしはくせん) in Japanese, although for some reason that won’t 変換 properly. That might be because the vernacular is 水虫 (みずむし) – water bug. Damn that rainy season and this never-ending summer. I’ll be making a trip to Matsumoto Kiyoshi today.

Friday Puzzle – A Boy Named Who? Answer

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A  boy named Mike, that’s who. The English is Mike, and the Japanese is 三毛 (みけ) – a tortoiseshell cat or perhaps calico in the US. They’re pronounced differently but have the same romanization. In Japanese it literally means three-hairs, referring to the three colors on the cat – black, brown and orange…although don’t some of those cats have white, too?

Beers to Robin and Thomas for continued participation.

The Friday Puzzle takes a summer vacation starting this week, inspired again by Car Talk. They’ve been on a summer break for the past three weeks and have been airing classic episodes. If you don’t listen, I highly recommend trying to get a hold of the episodes. They’ve been solid. If you subscribe in iTunes, it should let you download the past few weeks’ episodes.

号外 – 七夕

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Today is the alternate date for the Tanabata (七夕)  Festival, so I thought I’d talk briefly about the grammatical pattern you see hanging from bamboo around this time – 〜ますように. It’s an interesting phrase to me, partially because, perhaps as an English speaker, it seems like an incomplete sentence. It means “(I hope / I wish) that X happens / comes true.” For example,

いい成績とれますように。
(I hope) I can get good grades.

日本語が上手になりますように。
(I hope) that my Japanese gets better.

I did a quick google search for “七夕　ますように” and came up with a bunch of interesting results, including this page full of wishes.

I put the “I hope” in parenthesis because it is only implied in the Japanese. The actual phrase is only a dependent clause. They had a small Tanabata presentation at one of my elementary schools a month ago, and a bunch of kids had to stand up and tell everyone their wishes. Some of the kids were so uncomfortable with the ending of this sentence grammatically that they stuttered a little です onto the end of their phrase. (サッカーが上手にできますように．．．です。)

Hope everyone’s wishes come true.

 

Note to Self – 言われました

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Any time you want to say one of these phrases in Japanese

“He told me ____.”
“She told me ____.”
“They told me ____.”
“It told me ____.”
“The ____ told me ____.”

you should always be using 言われました.