Author Archives: Daniel

Doubtful Heart, Dark Demons

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One of the most difficult things about learning another language can be finding an easy way to express ideas that seem simple in your mother tongue. It can be frustrating to learn that there isn’t a one-to-one ratio for every English adjective and verb.

One of the parts of Japanese that seems especially complicated is the four-character compound (四字熟語、よじじゅくご). This is because they are often idiomatic (一石二鳥、いっせきにちょう), and many idioms don’t translate as neatly as those poor dead birds.

I just learned one recently that’s very easy to remember and expresses what seems like a comparatively simple concept in English. 疑心暗鬼（ぎしんあんき）means paranoid. It’s often used like an adjective (彼は疑心暗鬼だ。) or in combination with ～になる（疑心暗鬼になる。）.

Here’s the character by character breakdown:

疑 – suspicious, doubtful
心 – heart
暗 – dark
鬼 – monster

It isn’t the official way to say paranoia (which is 被害妄想、ひがいもうそう), so it can also be translated as “suspicious,” “wary,” or “fearful,” but it’s by far the coolest way to express this idea.

Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary (“The Green Goddess”) provides a most excellent translation – “Fear peoples the darkness with monsters.”

An Experience with Maybe

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The first time I came to Japan I did a summer internship at a propeller company. That’s right, a company that makes propellers of varying sizes for boats. Small ones, medium ones, and giant fuck-all ones.

Fortunately they also had a medical division that made artificial joints and a design division that made ceramic lights. I worked with the latter, helping to make English pamphlets, teaching English after work, doing a small amount of “market research,” and trying as hard as possible not to get in the way.

At the end of my two months I had to give a final report. I talked about all the possibilities of ceramic lights in the US. Maybe they could do this, maybe they could do that. Maybe you could try and sell through this magazine. Maybe you could sell through that website.

Afterwards I spoke with the youngest of the group, the person I was closest with, and asked her how it sounded. “Really negative,” she told me bluntly. I was shocked. These were the eight people I knew the best in all of Japan, and I had just told them, take your ceramic lights and shove them! Not so explicitly of course.

The pattern I was using – have you guessed it yet? – is ～かもしれない. This, I had been taught, is a way to express something that might occur. And it is, most definitely, but it has a very distinguishable negative tinge to it that I didn’t fully comprehend until that moment.

Try a quick search of かもしれない on alc.co.jp. Here are the first ten results:

– teenage years might be bad
– people might not sign up for something
– conventional wisdom may not apply
– someone might fucking disappear
– something might be indiscrete
– someone might have seen two cars but isn’t sure because there was crazy shit happening
– something might help in the fight against metastasis
– a store might lose a customer
– some country might attack Iraq (guess that isn’t so maybe anymore, right?)
– smoking could cause fatal illness

Not a single happy thing in the top ten. No maybe getting laid. No maybe finding 100 dollars on the ground. And sure as hell no maybe selling millions of ceramic lights in America.

Probability is still something that gives me fits in Japanese, but I know exactly when to use ～かもしれない.

A couple of good examples:

事故があったかもしれません。    Maybe there was an accident.

A: 来ないかもしれない               He might not come.
B:残念！来てほしかったな。    Damn! I was hoping he’d come.

And here’s one I think I used in my introduction speech on the very first day of classes at the junior high school in town:

私はちょっと怖く見えるかもしれませんが、実は優しい人だから、ぜひ声をかけてきてください。

I may look a little scary, but I’m actually a very nice person, so please say hello.

Quick Notes

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A few quick notes:

– Barring grievous bodily injury, this blog will be a 月火水 affair.

– I’m importing this blog into facebook, so I may take the freedom to cross-post comments that are helpful. The url if you’re interested and reading on facebook is https://howtojaponese.com .

– This blog grew out of two articles I wrote for the FUJET newsletter. I re-published these articles as the first four entries, hence all the mentioning of "monthly" and homework and whatnot.

– Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to read about. 

Cool Kanji – 鰐

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wani

 

This is one of my all time favorite kanji. I first learned it in Beppu where they have these things they call “hells.” They are like onsen but much hotter and are different colors. There’s a dozen or so of them and they vary in terms of respectability. The worst one houses something like 100 alligators. They’re all cooped up, piled on top of each other and forced to swim in their own shit all day long. There’s a sign that says something stupid like, “Hot springs provide a tropical atmosphere perfect for raising crocodiles!” Boo.

 

The kanji itself, though, is great. It’s fish on the left and then that thingy on the right, which I always recognize from the word for jaw – 顎. So, you can remember it as a fish with a big-ass jaw – alligator. It almost looks like the part on the right is trying to eat the fish part…as a crocodile would.

Hell no

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A funny, casual alternative to 遠慮 is お断り. Technically it’s derived from the keigo（お＋断り＋します） of 断る（ことわる）, which means to reject or refuse, but I think the actual usage is more casual. It’s generally used as a terse method of shooting down an unreasonable request.

i.e.:

Daniel: 俺と付き合ってくれ！     Go out with me!
Sumiko Nishioka: お断り。       Hell no!

There’s absolutely no way I could get a date with Sumiko Nishioka, and she and the imaginary audience in my brain all knew that, which is why she frowned and okotowari’d me, causing the audience to laugh at my suffering.

It’s generally delivered in a flat, flat tone with an air of “I’m not amused, asshole.” Although the English “Hell no” is hardly ever delivered in a flat tone, the meaning is just about the same, and it’s also capable of generating laughter.

(Side note:

I’m convinced that part of the reason お断り is so funny is that it doesn’t have any of the trappings of Japanese politeness – no 残念ながら, no hesitation, no apologies. Compare it to the conversation with my supervisor below and you can probably tell that the second sentence in both have, essentially, the same meaning and are merely delivered in starkly different tones.)

How to Say No by Saying Yes

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Japanese people hate saying no. Not only do they hate saying no, they even hate using negative endings to verbs. This presents a problem for many foreigners, who upon arrival suddenly find that there are many things they would like very much not to do.

Well, have no fear, citizens, there is a wonderful Japanese word called 遠慮（えんりょ）. Encapsulated within these two tiny-yet-complex characters is a phrase with a built-in no. Yes, that’s right, by doing this verb you are actually not doing something.

For example, the following conversation:

Supervisor: ダニエル先生、あのう、来週飲み会ありますが、どうですか。
Daniel: あそうですか。誘ってくださってありがとうございます。残念ながら、今月お金がちょっとぎりぎりで、遠慮します。

Now, in English:

Supervisor: Hey Daniel, umm, there’s a drinking party next week. You in?
Daniel: Oh yeah? Thank you for inviting me. Unfortunately I’m a bit short with cash this month, so I’ll hold back.

If you wanted to get even more polite you could say, 遠慮させていただきます, and utilize the causative tense.

遠慮 literally means “to hold back” or “to be reserved,” something like that, but what it really means is no. It reminds me a lot of that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean where the captain says, “I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.” The lady’s all like, WTF? and then he goes, “IT MEANS NO!”

遠慮 is Japanese code word for no. Everyone understands the meaning, and it can efficiently and politely be used to say “No thanks.”

(A side note:

It’s good practice to thank people for an invitation whether or not you accept or decline. That way the invitations will continue to come. )

Dedication

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I dedicate this blog to two people.

The first is my 6th grade Spanish teacher, Senorita Quimbay. When I started 6th grade I couldn’t speak a word, and she drilled Spanish into my brain. I loved the class. I loved copying my test mistakes twice to earn points. I loved conjugating Spanish verbs. I loved filling in the blanks in our textbook. She was the ruler by which I measured all future language teachers, and only a handful ever equaled her.

The other person is the 12-year-old me who miraculously absorbed Spanish. He always did Spanish homework first. If there was a vocabulary word he didn’t know on a test, he could sit there and, by concentrating, force the word to materialize. Maybe he never really learned to speak it that well, but he did love learning it.

I wish I could’ve started studying Japanese when I was 12, but unfortunately it had to wait until I was 19. By that time my brain had already partially calcified and become unable to learn Japanese to the extent that I could have learned Spanish. No longer able to quickly memorize lists of words or force vocab to appear, I am reduced to hard work and clever thinking. This blog is my thoughts on the Japanese language and learning Japanese.

Embracing Japanese Expression 2

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This month I want to talk about one of the simplest,  most underutilized phrases in Japanese – ~そうです。~sou desu. I am not referring to the “Oh really?” (あそうですか。) or the “Yes, that’s what I mean.” (そうです。) I’m talking about the sou desu attached to the end of an informal Japanese clause used to report what you have heard/learned from another person/source of information.

As I mentioned last month, Japanese has a distinct lack of subjects, which causes any un-subject-ed sentence to be understood to be first person. うん、行きました。
“Yeah, I went.”

However, you can very easily turn this into a third-person sentence by adding sou desu:

うん、行ったそうです。
“Yeah, she (said she) went.”

JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) speakers, especially those from English-speaking countries, probably tend to translate the above English phrase as,

彼女が行ったと言いました。

but this is just wordy and unnecessary in Japanese. In fact, you’re emphasizing the wrong information. Here’s a comparison of how these two sentences work in English.

彼女が行ったと言いました。
She said she went.

行ったそうです。
She said she went.

By providing the subject, which is probably clear in context, and marking it with a が you are actually emphasizing that this woman and not some other untrustworthy individual is the one that did the saying. 誰が？彼女が。Who said it? She said it, you big fat idiot, SHE!

Weather report – 天気予報

天気予報によると明日は晴れるそうです。
According to the weather report, tomorrow will be sunny.

Newspaper – 新聞

According to an Asahi Newspaper report, taxes will rise next year, too.

ハーバード大学の革新的な研究によると、ヨギは一般の熊より頭がいいそうです。

A vicious rumor – ひどい噂（うわさ – The kanji for this word is sweet; learn it.）

According to a vicious rumor, Daniel bought tofu at Lion D’or yesterday.

ひどい噂では、ダニエル先生は昨日豆腐を買ったそうです。

You’ll see the source marked with either によると or で.

Starting from this issue, I’m going to give everyone a little homework. I’m going to give you a Japanese phrase that I found interesting. I won’t provide any context or explanation. Your job is to figure out what the speaker meant. One can of Japanese 100% malt beer (your choice between Yebisu and Suntory) goes to a correct explanation of the meaning and possible context. Contest is only valid for non-Billy-McMichaels in the audience. If there is more than one correct answer, I will randomly select the winner. Here is this issue’s phrase:「 殺しそうになった。」    One of my teachers taught me this phrase when they corrected a mistake. This sentence will lead into my next column’s topic. Good hunting.

Embracing Japanese Expression – Get Used to It 3

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3. Causative Tense

This is one crazy-ass tense. Not only is it hard to figure out the meaning, it can even be hard to conjugate the verb. I find myself struggling with the Causative tense the most out of all of the ones listed in this article. One of the ways that I learned the meaning, though, is the following set phrase my teachers made us use in Japanese class:

日本の経済について発表させていただきたいと思います。

We’ll break this one down slowly. Forget the と思います for now.

日本の経済について = about the Japanese economy

(If you haven’t learned the phrase について yet, congratulations, you just did. It means about. For example, ビールについての本 = a book about beer. )

発表する = to give a presentation

日本の経済について発表する = give a presentation about the Japanese economy

Now, let’s change that into the causative form:

日本の経済について発表させて！

This person is clearly very excited. He really wants someone to make him give a presentation about the Japanese economy. The other possible topics must be incredibly boring. The important thing to remember here is that the causative form does not only mean “make someone X.” It can also be “allow someone to X” or “let someone X.”

Add the いただきたい (I want to receive):
日本の経済について発表させていただきたい。 I want to receive someone allowing me to give a presentation about the Japanese economy.

Now let’s put that into normal English:

I’d like to give a presentation on the Japanese economy.

Yeah, a silly English phrase, and not one that we would use in English, but this is how Japanese people begin their presentations. Get used to it. The と思います can be considered an extension of いただきたい. You should really think of いただきたいと思います as nothing more than “I want to receive.” Sure, 思う means think sometimes, but it can also mean feel, which it does in this case. How does he feel? He feels as though he’d like to give a presentation about the Japanese economy. Again, this is the way they say things, get used to it.

Other phrases you’ll hear:

自己紹介させていただきます。
I will now introduce myself. / Please allow me to introduce myself.

And a useful way to call in sick:

今日は気分がすぐれないんで、休ませてください。
I’m not feeling so hot today, please let me skip today.

Or if you wanted to include that lovely word 病休:

病休をとらせてください。
Please let me take byokyuu today.

Embracing Japanese Expression – Get Used to It 2

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2. Passive Tense

Arguably, there is nothing more foreign to English speakers than the Japanese passive tense, but the sooner you learn to understand it and use it, the sooner you learn to take off your active tense floaties, the more comfortable you will be with the language. If you grew up as I did, you learned the iron-clad rule “AVOID THE PASSIVE TENSE!” It’s weak. It’s not strong. It’s passive. Well, forget that rule, because there is no rule against using the passive tense in Japanese.

Let’s start with a useful example: そう言われると、そうだよね。

This is the Japanese way of saying, “Now that you mention it…(you’re right! / that is true).”

Let’s look at what’s happening in the Japanese. Here’s the ugly (but occasionally useful) direct translation:

When such( I) am told, it is that way.

I have put the “I” in parenthesis because there is no pronoun in the Japanese. But this leaves someone missing – the person who is doing the telling. The most accurate way to direct translate this is: When such (I) am told (by you). But would anyone ever say anything like that in English? Absolutely not. If you tried to do a literal translation from English to Japanese of “Now that you mention it…” (Something along the lines of, “今あなたがそれを言うと、”), you’ll end up with something just as silly.

The other way you may hear this pattern is, そう言われてみれば、.

The other usage of the passive tense is to describe adverse circumstances – when shit goes wrong. Here’s an example that should be familiar to all elementary school teachers:

ダニエル先生、どうしたの？
What’s wrong, Daniel?

カンチョウされた！
A first-grader just kanchoed me!

Passive tense is very frequently used when something bad or unfortunate happens to you. If we add in all the people to the second sentence above, you get:

私が一年生にカンチョウされた！
I was kanchoed by a first-grader unfortunately.

I’ve added the “unfortunately” to help express the adverse nature of the circumstance.

Now let’s make it even stronger. I mean, come on, a kid just stuck his fingers up your butt! You don’t want to just said, “First grader put fingers in my butt,” you want to be able to say, “Goddammit, that little fuck just stuck his fingers up my hairy asshole!”

カンチョウされてしまった！

しまった is the relatively mild exclamatory phrase which means something like, “Darn.” But change that to　カンチョウされちゃった! , add a little grunt, and then you’ll be expressing some of that fervor! されちゃった is just the contracted form of されてしまう。