Randomly hopping around on Wikipedia yesterday I came across an amazing phrase – ニコイチ. I had a great time reading the entry and figuring out what it means. I don’t want to ruin the experience for you, so I won’t say what it means here. Go ahead and give it a read. It’s a good read for intermediate students…hopefully not too, too advanced.
Those jeans are good for the next few years.
Also took the parents to the Yokohama Archives of History. Great exhibits, and I’m hopeless at history, so a refresher is always appreciated. In addition to the regular exhibits, they also had a special exhibit on missionaries. Samuel Robbins Brown, one of the missionaries, also wrote his own Japanese textbook titled:
COLLOQUIAL JAPANESE
OR
CONVERSATIONAL SENTENCES
AND
DIALOGUES
IN
ENGLISH AND JAPANESE
The title went on for two whole pages, and I didn’t bother copying the rest, but it
Several example pages were also displayed, one of which included this gem:
247. He deserves a flogging.
Ano okata wa tatakare nasarete mo yoroshiu gozarimasu.
アノ オカタ ハ タタカレ ナ井レテ モ ヨロシウ ゴザリマス。
You’ll have to ask Matt about the accuracy of the Japanese phrase (that seems to be the standard thing to do these days – in the comments), but to me it sounds more like the standard phrase ~てもいいです, where the ~ happens to be a passive keigo verb. For example, 電気を消されてもいいです。Or “I don’t mind if you turn off the lights." In the case of flogging, the sentence would be “I don’t mind if you flog that fellow.” I could see either of these phrases making the translational jump to "Go ahead and flog that fellow/turn off that light," but can it take that last step to “deserve”? This could be some Meiji Era madness I’m totally unprepared to understand. I mean, is 井 really supposed to be floating around in there? If so, cool. If not, Nelson laugh. (My initial theory was that this was some aggressive passive tense action. Like, 電気が消されてもいいです. Literally "I don’t mind if the lights are turned off." But that would be just wrong…right?)
247 was followed in short order by these:
252. He is drunk every day.
253. His opinion and yours are the same.
What was going on in Yokohama in the Meiji Era?
Update: Adam found a link to the actual book on archive.org – here. You can get a PDF or text version or just flip through pages. Awesome. Check out Adam’s comment to see the ridiculous full title.
Man, I’ve looked through it just a little bit and found this great explanation: "Hashi, a bridge, is distinguished from hashi, chopsticks, by the suppression of the final i in the last, thus hash’, signifies chopsticks." That’s a really nice explanation. This book is going to be awesome.
More awesomeness as I discover it (page numbers refer to PDF):
Pg 18: "The oral language delights in courteous expressions, and one of the most remarkable features of the polished style of speech is the use of long words, and circumlocutions."
Pg 49-50: "The difference between wa and nga is scarcely translateable, but is to be expressed by the tone of the speaker’s voice, rather than by any corresponding words in English. The native ear at once perceives the difference, and a foreigner can acquire the use of these particles, only by practice and much familiarity with the Japanese usage."
Pg 81: After an extensive introduction, the first sentence in the book? "A bow-knot is easy to untie. Hi-za o-ri ni mu-sz-bu to to-ke ya-sz-u go za-ri-ma-s’." The only reason it’s here is because all the phrases are in alphabetical order, which explains 252 and 253 above.
Adam from Lucky Isle was on the news for riding his giant unicycle. Check out this post for YouTube video of his appearance on the local news. Pretty awesome video.
Took the parents to the Silk Museum in Yokohama. Highly underrated museum – lots of English translation, great depth of information, women can try on a kimono for free, and they have a display where real cocoons are being used to create actual silk thread. Very cool. It’s been empty the two times I’ve been.
I also learned an amazing kanji – 繭 (まゆ). It means cocoon. It’s got all the important parts: the grass radical for the mulberry bushes (草 – just that top bit), the thread radical for the silk (糸), and the insect radical for the worms (虫). Visually it expresses a lot of meaning as the insect and thread are held together tightly by that small matrix, and the plant sits on top, letting us know where it all starts.
Great kanji.
Updated: Changed bamboo to grass upon dope slap from Aak. Domo domo.
Don’t forget that 大好物 can only be used for stuff you eat!
Plum blossoms get no love in this cherry blossom country, but they’re just starting to bloom, which means Winter is almost over. Here’s the scene at Ikegami Baien.
Don’t forget there’s a kanji for “shit”! Isn’t that awesome!
Apparently that post helped inspire some deviant behavior – slightly NSFW.
My folks are in town this next week, so I’ll be recycling ideas from a couple of my favorite posts – consider them spaced repetition reminders rather than sheer laziness.
Don’t forget that かわいそう is a difficult word to translate. I hate it when people just translate it straight up as “pitiful” or “pathetic.” Even “It’s a shame that…” can be off sometimes. I like to think of it as a truly sympathetic “It’s too bad that…” but it really needs to be handled on a case by case basis.
Now here’s some madness to play with your brain: Japanese have difficulty learning the English alphabet for the same reason that Americans have difficulty using the metric system – they already have a perfectly good naming/measuring convention of their own, so psychologically it’s more comfortable to stick with what’s familiar. It’s the same reason that it’s really difficult to adjust to Celsius or Fahrenheit if you’ve grown up with the other. I’ve come to understand what 10C means, but 50F still means more to me.
Yes, the alphabet has so pervaded Japan that they’ve found a way to fit it into their own language. And here is how it works:
A エー
B ビー
C シー
D ディー
E イー
F エフー
G ジー
H エイチ
I アイ
J ジェー
K ケー
L エル
M エム
N エヌ
O オー
P ピー
Q キュー
R アル
S エス
T ティー
U ユー
V ブイ
W ダブルユー
X エックス
Y ワイ
Z ゼッド
Follow this rubric with the occasional hint (ラビットのアル) and you’ll have no problem relaying the alphabet in Japanese, even if it means dictating your romanized name over the phone. I think the hardest ones for me to get used to have been V, R, L, M and N, but it’s amazing how much fater アル can relay information than “ARRGH.” Also, it wasn’t until I wrote down this list that I realized why my former students refused to give up the British “zed” – pronouncing it “zee” creates an overlap with the pronunciation for G. I was tempted to write ズィー until I remembered zed.