Tag Archives: Japanese vocab

Cool Compound – 悠々自適

Posted on by

Hard to believe that 2020 is finally coming to an end…or is it?

I’ve had a couple of tweets do pretty well the past week, and I’m going to attribute most of the success to sheer luck. I happened to be transcribing a 悩み (nayami, problem/distress/sorrow) from Higashimura Akiko’s podcast (same episode I mentioned in the newsletter this month, just an earlier call) the other day and came across the great compound 悠々自適 (yūyūjiteki), which felt incredibly appropriate to share:

This is definitely my personal goal for 2022, although I do feel like it’s a luxury to be able to completely tune out the outside world. Once I get through the program I’m in, I’m planning to make phone calls for the governor’s races in Georgia and Florida, and I hope you contribute time or money as well.

As for Japanese language study, I do think it’s incredibly helpful to transcribe native Japanese audio from time to time. I find myself doing this for my writing every now and then, usually from NHK or Higashimura-sensei’s podcast, which provides good balance between 報道 (hōdō, broadcast) language and more natural language. It’s obviously helpful to listen to these without transcribing to practice your listening skills at a native pace, but transcription forces you to get in there and confirm particles and verb forms in a way that enables you to then implement the patterns more accurately. It’s not fun work, but if you can set a schedule to do this once a month or so, I promise that you’ll find yourself improving.

I hope that you all find the time to take a breath at the end of the year. I was really looking forward to spending the New Year’s holiday in Japan. There’s really nothing like relaxing in Japan during that period. I will admit that I’ve enjoyed the 80F/24C days in New Orleans I’ve had the past 10 days, and I’m also looking forward to returning to my monastic existence in Chicago. I’m probably putting together a virtual hang for New Year’s Eve, so if you’re a friend of the blog, reach out and I’ll share the link. Otherwise, 良いお年を！

Cool Word – 仕事納め

Posted on by

I’m back in Chicago after the holidays, the temps have dropped again, and there’s a dusting of snow on the ground, but I’m on the inside looking out, sipping on a hot mug of honey ginger lemon, so no complaints.

I’m done with work for the year!

A Japanese friend’s Facebook post reminded me of the excellent Japanese word 仕事納め (shigoto-osame)—finishing up work for the year. It makes sense that Japan — where New Year’s is absolutely the dominant national holiday — has a word that means wrapping up for the year.

Nothing too crazy going on here – just 仕事 (work) plus a nominalized form of the verb 納める (to complete).

納める is one of those verbs that can have a ton of different meaning depending on context. In fact, the Japanese dictionary provides nine independent usages. Dictionary posts like this are complicated but really helpful if you’re trying to get a true sense of meaning. The dictionary post for 仕事納め is much simpler and good reading practice for beginners.

Update: Check out the 仕事納め hashtag on Instagram for a nice contextual definition of the word and a cool glimpse of how Japan is wrapping up the year.

boy ≠ ボーイ

Posted on by

booi

Apologies for the lack of posts. They should hopefully resume at a more regular pace shortly now that I’ve 1) finished my graduate studies, 2) found a job (one that will keep me in contact with the Japanese language!), 3) moved to the city where I do that job, and 4) almost moved into an apartment in that city. Until Wednesday, I am living with my brother who, conveniently, also lives in that city.

[I’m not really trying to keep secrets. I moved to Chicago, the Windy City, which feels more poetic in Japanese: 風の街 (The City of Wind).]

I’m still working my way through Tazaki Tsukuru, and as I was reading today, I noticed an awesome 外来語 inequality. (MILD SPOILER ALERT: The example details one minor plot point from the new Murakami book.) Tazaki Tsukuru has arrived in Finland to track down a high school friend, and when he gets to his hotel, this happens:

ハンサムな金髪のボーイに案内され、クラシックなエレベーターに揺れられて、四階にある部屋に入った。

As you can see from the katakana, there are a number of foreign words, but “handsome,” “classic,” and “elevator” all match up pretty smoothly with their English equivalents. ボーイ on the other hand, varies a little more. This translation, for example, is a little off:

A handsome, blonde boy guided him into a shaky, caged elevator and up to his room on the fourth floor.

This makes much more sense, no?

A handsome, blonde bellboy guided him into a shaky, caged elevator and up to his room on the fourth floor.

Forget the fact that I’ve smoothed out the listed clauses and the fact that Tsukuru is the subject of every verb in the Japanese, and focus on how much more natural “bellboy” is in that sentence.

This word doesn’t really pass the Google Images test (at least not for ボーイ), but if you add ホテル, it becomes clear that ボーイ = bellboy in many if not most cases, in practical usage.

I love the long vowel here, although I admit that it’s mostly because it makes me think of Flava Flav: YEAHHHHHHH BOYYYYYYYYYYY!