Let’s look at a few phrases that are useful when you want to get pissed in Japanese. (Here, I mean the American-English ‘pissed’ as in ‘angry’, not the British-English ‘drunk’, although it would be an interesting thing to see someone actually getting drunk on Japanese.)
よくそんなばかなことをしたもんだ！
How could you be such an idiot!
When your friend, in [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Japanese’
July 3, 2008
Getting pissed in Japanese
June 26, 2008
Ambiguity in English
I continue to realize the existence of problems in English the more I study Japanese.
Of course, I’m sure everyone already knows the problem with the sentence, “The boy watched the girl looking through the telescope.” Was the boy using a telescope to watch the girl? Or was the boy watching a girl who [...]
June 9, 2008
Back on the table - Japanese subtitles once more
My wife and I went out to see Charlie Wilson’s War after dinner last night for our wedding anniversary. When we watch movies in English together at home, we usually have Korean subtitles on for her, and the result is that when I describe the scene I watched in English with the same scene [...]
June 3, 2008
Yet another story of super kanji to the rescue
Yet another story of how kanji saved my life…would have sounded a lot more dramatic and probably would have been a more interesting read. But, seriously - Kanji rock. Kanji are superheroes. In fact, in the upcoming 8th season of Smallville (yeah, I watch it - What’s it to you?!), we find [...]
May 31, 2008
Kanji - The Layman’s Best Friends
Sesquipedalian. I don’t think I’ll ever fall out of obsession with that word. The definition is itself. It is its own definition. There’s something so satisfying about that. But that’s not what this is about.
Sesquipedalian is far from being a common vocabulary term. The same holds true of its [...]
May 26, 2008
Japanese Homophones - A Blessing or a Curse?
I have the impression that most foreigners who study Japanese get frustrated by the inevitable homophones which accompany a language with so few vowels. However, I prefer to think of them as very useful tools - Mnemonic devices!
I’ll repost my most recent mixi.jp entry below as an example of this.
外国人にとって、日本語の同音異義語は、意味の誤解になる原因だと言われているが、
一方では記憶術として使えるので、便利だと思う！
「東大は学界の灯台」
日本語では分からないが、灯台は英語にするとa light houseで、船を案内する機械という意味だけではなく、「案内して、明らかにすること」という定義も持っているので、「東大は学界の灯台」といったら、「東大は学界の一流」という意味になる。
引き続き、「東大は当代の学界の灯台」もできる。
Toudai in Japanese [...]
May 1, 2008
Love for Japanese proverbs.
Very unabashedly, I love Japanese proverbs, even the ones that contradict each other.
十人十色 - Literally meaning, “10 people, 10 colors.” This phrase emphasizes the individuality of humans. “As many opinions as people.”
出るくぎは打たれる - Literally, “The nail that sticks up is hammered down.” Contrasting the proverb above, this expresses the idea that it [...]
April 28, 2008
弁
Here’s some of the local 弁 (dialect) that I’ve come to love and utilize.
つかっちゃ Meaning “I’m beat [tired]“, derived from 疲れてしまいました.
どうスッペ? Meaning “What should [I/We/You] do?”, derived from どうする？
さすけね Meaning “No worries / Not a problem”, derived from (the old term) 差支えがない.
These terms will not benefit me at all on the JLPT [...]
February 26, 2008
Novel Japanese study method
I thought I’d share with all of you other Japanese language learners out there a(nother) novel way of studying, this time with the Japanese version of Wikiquote.
It couldn’t be more straightforward, really. You just look up the name of one of your favorite writers, and there you have some of their best works translated [...]
February 18, 2008
Follow-up to Darjeeling Limited in Japanese
After writing up a post about translating humor, specifically focusing on Darjeeling Limited in Japanese, I searched for the official movie site in Japanese and was happy to find that there was a trailer with Japanese subtitles. I’d like to document the English script and Japanese subtitles below, with a brief comparison following.
[Francis] [...]
