There are phrases in Japanese that I hear again and again and I get frustrated trying to look them up because I can't figure out how to parse the word boundaries.

I finally figured out mada ashita just now. In use it means "See you tomorrow" and I finally figured out that ashita is "tomorrow" and mada is "more, again".

A couple of related ones that I've finally realized are used constantly that I can't figure out how to parse sound to me like soyukoto and doyukoto. I have something of a suspicion that the core of it is koto "thing, fact, matter, reason". But I'm far from sure of that and I can't parse the rest of it. It's been driving me nuts. Anyone care to help me out with this?

Whatever they are, those phrases are very versatile, meaning variously "What have we got here?" or "That's the way it is" or "Is that so?" or "What the hell is that?" or a lot of other things. It can be snide, or reaffirming, or an expression of disbelief, or an expression of agreement. Sometimes there's a da after it, which of course is the copula.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 01:54 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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