In Banner of the Stars there's something Lafiel says that they translate as "Thanks". I've long wondered what it is. To my older untrained ear it sounded like kanshell but that is obviously wrong.

It turns out that kansha means "thanks, gratitude" and that's part of what she's saying, but there's something on the end.

My first take was that she's saying kansha wa. That would be wa as the feminine softener -- except that using feminine speech patterns is completely, totally out of character for Lafiel, especially since she uses it to a peer captain in another ship in her squadron. (I have heard her use -zo at least once, which is not very lady-like.)

Or is that wa actually a topic particle? Sort of like kimi wa uses it? Since the wa "points right" it would indicate that the important thing is what the thanks are being offered for.

Could she be saying kansha o? With "o" being the object particle?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 01:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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There's a point in DBZ where 7 year old Goten and 8 year old Trunks are competing in the finals of the junior division of the World Martial Arts Tournament. At the very end of that match, Goten is hanging in the air over Trunks, and yells something just before beginning a high speed power dive straight down at his friend and opponent.

I've always wondered what it was. Now, finally, I think I've figured it out. I think he's saying Yattsukeri!

That would be the continuative form of the verb yattsukeru which means "to attack, to beat, to finish off". They translated it as "Charge!" but it seem to me that "Onward to victory!" would have been more accurate.

I just heard that in the 12th episode of Aoi & Mutsuki. I decided to skip ahead to ep 13, but it was such a strange situation that I jumped back and watched ep 12. Actually, I must say that the situation isn't what I expected, and it's turning out to be pretty exciting. I think I will go back and watch it all. But I'm not through with ep 13 yet, and I might not still feel that way after I do finish.

UPDATE: OK, it might actually be decent. I think I will go back and watch the rest of it. But not now. There's a bunch of other stuff on the unwatched pile I want to check out.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 08:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've heard that the number 1 thing that Japanese students of English have trouble with is articles. Learning when to use a/an and the is apparently really difficult, because Japanese has no equivalent. Nothing even remotely close.

The second biggest problem with English is the preposterously huge vocabulary. The English language has far more words overall, and far more words in everyday use, than any other language. For most things we have lots of synonyms, and we use those synonyms. That's because when a concept appears twice in the same sentence, or within contiguous sentences, it's considered good practice to use different words for it to prevent ear fatigue.

But I've also heard that another real problem is verb+word constructs which amount to single terms. "Run" is a perfectly good verb in its own right, but consider "run out", "run over", "run into", "run across", "run away", "run down", "run amok", "run wild", "run ragged"; the number of those using "run" is huge. And in a lot of those cases the actual meaning of the phrase has little to do with "moving faster than a walk using one's legs".

Creating one of those phrases unintentionally is easy to do, and misunderstanding them is very possible if you're not fully fluent, especially if someone is splitting their infinitives.

What makes me think about this is something I just saw on NRO Corner. Some US Senator from Idaho got arrested in the Minneapolis airport a couple of weeks ago for trying to proposition another man in a bathroom there. Turns out the man was a cop, stationed there to prevent that kind of thing.

Some reporter discovered this a couple of days ago and it's been all over the news. Yawn. But the senator felt the need to have a press conference today. Katherine Jean Lopez sez:

Jon Stewart will not fail to note that the senator opened with: "Thank you for coming out today."

Heh-heh-heh... "coming out"... heh-heh-heh...

UPDATE: "Run into" isn't the opposite of "run out of". "Run up" isn't the opposite of "run down".

UPDATE: A news account of his opening misstep.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 05:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Apropos nothing in particular, I was just rewatching the original Tenchi Muyo OVA and heard "mugen" as part of something Kagato said. So I looked it up. It's spelled 無限.

ç„¡ mu means "nothingness, nothing, not, nil"
限 gen means "limit, restrict"

So 無限 mugen means "unlimited, infinite". Isn't that interesting? (And let's not mention in comments what series this refers to, shall we? Hmmm?)

Of course, it could also be 夢幻 which means "dreams, fantasies" but I'm sure it isn't.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 10:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In a couple of series I've heard people say "mataashita" which gets translated as "See you tomorrow". The dictionary says that "jaamataashita" means precisely that.

I'm wondering if it's actually three words: jaa mata ashita. "Jaa" is informal "goodbye". (Literally it's "well, then...") "Mata" means "again". "Ashita" means "tomorrow". So jaa mata ashita would mean "Bye, (see you) again tomorrow" with an implied verb and object. And you could omit the jaa and just say mataashita.

Is that right?

(I tried to convince myself that it was matashita and the lengthened "a" in the middle was because of the omitted "i" in the shi. So I thought it was short for "mata deshita". Only problem with that is that it's clearly referring to the future, and deshita is polite past, so mata deshita doesn't make any sense.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 11:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The (now ex) planet Pluto is called 冥王星 meiousei in Japanese. It turns out that the kanji read "planet of the king of darkness". Which is pretty neat, actually, because in Roman mythology Pluto was god of the underworld.

Finding that out got me curious about some of the others. 星 sei means "planet" so it's a matter of what the other kanji mean.

Mercury: 水星 suisei "planet of water"

Venus: 金星 kinsei "planet of gold"

Mars: 火星 kasei "planet of fire"

Jupiter: 木星 mokusei "planet of trees"

Saturn: 土星 dosei "planet of soil"

Uranus: 天王星 tennousei "planet of the king of the sky"

Neptune: 海王星 kaiousei "planet of the king of the ocean"

The planets out through Saturn are observable with the naked eye, but it takes a telescope to see Uranus and Neptune. (Which is why both of them were discovered after the American revolution.) I suspect that the names of the inner five planets are taken from the names given to them by Chinese astrologers.

The other two are clearly descriptions of the Roman gods. Uranus was the god of the sky, husband of Gaia the goddess of the earth. Neptune was the god of the ocean. And as mentioned, Pluto was the god of the underworld.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 11:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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There's no way anyone guesses this borrowed phrase: バーチカルマーケティング baachikarumaaketeingu

Vertical Marketing

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 10:22 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Oy.  I got the marketing part, but "vertical"?

I hope I do less damage to Japanese on the rare occasions I speak it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 01, 2007 02:13 AM (PiXy!)

2 Awww... Pixy, don't you know about the "spoiler" tab? You dumped the answer into the side bar.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 01, 2007 10:37 AM (+rSRq)

3 At first glance I missed ã‚« and thought it read "virtual," which would make only slightly more sense. But there's obviously no "k" in that.

Posted by: Will at August 01, 2007 11:12 AM (SOx9v)

4  Sorry!  All fixed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 01, 2007 05:18 PM (PiXy!)

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I just picked up yet another marvelous borrowed word: teekauto.

"Take out", as in food-to-go.

(I need to learn how to set up categories. I probably should have done it a long time ago, and the longer I wait, the more of a pain it's going to be if I want to do it retroactively.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 07:53 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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In the seventh episode of Shingu, a girl needs to get home and is too weary to walk. The guy who is with her (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, which is why I'm being vague) offers to call a taxi, but instead she says, "Carry me." Or something like that.

What she says sounds to me like ounbu. But I can't parse that. The subtitles translate it as "Piggyback".

Anyone have any idea what she's saying? (DVD 2 of the thinpak, title 2, chapter 4, time 0:22:18)

UPDATE: A different one, which I figured out a while ago. The "Secret technique" that the subtitle calls "Astral Deviation", well, that wasn't really a very good choice for an English term for it. I think I might have used "Astral Projection".

The Japanese term they're using is 空蝉 utsusemi which is the term that's used to refer to the process of a cicada molting and casting off its shell when it transforms to its adult winged form. That's actually rather poetic.

(Obviously, in order to avoid spoilers, I'm not saying what it specifically refers to in the show; and just talking about the name isn't a spoiler because we first hear of it just as it's used.)

UPDATE: Actually, it turns out to be 空蝉の秘技 utsusemi no higi. (But it sure does sound like they're saying himi, which is not a word.)

UPDATE: I'm told that the word I heard was 負んぶ onbu which means "carrying on one's back". So in fact the subtitle was accurate when it said "Piggyback".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 01:15 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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In Shingu at one point, an adult is very angry with a couple of middle school kids and he calls them konoyarou. The subtitle translates it as "you bastards".

That isn't a word, so I got to wondering. 野郎 yarou means "rascal". It occurred to me that no might be the possessive particle. So what was ko? One meaning is 子 which means "child". Or it could be 児 which means "young animal".

"rascal kids" seems completely plausible. (...and I'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for konoyarou!)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 06:52 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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