February 13, 2010

Japanese -- no yatsu

I've been noticing no yatsu quite a lot. It always follows someone's name. Suga-kun in Saki uses it (e.g. Yuki no yatsu) and for a while I thought it was "man speech".

But Queen Mashiro in Mai Otome Zwei also uses it, "Arika no yatsu". The no is a particle but it doesn't make sense as a possessive. It might be a linking. But I think phrase is an idiom, a phrase which has a meaning other than its literal reading.

奴 yatsu is a less-than-respectful way of referring to a person of either sex. The whole phrase is lightly derogatory, a way of expressing contempt or displeasure or distaste.

So I've been thinking about how you'd translate Arika no yatsu and I think I'd go with "That Arika".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 08:29 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 I think may be called "appositive". The textbook example is, "hosutofamirii no Suzuki-san" that means "[my] host family, Suzuki-san". So, "onii-chan no baka!" means "idiot big-brother" in the same way.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 13, 2010 09:49 PM (/ppBw)

2 That's maybe a bit too nice. As you say, there's definitely the negative implication there. "That damned (darn?) Arika" would work just fine, depending on the character's other speech patterns.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at February 14, 2010 12:30 PM (mRjOr)

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