November 10, 2011

Japanese -- suru and yaru

I'm a bit confused about the difference between suru and yaru. The dictionary says that they both mean "to do" but it's clear there must be some distinction between them.

Judging the language from how it's used in anime is a bit perilous because anime Japanese isn't really normal. But based on what I've been hearing, it seems to me that yaru is more like "to do to". One of the alternate meanings of yaru is "to kill", for example.

Seems like yaru is just a bit sinister, in fact. Is my impression correct?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 03:39 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 99 words, total size 1 kb.

1 >>>Judging the language from how it's used in anime is a bit perilous because anime Japanese isn't really normal.<<<

That, if anything, is an understatement. Compared to how actual Japanese folks talk, at least in public or when gaijin are around, anime Japanese is tremendously informal and slangy. I can only think of a handful of occasions when I was in Japan and heard a native using anything less than a "desu" level of formality.

>>>But based on what I've been hearing, it seems to me that yaru is more like "to do to". One of the alternate meanings of yaru is "to kill", for example.<<<

Yaru's base meaning IS the same as "suru", strictly speaking, and I think it could stand in as a more informal synonym for "suru" in most situations if you were joking around or otherwise being extremely informal, but it more commonly appears in idiomatic expressions. One such expression is the Japanese equivalent of "waste" or "wipe out" in American gangster slang, but you're more likely to see it used in reference to playing sports ("yakyuu wo yaru"), feeding an animal ("inu ni kuimono wo yaru"), etc.
It's hard to give truly accurate concrete, generalized definitions of Japanese words in English, because everything's so flippin' context-dependent...

Posted by: AlexG at November 10, 2011 04:54 PM (ekMZX)

2

A couple of places I noticed it: In Summer Wars it's used in reference to a good play in a card game. In Strike Witches it is used to refer to actions in combat.

In both cases it's about competition, albeit a lot more deadly in the latter case.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 10, 2011 05:00 PM (+rSRq)

3 Also, "Yatta!" is the past tense of yaru. (But yatta is pretty much an idiom at this point, whose usage has little or nothing to do with its literal meaning.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 10, 2011 05:01 PM (+rSRq)

4 Yaru isn't so much sinister as insulting, when used with someone not in your group. It implies the other person has much less status than you do. That's why, in cases where you give something to someone, it's usually reserved for animals and plants as the recepient.

Posted by: muon at November 10, 2011 10:01 PM (JXm2R)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
      [spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)

At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.

How to put links in your comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
10kb generated in CPU 0.0046, elapsed 0.0139 seconds.
21 queries taking 0.0106 seconds, 21 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.