Japanese vocabulary: crime words
Japan is one of the safest countries in the world, but not without its share of problems. Mostly, these problems amount to stolen bicycles and umbrellas (I had my own bicycle stolen last fall). Recently I played through 龍が如く３ (English title: Yakuza 3) on Playstation 3, so I had a chance to polish my crime vocabulary a little bit. Here’s a list of crime-related words which may or may not have been found in the game.
Do you know these Japanese words?
These words are the latest additions to the Nihonshock Vocabulary Bank (updated daily... mostly). Want to see all the words?
なつばて [natsubate] – Something about the 38℃ days just makes you tired, you know. In Japanese, that fatigue is called 夏バテ.
[Read More]てじな [tejina] – ‘Hand’ (手) plus ‘wares’ (品) gives us the Japanese word for sleight-of-hand. The word 奇術 [kijutsu] is typically used for…
[Read More]7 polite phrases foreigners aren’t supposed to know
One of the joys of learning Japanese is seeing that shocked and dumbfounded look on native speakers’ faces when you fire off a difficult word or phrase that even they probably wouldn’t have come up with. You get to smile snobbishly and think to yourself: Ha! you didn’t see THAT coming, did you!?
Nihonshock’s new vocab section
Following on yesterday’s graphical tweak of the site, I’ve added a new feature: Vocabulary.
These are basically short posts (just a paragraph or so) about a specific Japanese word that I thought was either interesting or worth talking about. The words included will (for the most part) be…
Japanese words for age
You may already know that Japan has the world’s longest life expectancy. But did you know that Japanese are also the most well prepared for their longevity with a vast array of special words for different ages? Although many (umm, almost all?) of these words are not commonly used, they’re still fun to know. And you never know what’s going to come up on a Japanese game show or in your izakaya parties. Here’s the list!
The many ways to say “I”
One of the many unique and intriguing features of Japanese is the vast selection of words you have available to choose from when you want to say “I.”Each of these words has a different connotation reflecting the speaker’s view of his/herself and relationship to the listener.
For this article, I’m introduce to you my personal collection of “I” words that I’ve encountered here in Japan (even if I’ve only seen them once or twice in obscure contexts). Hopefully, this list will help to prepare you for your own Japanese adventures.
Vocab power: stop saying “totemo”
Totemo means “very” in Japanese, also sometimes pronounced とっても/tottemo with a kicked “t” for added emphasis. Because it is so easy to pronounce, so broad in meaning and so simple in grammar, it is one of the most useful words in the Japanese language. “Power-words” like totemo great for speed-learning, and non-Japanese pick up on these words with unparalleled ease… However, all too often those learners end up clinging to these words to a far greater degree than they should and for a much longer time than they should…
Katakana Mysteries: 7 lucky loan words
In the first chapter of Katakana mysteries, I covered a few words whose Japanese meaning has by one path or another become quite different from their English ancestors. This time, I’ve rounded up 7 more words/phrases that are interesting for the opposite reason: their accuracy. You probably wouldn’t have expected these underdogs of English to even become loanwords at all, much less to have survived the Japanese translation gauntlet intact…
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