I looked into the rich Japanese language again.
Autumn has suddenly deepened. Autumn is the season when seasonal fish such as saury and mackerel become very delicious.
There is a saying that goes, “Don’t let your wife eat autumn mackerel,” but it is generally thought to be a prank from a mother-in-law who says, “It would be a waste to let your wife eat delicious mackerel.” However, it actually has the opposite meaning, and is a word of compassion for the wife to avoid harming her body by eating fast-moving (and easily painful) mackerel.
In Japanese, there are many words whose commonly known meanings are far from their original meanings. This may be due to the richness of the Japanese language.
Until just the other day, I was feeling comfortable as my whole body was bathed in the cold air emitted by the air conditioner, but recently, perhaps because I had set it to automatic mode, the air was blowing out in a slightly looser way. . When you expose your palm to the air outlet, you will now feel the warmth and comfort. The rapid deepening of autumn can be felt in many places around us. Is mackerel something to read?
When many people think of delicious autumn fish, they probably think of swordfish and mackerel. Now, many of you have probably heard of the phrase “reading mackerel” when you are trying to hide things like your age. It’s a word you often hear, so few people may have given it much thought, but the term saba here refers to the fish mackerel.
During the Edo period, mackerel was abundantly caught in the waters around Japan.
At that time, fish trading was based on quantity, not weight, such as how many fish and how much. However, when dealing with mackerel, which is susceptible to damage, every moment counts. Therefore, it seems that transactions were often made by eye value without counting accurately. For this reason, in mackerel transactions, the actual number and the number at the time of transaction are the same.
It seems that the word “saba no yomi (measure)” has come to be widely used to mean that the actual number is different from the actual number.
In the Japanese language, there are many idioms that are interesting when you know their roots, and words that have different meanings than they are actually used.
What is “insufficient role” lacking?
There is a word that is often misunderstood: “Yakusaku”. It is sometimes used to mean that someone is saying, “You are not good enough for this next job,” and that the job is too much for them to handle.
However, this word has the exact opposite meaning; it means that the role (or job) is not good enough for the person. In other words, “That’s not a job for him.”
It’s a word used when the work is too light, as in, “It’s not enough.”
Who is pity good for?
Another idiom that is often misused is “Pity is not good for others.” It means, “Even if you do something out of sympathy for someone, it’s better not to do what you did because you felt that way, because it won’t help that person.”
However, this is quite the opposite; it means, “If you show compassion to others, it will come back to benefit you.”
There are two major reasons why this has been misunderstood. One is how to understand the archaic word “Nana”. In this idiom, it does not mean “for the sake of others”, but “not for the sake of others”.
The other thing is how to understand “mercy”. “sympathy” in modern times
People tend to think of it as “pity,” but in ancient Japanese it actually meant “affection” or “kindness.”
Misuse of various other idioms
Even if you usually use words without paying much attention to them, if you look them up again, you may find that they have meanings you didn’t expect.
For example, a “bad view” is not a perverse view, but a view that captures the truth or essence of something, and a “conviction crime” refers to an act or crime that is done knowingly that it is wrong, in a negative sense. Instead, they act to adhere to their own policies based on political or religious beliefs.
On the long autumn nights, it might be a good idea to pull out the dictionary you have stored away and look it up again.
By Admin|2023-10-17|2023,|