It is a linguistic trap few learners of Japanese have avoided: declaring yourself pera pera (fluent in a language) when you’re really peko peko (hungry); or breaking into applause (pachi pachi) when the dentist asks you to kachi kachi (bite repeatedly).
Navigating the rich and varied world of Japanese onomatopoeia can result in laughter and mild embarrassment, but the words can also be a quick and effective way to get through to a friend or colleague.
As Japan’s foreign population reaches record levels, lifted by the arrival of more people to fill a gaping hole in the labour market, volunteers in the western prefecture of Mie have compiled a guide to commonly used onomatopoeic words for language learners.
Photo: AFP
The book, E Kara Oto ga Wakaru Hon (understanding sounds using pictures) was the idea of Masao Hara, the deputy head of a nonprofit in the prefecture whose interactions with non-Japanese convinced him the guide would come in useful.
It contains a host of words that can be used in everyday situations, such as a visit to the doctor, who might hear of their patient’s throbbing (zuki zuki) ankle or pounding (gan gan) headache, a piri piri (stinging) insect bite or muzu muzu (scratchy) throat.
Hara and other members of the nonprofit sifted through a Japanese dictionary to create a list of 100 words, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
They are divided into categories — from actions and emotions to the weather and descriptions of inanimate objects — and accompanied by an illustration and descriptions in Chinese, Vietnamese, Nepalese and Indonesian.
Wan Fang, a Chinese resident, said the guide had already made her job at a supermarket a little easier.
“When I was told that the floor was tsuru tsuru in Japanese, I didn’t know what it meant, but when I saw the illustration in the book, I instantly understood that tsuru tsuru means the floor is clean or slippery,” Wan told the newspaper.
The print run of 1,000 copies is expected to find a keen readership among students attending local Japanese language schools — as of January, Mie was home to 31,000 foreign residents. Nationwide, the non-Japanese population reached a record 3.2 million last year, according to the immigration services agency.
The guide only scratches the surface, however. There are said to be more than 1,000 onomatopoeia in Japanese — enough to make most language learners come over all fura fura (dizzy).
On those rare days in Kaohsiung when the air is crisp and clear, the eastern horizon is dominated by a green wall that towers high above the Pingtung plains. This is the ridge running from Wutou Mountain (霧頭山), up to Beidawu Mountain (北大武山) at 3,092 meters. Many make the trek up to Beidawu, but very few walk the top of this wall over to Wutou, and for good reason: it is an unmarked, overgrown death trap with no reliable water and steep slopes full of rotten wood and crumbly rock. Last week, news emerged that a French couple called for rescue
Last week, the presidential campaign of Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) tapped Cynthia Wu (吳欣盈), the granddaughter of Shin Kong group founder Wu Ho-su (吳火獅), as his vice-presidential candidate. Wu and her vast wealth seem to fly in the face of Ko’s claim to be offering new, cleaner politics. She wasted no time putting the peasants in their proper place. Asked last week by a reporter if she would publicly reveal that she had given up her US citizenship, Wu tartly responded that it was an issue between herself and the US government. The following day, when
Hitting tennis balls across a tree-lined court in Thailand’s mountainous north, Connie Chen’s weekly private training session is a luxury the Chinese national could barely afford when she lived in Shanghai. China implemented some of the world’s toughest COVID restrictions during the pandemic, putting hundreds of millions of people under prolonged lockdowns. In the aftermath, younger citizens — exhausted by grueling and unrewarding jobs — are taking flight to escape abroad. With a relatively easy process for one-year study visas, a slower pace of living and cheap living costs, Thailand’s second-largest city Chiang Mai has become a popular destination. “During the pandemic, the
Comedian Xi Diao says he knows he should avoid talking politics on stage, but sharing a family name with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) makes it hard to resist. Even his name is politically sensitive, the Melbourne-based amateur comedian tells audiences, setting up a joke about a group chat on the Chinese messaging service WeChat being shut down as soon as he joined it. The 33-year-old civil engineer gets nervous laughs whenever he breaks a de facto rule of Chinese comedy: Don’t say anything that makes China look bad. To most comedians, that means no jokes about censorship, no mentioning the president’s
RSS