MRubingh
後輩
- 17 Nov 2014
- 40
- 5
- 18
This thread is about the Japanese expression or saying 「減るもんじゃない」.
I started this new thread to split off this topic from the thread
Learning resources
where the topic came up but where the topic doesn't really belong. In this first posting I repeat the things that have already been written in that other thread. Namely:
During a successful action of the older forum member Mike Cash to urge a newer forum member to share the Japanese learning resources known to him with the group, the older forum member wrote:
Which made me post the following:
Picking up on that Japanese phrase you used. Googling it or looking it up in "Jim Breen's WWWJDIC" finds the translation
"it's no big deal;
it's nothing to fret about;
it's not like it's the end of the world".
But it's not obvious (to me as a beginner) how that meaning is arrived at from the actual words, seeing that the dictionaries translate "減る" as "to decrease (in size or number); to diminish; to abate".
From the position of "もん", one guess is that "もん" is a noun, which would likely make "減る" an adverbial modifier to that noun, leading me to guess at a literal meaning like "there is no such thing as a decreasing もん". Where the "もん" could be a number of homophones, such as 問 ("there's no such thing as a stupid question"??), 物, 門.
There seems also to exist a particle "もん", "used as a conjunction or at sentence-end, often as 〜もの
な, 〜ものね) indicates reason or excuse", but that doesn't seem to fit.
Obviously, sayings in any language are often set phrases that are difficult to translate and often using archaic words or grammar. But is there any way to understand how the meaning "it's no big deal" can be "construed" from (related to) the actual words in the Japanese phrase ?
Then the Forum Moderator Nekojita replied the following:
I started this new thread to split off this topic from the thread
Learning resources
where the topic came up but where the topic doesn't really belong. In this first posting I repeat the things that have already been written in that other thread. Namely:
During a successful action of the older forum member Mike Cash to urge a newer forum member to share the Japanese learning resources known to him with the group, the older forum member wrote:
Then you could at least post what you found, as it might be of benefit to others in the same circumstances. 減るもんじゃない, as the saying goes.
Which made me post the following:
Picking up on that Japanese phrase you used. Googling it or looking it up in "Jim Breen's WWWJDIC" finds the translation
"it's no big deal;
it's nothing to fret about;
it's not like it's the end of the world".
But it's not obvious (to me as a beginner) how that meaning is arrived at from the actual words, seeing that the dictionaries translate "減る" as "to decrease (in size or number); to diminish; to abate".
From the position of "もん", one guess is that "もん" is a noun, which would likely make "減る" an adverbial modifier to that noun, leading me to guess at a literal meaning like "there is no such thing as a decreasing もん". Where the "もん" could be a number of homophones, such as 問 ("there's no such thing as a stupid question"??), 物, 門.
There seems also to exist a particle "もん", "used as a conjunction or at sentence-end, often as 〜もの
な, 〜ものね) indicates reason or excuse", but that doesn't seem to fit.
Obviously, sayings in any language are often set phrases that are difficult to translate and often using archaic words or grammar. But is there any way to understand how the meaning "it's no big deal" can be "construed" from (related to) the actual words in the Japanese phrase ?
Then the Forum Moderator Nekojita replied the following:
もん = もの (this is a quite common sound change). Literally "(the thing we're talking about = もの) is not something that will be diminished (by doing whatever it is we're talking about)". In this case, sharing a website doesn't make it any less accessible to you, so there's no reason not to share.
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