Watching the most recent Blade Runner movie, I spot pieces of Japanese that it's fun to translate as I'm able. In one scene, filled with flavour and atmosphere, an advert proclaims:
おとくに
おさけ
Great, think I. That's "alcohol" at the bottom, with a polite お prefix; that makes sense in the context, someone advertising a bar maybe. So what's this at the top? I run through my limited mental heuristics - polite お at the start, perhaps, particle に at the end there, leaving me wondering about とく (and of course, it might not be a particle, it might not be a polite prefix). とくに is "especially", so maybe this is some kind of alcohol specialist, I think. Must be missing some context. After I while I check my guesses with some resources, and it comes up with "young women" as a translation for the whole thing. Which makes me think that it's a misinterpretation, except that the picture on which it's overlaid is a young woman.
So my question becomes, is this "young women", in which case, how? The translation resource suggested to me a "did you mean おとくにお酒", but that's basically the same thing. This is really interesting to me; languages are a constant surprise.
おとくに
おさけ
Great, think I. That's "alcohol" at the bottom, with a polite お prefix; that makes sense in the context, someone advertising a bar maybe. So what's this at the top? I run through my limited mental heuristics - polite お at the start, perhaps, particle に at the end there, leaving me wondering about とく (and of course, it might not be a particle, it might not be a polite prefix). とくに is "especially", so maybe this is some kind of alcohol specialist, I think. Must be missing some context. After I while I check my guesses with some resources, and it comes up with "young women" as a translation for the whole thing. Which makes me think that it's a misinterpretation, except that the picture on which it's overlaid is a young woman.
So my question becomes, is this "young women", in which case, how? The translation resource suggested to me a "did you mean おとくにお酒", but that's basically the same thing. This is really interesting to me; languages are a constant surprise.