Beautiful Japanese Words Dying Out?

I recieved an email from a friend of mine from Japan (the only friend whom I've known for a while who is from Japan). They were writing to me in response to my studying the kanji chars/names for different colors.

They wrote this curious thought:

I love Japanese colour name because some colours have also traditional name.
"Red" -> "Aka 赤" -> "Kurenai 紅", "Syu 朱", "Benibana 紅花"
"Blue"-> "Ao 青" -> "Ruri 瑠璃", "Asagi 浅葱"
"Yellow green" -> "黄緑 Kimidori" -> "Wakakusa 若草", "Moegi 萌黄"
etc, etc...
Those are beautiful expression words, however we use the traditional colour name less and less these days.
I feel sad beautiful Japanese words are disappeared.

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How true is this for you guys out there? I know that I've not seen such terms as "Kurenai" or "Kimidori" as of yet...
Aurura

Study them for posterity's sake. Use them when you can I think I'd like to study those now.

In my opinion, kimidori is still used very often.

I like the word ruri iro.

The only times I ever remember coming across 瑠璃 are in dictionary entries that quote 浄瑠璃. That's not to say it isn't ever used, I just don't remember coming across it in any other context.

Glenn said:

The only times I ever remember coming across 瑠璃 are in dictionary entries that quote 浄瑠璃. That's not to say it isn't ever used, I just don't remember coming across it in any other context.

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I know someone that uses it for their name. "瑠璃子"

Ha, just remembered 瑠璃千代 from Bleach. Fictitious characters don't count, I guess, though.

I knew a dog name 瑠璃。 Lovely creature.

瑠璃色の地球 by 松田聖子


紅 by X Japan


Also, Subaru R2 had 11 Japanesque colour variations.

真珠; shinju - pearl
檸檬; remon - lemon
松葉; matsuba - pain needles (green)
空; sora - sky (blue)
菫; sumire - violet
杜若; kakitsubata - iris
紅; kurenai - deep red
漆黒; shikkoku - japan black
瑠璃; ruri - lapis lazuli/azure
純銀; jungin - pure silver
雪白; seppaku - snow white

From personal experience it seems that a Japanese dictionaries contain thousands of words, perhaps up to 30%-40%, that the average Japanese person has never used or, more importantly, even heard of.

I think Maciamo's article here is quite relevant.

Taiko666 said:

From personal experience it seems that a Japanese dictionaries contain thousands of words, perhaps up to 30%-40%, that the average Japanese person has never used or, more importantly, even heard of.

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I'm sure dictionaries of English, French, German, Chinese, etc all contain thousands of words that average native speaker has never used or unheard of.

By the way, I don't think these color terms are something average Japanese people don't know. It is just in daily conversation English loan words started to replace them. In written language like in literature you see them all the time (but not in novels by Murakami Haruki, I suppose...). In contrast, Japanese names of flowers are probably more in danger.

I think Maciamo's article here is quite relevant.

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This is off-topic but Maciamo-san's article is missing an important characteristic of conversational Japanese, 擬音語・擬態語, onomatopoeia and psycho-mimes (phonetic representations of non-auditory perceptions). Shades of meaning are expressed with such expressions in daily conversation in Japanese.

grapefruit said:

I don't think these color terms are something average Japanese people don't know. It is just in daily conversation English loan words started to replace them. In written language like in literature you see them all the time

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I agree. I personaly know/heard/read all the colours the OP quoted...

grapefruit said:

I'm sure dictionaries of English, French, German, Chinese, etc all contain thousands of words that average native speaker has never used or unheard of.

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Unforunately I can't agree. Leaf through an English dictionary. I reckon there will be a maximum of one word per page that you've never heard of. You may not have used some other words, or know their exact meaning, but at least you would have heard them at some point. The same is not true for Japanese speakers and dictionaries (in my experience.)

Toritoribe said:

I agree. I personaly know/heard/read all the colours the OP quoted...

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But how often do you use those words?

Japanese dictionaries are full of beautiful words that nobody uses.

For example the average English speaker will know and use, depending on the context, perhaps a dozen words that basically mean 臭い. In Japan it seems to be the case that 臭い is almost always used, with 香り coming a distant second.
This phenomen became apparent to me while using the EDICT dictionary. It was designed as a Japanese to English dictionary, and works wonderfully in that context. However, it's virtually useless as an English to Japanese dictionary because it will offer you several Japanese words for the English you're seeking, but most Japanese will have only heard of one or two of those words.

Taiko666 said:

But how often do you use those words?
Japanese dictionaries are full of beautiful words that nobody uses.
For example the average English speaker will know and use, depending on the context, perhaps a dozen words that basically mean 臭い. In Japan it seems to be the case that 臭い is almost always used, with 香り coming a distant second.
This phenomen became apparent to me while using the EDICT dictionary. It was designed as a Japanese to English dictionary, and works wonderfully in that context. However, it's virtually useless as an English to Japanese dictionary because it will offer you several Japanese words for the English you're seeking, but most Japanese will have only heard of one or two of those words.

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臭い and 香り do not mean the same thing. 臭い is only used for something that smells BAD. If you ask me, the word that we use the most for "smell" is 匂い.

Taiko666 said:

Unforunately I can't agree. Leaf through an English dictionary. I reckon there will be a maximum of one word per page that you've never heard of. You may not have used some other words, or know their exact meaning, but at least you would have heard them at some point. The same is not true for Japanese speakers and dictionaries (in my experience.)

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Interesting. I was under the impression that a good unabridged dictionary (not the OED, that's exceptional) has around 150,000-200,000 words in it. I was also under the impression that the average high school graduate knows around 10,000 words, college graduate around 20,000, and Ph.D. from 40,000-60,000. This is going from what I remember seeing on the cover of my New Webster's Unabridged American Dictionary (don't remember the exact title, that may be off) and having heard a story about average vocabulary on the news. If those numbers are right, something like 3/4 of the American population only would know 1/15th-1/20th of the words in a good unabridged dictionary (going by the 23% of Americans have a college degree report that I heard on BBC America). I don't know what GB, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. are like, but I would guess they aren't all that different. If all this is close to being accurate, and we want to give people the benefit of the doubt, 75% of native English speakers only know 10% of the words in a good unabridged dictionary. If you wanted to go even farther you could say 50% of native English speakers only know 30% of the words in a good unabridged dictionary. That's still a lot more unknown words than 1 per page.

Of course, we also have to define "dictionary," "know," "word," and "native English speaker" at the very least for the purpose of this discussion. Do you have numbers different than these? Do you have a different idea of what these terms mean?

On a side note, in talking to native English speakers I find that a few words bear most of the burden. Words like "awesome," "cool," "like," "random," etc., and let's not forget the words that would get filtered that get used so often. I don't see a difference really between that and Japanese.

I'll defer to your stats because I doubt if I'll get round to digging out any of my own, seeing as I'm only speaking anecdotally.

Glenn said:

On a side note, in talking to native English speakers I find that a few words bear most of the burden. Words like "awesome," "cool," "like," "random," etc., and let's not forget the words that would get filtered that get used so often. I don't see a difference really between that and Japanese.

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This is precisely the opposite of my experience, unless you're referring to 2-fingered bloggers. I didn't believe Maciamo could possibly have been correct in his appraisal of the vocabulary usage of Japanese speakers, and yet I still have the impression that English speakers have a broader day-to-day vocabulary than Japanese speakers. It's just personal experience; like asking a friend what's the Japanese for 'rat' and finding it to be the same as for 'mouse', or asking what's the Japanese for an elephant's trunk, or a bird's claw, or asking for the Japanese for 'implore' and finding it to be the same as 'request'. Obviously Japanese can convey the nuance of 'implore' by other means, just as the sense of future can be conveyed without having a future tense.

ASHIKAGA said:

臭い and 香り do not mean the same thing. 臭い is only used for something that smells BAD. If you ask me, the word that we use the most for "smell" is 匂い.

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Sorry you're right, I typed in those three words into notepad to check the kanji and then pasted the wrong word.

Yes of course I meant 'niyoi'. I've heard 'kusai' or even 'kusei' often enough in relation to my socks.

Taiko666 said:

I'll defer to your stats because I doubt if I'll get round to digging out any of my own, seeing as I'm only speaking anecdotally.

This is precisely the opposite of my experience, unless you're referring to 2-fingered bloggers. I didn't believe Maciamo could possibly have been correct in his appraisal of the vocabulary usage of Japanese speakers, and yet I still have the impression that English speakers have a broader day-to-day vocabulary than Japanese speakers. It's just personal experience; like asking a friend what's the Japanese for 'rat' and finding it to be the same as for 'mouse', or asking what's the Japanese for an elephant's trunk, or a bird's claw, or asking for the Japanese for 'implore' and finding it to be the same as 'request'. Obviously Japanese can convey the nuance of 'implore' by other means, just as the sense of future can be conveyed without having a future tense.

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Well, I really don't think I hang around idiots, but obviously our experiences are different. I get caught up on the many-English words-with-one-Japanese-word-for-them-all thing as well, but I feel just as many times it goes the other way. The categories are different, but there seem to be many Japanese words that have specific meanings and uses where one English word would be used, so I don't get caught up in the who-uses-more-words game.

Taiko666 said:

Yes of course I meant 'niyoi'. I've heard 'kusai' or even 'kusei' often enough in relation to my socks.

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That's just mean, man, that's just mean!

What are English words for "okoru," "hara ga tatsu," "hara o tateru"? Most likely the answer will be get angry. What are words for mizu and oyu in English? Both are "water" in English. What are words for "kome," "ine," and "gohan" in English, they are all rice in English. We all know that these types of questions are none sense and they do not prove Japanese has more daily words than English.

If one first attempts to come up with two slightly different words in one language and tries to find the equivalent in another language, you will end up having one word in that language. English has rat and mouse because the distinction is important to the society/culture/language. Japanese has "kome," "ine", and "gohan" because such distinctions are important to Japanese. The most famous example is how Inuits call snow, right?

I think we always end up having more words if we attempt the questioning process described above for the following logic. When you try to come up with two or more than two similar words in daily language, you are naturally selecting a field of semantics that is important to the culture. The fact that there are more than one word in that language suggests the chosen semantic field is significant in the culture. If the semantic field is significant to the culture, it is natural to have more words within the same field. So, this type of "evidence" does not prove a thing.

Having said this, I still think what @Taiko666 -san said is interesting. You said you rarely see unknown words on a page of dictionaries right? If this is what most of English speaking people are feeling, it is a quite interesting phenomenon. It is possible for average English speaking people to know more "words" than average Japanese people.

I was wondering if this is related to the concepts of "word" and "dictionary." Contrary to the common conception that words and dictionaries are universal, we have to be aware that both are ideas conceived in the West. Japanese people had never thought of the concept "word" before contacting the West. Indeed, it is still difficult to count how many words are in one sentence in Japanese. It is possible to hypothesize that the Japanese language expresses subtle differences in meaning with units higher than what the West calls "word". If that is the case, we are going to see fewer words in average Japanese people's mind. Of course, dictionaries are not going to identify expressions that are not words. As I mentioned before, 擬音語・擬態語 are usually not considered as words, but we all know that without them, no Japanese can explain things in daily conversation. There might be more structures in Japanese that are actively used in Japanese daily conversation but simply not identified because they are not "words".

grapefruit said:

What are English words for "okoru," "hara ga tatsu," "hara o tateru"?

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Mukatsuku, atama ni kuru (intersting that so many deal with the stomach).

grapefruit said:

If one first attempts to come up with two slightly different words in one language and tries to find the equivalent in another language, you will end up having one word in that language.

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This reminds me of something that I read about there not being either synonyms in language or across languages (e.g., 青い is not "blue"). There are overlapping areas, and the ones that have the largest areas overlapping are the ones used as glosses (e.g., 青い for "blue").

grapefruit said:

English has rat and mouse because the distinction is important to the society/culture/language. Japanese has "kome," "ine", and "gohan" because such distinctions are important to Japanese. The most famous example is how Inuits call snow, right?

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You may be referring to a myth here. They don't have forty-something words for snow. This relates to what you wrote below, actually.

grapefruit said:

I was wondering if this is related to the concepts of "word" and "dictionary." Contrary to the common conception that words and dictionaries are universal, we have to be aware that both are ideas conceived in the West. Japanese people had never thought of the concept "word" before contacting the West. Indeed, it is still difficult to count how many words are in one sentence in Japanese. It is possible to hypothesize that the Japanese language expresses subtle differences in meaning with units higher than what the West calls "word". If that is the case, we are going to see fewer words in average Japanese people's mind. Of course, dictionaries are not going to identify expressions that are not words. As I mentioned before, 擬音語・擬態語 are usually not considered as words, but we all know that without them, no Japanese can explain things in daily conversation. There might be more structures in Japanese that are actively used in Japanese daily conversation but simply not identified because they are not "words".

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And what I was referring to above is that because of the historical Euro-centric nature of language study, grammar (all based on Latin, if memory serves me correcly), etc., polysynthetic languages like Inuit weren't very easily described. In Inuit and other languages like it, what we might consider as one word from an English perspective can be a whole sentence, and the "snow" words came from that highly productive morphemic nature.

I think it's interesting and also worth noting that Chinese dictionaries are fairly non-existent still (correct me if I'm wrong), and the ones that do exist are character dictionaries. They don't even have the same sort of concept of "word" that we do; they think in morphemes (which are pretty much the same as syllables for Chinese). In the same manner, what should we call られる in Japanese? I think it's traditionally classified as 助動詞, but it's certainly not the same as auxiliary verbs in English, which are free morphemes. You'll never see られる hanging out on its own in Japanese. That's partly why I made the comment about having to define what "dictionary" and "word" meant (bound derivational morphemes throw another wrench in there, but most dictionaries treat words with those attached as separate lemma: e.g., "friendly" is a separate entry from "friend").

Glenn said:

Interesting. I was under the impression that a good unabridged dictionary (not the OED, that's exceptional) has around 150,000-200,000 words in it. I was also under the impression that the average high school graduate knows around 10,000 words, college graduate around 20,000, and Ph.D. from 40,000-60,000.

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I have my doubts about those numbers. I know around 10,000 words in Japanese and there's no way I am even approaching below average high school students (i.e. the ones I used to teach).

I would wager as well that the number for college graduates is much higher as well. Know 20,000 words? I am sure there are far more than that in the reservoir of words that I actually use.

Here's an interesting link:

World Wide Words: How Many Words?

grapefruit said:

"hara ga tatsu," "hara o tateru"?

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Is there a difference between these? And why is it that the 2nd feels counterintuitive to me in terms of how the を is being used...is there a good reason its used here?

grapefruit said:

It is possible to hypothesize that the Japanese language expresses subtle differences in meaning with units higher than what the West calls "word".

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I am with you 100% on your last post except for this line, which sounds, though I am sure it was unintentional, as the content of your last post was precisely to argue against standards of judgment being applied to language, slightly condescending.

I always cringe when these kind of conversations come up. The most common sources of pride I have found among English speakers are:

-number of words used/in the language
-irony
-implicit meanings

and with Japanese:

-unique concepts
-being imbued with more feeling
-implicit meanings


Ironically, in my experience both English and Japanese speakers who generalize about their language applaud its ability to transfer information in subtle, indirect ways (which I am sure is inherent to all language). You get the feeling this is only possible when one isn't quite up to subtlety in another language...

From Maciamo's article:

English is the richest language in the world (over 500,000 words, 7x more than French or 5x more than German), which is why Japanese people often have trouble finding an adequate translation with the right nuance fitting the context. Japanese could be called more convenient, as it requires less thinking or learning to be able to communicate efficiently. Having learned many languages myself, I was always surprised at how easy it was to understand some Japanese TV "drama" with so little vocabulary, something which would require a much larger vocabulary in many European languages.

--


Wow...In one short paragraph he managed to talk up English, belittle Japanese a couple of times, and brag about himself. I can only think of one word to describe this: rich.

The rest of the article is full of crap (くず、ゴミ、大便、うんこ、くそ） as well.

Charles Barkley said:

I am with you 100% on your last post except for this line, which sounds, though I am sure it was unintentional, as the content of your last post was precisely to argue against standards of judgment being applied to language, slightly condescending.

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If so, I apologize.

Anyway, what I meant is that the units of linguistic analysis are often first decided by things commonly found in European languages. For instance, the concepts of sentence, word, and pronoun were, I believe, all invented because they commonly exist in European languages. But, whom to decide the word is the fundamental unit of analysis? Chinese would surely disagree. They would say the morpheme (kanji character) should be the basic building block of language. So, they compile their dictionaries according to morpheme not according to word. I can't remember whether it was Swahili or Arabic but some languages express what we call "sentence" with what we call "word", right? I heard a sentence like "Yesterday, I went to school to take a Japanese exam" can be expressed in one word. So, in extreme cases like that, I think it is not constructive to simply compare the number of words between two languages. It is meaningful to compare the number of words in each language, if we can agree on that the concept of "word" is something comparable in the two languages. Taiko666-san's comment made me think of the possibility of difference in the level of analysis.

Charles Barkley said:

From Maciamo's article:
English is the richest language in the world (over 500,000 words, 7x more than French or 5x more than German), which is why Japanese people often have trouble finding an adequate translation with the right nuance fitting the context. Japanese could be called more convenient, as it requires less thinking or learning to be able to communicate efficiently. Having learned many languages myself, I was always surprised at how easy it was to understand some Japanese TV "drama" with so little vocabulary, something which would require a much larger vocabulary in many European languages.
--
Wow...In one short paragraph he managed to talk up English, belittle Japanese a couple of times, and brag about himself. I can only think of one word to describe this: rich.
The rest of the article is full of crap (くず、ゴミ、大便、うんこ、くそ） as well.

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Hahaha. I agree.

Is there a difference between these? And why is it that the 2nd feels counterintuitive to me in terms of how the を is being used...is there a good reason its used here?

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Now, let's switch back to the ordinary mode of talking about words and grammar in "Learning Japanese" threads.

"Hara ga tatsu" is grammatically intransitive and "hara o tateru" is transitive because of the particles ga and o. The distinction might be similar to such expressions "kanji ga machigatteru" and "kanji o machigaeru."

You can request to someone, "hara o tate naide kudasai." In contrast, "hara ga tatsu" cannot be part of a request because it is intransitive.
Your own emotion can be explained with "hara ga tatsu" but not with "hara o tateru."

grapefruit said:

Now, let's switch back to the ordinary mode of talking about words and grammar in "Learning Japanese" threads.

"Hara ga tatsu" is grammatically intransitive and "hara o tateru" is transitive because of the particles ga and o. The distinction might be similar to such expressions "kanji ga machigatteru" and "kanji o machigaeru."

You can request to someone, "hara o tate naide kudasai." In contrast, "hara ga tatsu" cannot be part of a request because it is intransitive.
Your own emotion can be explained with "hara ga tatsu" but not with "hara o tateru."

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Yeah, that is exactly the issue I was having with it. Sentences like:

なんでそんなに腹を立てるんだ？

When I hear this, I wonder why its not "なんでそんなに腹が立つんだ？

Is it that in the first case 何々が is implied and in the second 何々に is implied, and the difference in nuance is that in the first, the causer is seen as slightly more active?

Charles Barkley said:

Yeah, that is exactly the issue I was having with it. Sentences like:
なんでそんなに腹を立てるんだ？
When I hear this, I wonder why its not "なんでそんなに腹が立つんだ？
Is it that in the first case 何々が is implied and in the second 何々に is implied, and the difference in nuance is that in the first, the causer is seen as slightly more active?

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Interesting! So, "腹が立つ" is used to express the speaker's own emotion, while "腹を立てる" is used to express somebody else's own emotion.

That kind of distinction made me think about other expressions in Japanese that entail emotion or inner thought.

仕事がいやだ vs. 仕事を嫌がる
悲しい vs. 悲しがる
ビールが飲みたい vs. ビールを飲みたがる
変だと思う vs. 変だと思っている

This type of distinction must be something inherent in Japanese grammar. The former express speaker's own mind, but the latter express someone else's.