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Iza ikan

C

Carabas

後輩
Joined
8 Oct 2004
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It's always those small expressions that confuse me most. ^^;
Context: Two persons are standing in front of a disco. Person A aks if Person B brought money with him. Then he says "iza ikan / いざ行かん" and goes in. Okay, I know that "iza" means "critical moment" and "ikan" seems to be a dialect form (?) of "ikanai." But what does the whole expression mean?
 
I believe it's an old way of saying "Let's go" or "Come on, why don't we go" that isn't used anymore. Where did you get it from ?
 
Very old way of saying. My old lady helped me translate something once that I couldn't make heads or tales out of. It was
荒れの道を行かん。

FYI -- pronounciation is ゆかん。
 
As GaijinPunch and Elizabeth say, "iza yukan" is old-style form of "saa, ikuzo" (all right, let's go). If you read old novels, samurai drama (and stories) and poetry, you'll see it come up very often.

When somebody says that to enter a disco, the person is speaking as if he is a samurai plunging into battle. There must be something very important for him to do, meet, etc., inside. It can be used in humorous situations, too.
 
Everyone, thanks for your replies. So "Let's go!" it is.

@Elizabeth: It's from a manga I try to read. ^^;
 
Carabas said:
Everyone, thanks for your replies. So "Let's go!" it is.

@Elizabeth: It's from a manga I try to read. ^^;
Click to expand...
Hehe, I understand the feeling. I'm in the middle of a samurai-era manga series myself...
 
I had heard about this a while ago, so I'm not sure if it's entirely correct, but is this ikan an abbreviation of the old volitional form ikamu?
 
If you mean 「いざ、いかむ」, it is pronounced exactly like 「いざ、いかん」. It is 旧仮名遣い（きゅうかなづかい）, the older (obsolete) form of writing in kana. You see it often in the writings of Meiji authors like Higuchi Ichiyou, the new face on the Japanese 5000 yen bill.
 
Ah, so it's spelled differently but pronounced the same? Interesting. I didn't know that it survived all the way up to the Meiji era. I thought its use had stopped long before that, like Heian.
 
This is a link to an excerpt (I think) from writing by Izumi Kyoka (another Meiji female writer). You'll see a lot of kana has been replaced with what you use today. Just for your information!

愛と婚姻
 
Wow, maybe someday I'll be able to make sense of that, but not today. That style of writing is pretty foreign to me.
 
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