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Number of everyday words in Japanese

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eeky

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Counting the number of words in a language -- or even defining what qualifies as a "word" -- is notoriously difficult, but sometimes I feel that Japanese has lots more words for everyday things and concepts than English does. It seems like in cases where English has just one word, Japanese has half a dozen, and it seems as if I'm forever coming across new words for very basic things -- words that I would have thought by now I should be familiar with. Is this reasonable, or am I just imagining it? I'm wondering if I just don't notice the variety in English because all the words are already so familiar. Do any native Japanese speakers here remember when they first learned English? Did it seem as if there were "too many words"?
 
The following thread might be somewhat helpful.
Beautiful Japanese Words Dying Out?

EDIT:
As for me, I have to say I still feel there are too many words in English. For instance, I'm often at a loss which word I should use in a context; obvious, clear, evident, apparent for 明らか, correct, accurate, exact, precise, right for 正しい...
 
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eeky,

I have run into the same thing. Sometimes its just determining what word works (as in there is more then one way to say it) other times its how polite you need to be. The later is really apparent in Japanese as there are so many politeness levels.
 

Here is where I disagree.

All those words you describe in English do have similar translations in Japanese.

Eg:
明白
明確
明瞭

正確
的確
精密

I could go on, but all those English words have a specific situation to be used , just as these Japanese words do.
 
Then there are these two that I've been coming across lately: 明らかになる and 判明する. The English glosses are exactly the same as far as I'm aware.

One thing that drives me crazy is that there's no word that encapsulates "comfortable" in Japanese. It seems like you have to have a situation in mind, like 心地良い or 愉快 or 着心地よい or 気持ちいい or whatever. I just want to say "comfortable", man, and not having that one word makes me uncomfortable (see, what would be the appropriate word here? 落ち着かせてくれない or something?).
 
That's why I used 明らか/正しい instead of those words you wrote. These 和語 can widely cover the similar meanings, like the example Glenn-san brought out. Besides, those compound words indeed "have a specific situation to be used" and the situation is limited compared to 明らか/正しい, but the situation is not the same to the one in English. As in the example sentences in the dictionaries linked below, "correct" and 正確 don't have one on one correspondence with each other, for instance. Therefore learners need to understand the meaning/concept of each word correctly. It's tough at least for me.

正確を英語で訳す - goo辞書 英和和英
correctの意味 - goo辞書 英和和英
 
There isn't an all-inclusive phrase for "in a state of comfort" I suppose because comfortable isn't the more descriptive term even in English outside of a few particular situations (clothing, temperature, chairs etc). My sense of the most general to highlight different aspects of the core meaning would be 楽 (relaxed, easy) 愉快 (happy, pleasant, cheerful) or 気持ちいい (cozy, good/pleasant feeling)....There still seems more overlap among the Japanese and more distinction in English, though...:?
 
楽 is a good one, thanks. I had forgotten about that. 気分がいい also seems to fit, just going from the 中日 entry for 舒服 (which, by the way, seems to be much more widely used than any of the Japanese words, and is closer to the English, which makes me feel better because I know I don't have to go searching for the right word to fit the situation when I'd normally just use one), although I don't know how commonly/widely 気分がいい is used.
 
気分がいい I guess is like the opposite of "out of sorts" referring to subjective mood, physical state, feeling calm (not unwell, restless, jumpy) with a situation, person, etc.

Ochitsukanai kibun da yo ! When I don't know the context of what anyone is trying to say.
 
I wonder if you can use 落ち着いてい(られ)ない or something for a cover-all...
 
Glenn said:
I wonder if you can use 落ち着いてい(られ)ない or something for a cover-all...
Click to expand...
I don't know what situation, but usually you just hear "fine" or "OK" instead of "comfortable."
 
Maybe it is because I am on the side of the fence that I am on but I agree with Dave and Glenn. I have felt for a long time that there is a significantly higher number of "everyday" words used in Japanese than there is in English. With English I really feel that you can get by in a day and in many situations with a smaller vocabulary than you can in Japanese.
 
Well, there are some words in Japanese that cover lots of English words too, like すごい and やばい. That's just the thing -- it goes both ways, and there isn't much overlap, it seems. What English uses one word for, Japanese uses many words for; what Japanese uses one word for, English uses many words for. At least that's how it feels to me.
 
Toritoribe, I understand what you are saying, but I feel that it does work both ways.

For instance your links to "正確" and "correct", which I am assuming you are trying to point out that the spelling is the same but with completely different meanings. Sure this happens occasionally in English , but nowhere near the amount of Japanese.

This also goes for Japanese. And frankly , I think it is worse in Japanese. The only thing that helps us is that most words have different kanji which enables the reader to distiguish what the meaning of the word is. But written in hiragana and you have to read the context of the sentence to know what is being implied. As for spoken Japanese, good luck, case in point "たいこう", this has so many different meanings it is difficult to track.

たいこう＝大公
たいこう＝退校
たいこう＝対抗
たいこう＝大綱
たいこう＝対向
たいこう＝対抗
たいこう＝体腔
たいこう＝大興
たいこう＝大行
たいこう＝太閤
たいこう＝大光
たいこう＝大功

Sure, these when spoken, will have different intonations, but to a person learning it can be quite hard to pick up. Anyway I think you get my point.
 
I think this is what he was saying with that example:
Toritoribe said:
"correct" and 正確 don't have one on one correspondence with each other
Click to expand...
and he wasn't commenting on pronunciation. The point is that when you want to express the idea of 正確 in English you have to choose from "correct", "exact", "accurate", and "precise", and if you want to express the idea of "correct" in Japanese you have to choose from 正しい, 正確な, and 真実の, and that's just limiting the field to the first sense of "correct" as an adjective. I'm pretty sure he was just trying to illustrate that there's no 100 percent (really? the "percent" sign doesn't display properly?) overlap.

At any rate, I don't see how you can disagree with this:

Toritoribe said:
I'm often at a loss which word I should use in a context; obvious, clear, evident, apparent for 明らか, correct, accurate, exact, precise, right for 正しい...
Click to expand...

Can you really tell him he's not at a loss when trying to decide on the proper English word for those Japanese words?
 
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Everyday speech really is highly restricted. And polite doesn't necessarily mean using a lot of difficult words that I highly doubt most Japanese would know what it means if you just *threw it out* into a casual conversation. Those that Dave listed are pretty much formal or work-related terms, other than 明らか or 正しい/正確.

とても攻撃的で硬い印象を与えるどんな言葉 ?
 
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