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Words Lacking in English

Brooker

Anjin
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10 Apr 2004
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There are a lot of things that English doesn't have a word for. Through studying Japanese I've noticed a lot more of them recently. Here are some examples....

There is no third person for someone you don't know the gender of. Let's say your company is hiring a new employee, but you don't know if that person will be male or female. All you can say is, "When will IT get here?"

There is no second person plural. If you're talking to a group of people, you have to use "you" (which is really only for one person) or "ya'll" (which is bad English).

We have no single word for the Japanese "ototoi" (the day before yesterday) or "asatte" (the day after tomorrow). Or "nomihodai" (all-you-can-drink) and "tabehodai" (all-you-can-eat).

Got any others?
 
Brooker said:
There is no third person for someone you don't know the gender of. Let's say your company is hiring a new employee, but you don't know if that person will be male or female. All you can say is, "When will IT get here?"

Traditional English rules say that you should refer to a single person whose sex is not known by the third person male personal pronoun, "he." But you're right, I wish we did have a unisex third person pronoun for such situations. I was thinking maybe "shey" (pronounced "shay," just like "they") for nominative case, "shem" for objective case, "sher" for genitive, and just "sheys," "shems," and "shers" for the plurals.

[Edit]I just realized that there is a problem, because the genetive pronoun (as opposed to attributive) would be "shers," so I guess the plural would have to be something else. Hmm...


Brooker said:
There is no second person plural. If you're talking to a group of people, you have to use "you" (which is really only for one person) or "ya'll" (which is bad English).

I wouldn't say that it's bad English, but it certainly isn't formal. By the way, I prefer to write it as "y'all," because it shows its etymology better (from "you all").

Brooker said:
Got any others?

The only other one that I could think of right now would be ki.
 
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Yeah, it is a bit weird. You have a mixed gender group or all female group and you use "hey guys."

When I have to mention a person with an unspecified gender, I usually use the purpose of the person to describe them.
"When will our new co-worker start?"
 
I think that is one reason that Japanese is so emotional and specific. And because of these reasons it makes it a beautiful language to learn and know. The more you learn then the more you tend to appreciate the Japanese (as a language, people, and culture) too.
 
Buddha Smoker brings up a good point. I just thought of a word that isn't a word in itself, but it can't really be translated effectively into English because of its function: shimau the auxiliary verb. It just sounds strange in English to say something like "I regrettably ate all of the ice cream," or something to that effect. Also, oku doesn't really have a good English counterpart.

Oh, what about the imported words, like sushi?
 
It seems that Japanese is usually much more general than English. For this reason many Japanese companies write their legal documents in English (even when no non-Japanese companies are involved) because in a legal content English specifies things much more and leaves less room for various interpretations.
 
That's interesting, because really I don't think that Japanese is all that ambiguous. Rather, it is the Japanese people who tend to be ambiguous.

From the page to which I linked: ...決して日本語が曖昧を好むからではない。曖昧な日本語があるとすれば、それは曖昧な人の話す日本語である。

"...is never because Japanese likes ambiguity. If there is ambiguous Japanese, it is because it is the Japanese spoken by an ambiguous person."
 
I usually think in English,especially when talking to a non-Chinese person
because if I think in Chinese,and then try to find some words that have same or similiar meanings in English,sometimes I can't find the words because there are no such words in English.
 
Dream Time, can you also read Chinese, or do you just speak it?

By the way, there are words lacking in Japanese, as well as Chinese, Bengali, etc. It all depends on the focus of the people who speak the language as to what concepts they will have words for. Apparentely English speakers never considered the concept of ki, so we have no word for it. On the same note, the Japanese have no word for intriguing, so they seem to have not focused on that concept. I guess for them, omoshiroi is enough. ☝
 
What's ki? .....................................................
 
Are you serious? This is the ki to which I was referring, and as you can see, there is no English equivalent.
 
Still lost. You mean the Hiragana character for ki?

Could you describe its meaning? Then I might know what you're talking about.
 
I posted a link. Click on it. It will lead you to the definition in the EXCEED wa-ei jiten. I guess ki is just too short of a word. I guess it is kind of hard to see that it is a link. Maybe I should have been clearer.
 
I saw the link and hmmmmm..... :? that didn't clarify anything. Keep in mind my reading level is pretty low. I did see that there was no English translation for ki, but I still have no idea what it means. Oh, well.
 
Oh, sorry. I thought that you could read Japanese at a fairly high level. Anyway, there is no translation given there for the actual word, just a bunch of set phrases that use it. Also, the meaning of it changes from one set phrase to another, so there really is no one word in English that captures the meaning of it, but it is generally understood as "spirit" or "energy." It is the same thing as qi4 in Chinese (Mandarin), or, for Golgo's sake (if he happens to see this), chi (note, however, that this is not the correct pinyin romanization for the word).
 
I think of it as spirit also. But it doesn't seem Japanese just uses ki alone that much, so maybe it might not necessary to have a separate word for it, but just to know the general thing it refers to.
気を付ける
気がある
for example. where 気 is a separate "kanji" (as opposed to 元気).
 
Yeah, but it refers to different things depending on what's around it, is my point. For example, ki o tsukeru, "to be careful" and ki ni suru, "to worry." Also, there is a difference between ~ki ni naru (to set one's mind on) and ki ni naru (to worry). That's not talking about when it is merely a morpheme, like in kibun or fun'iki.
 
Glenn said:
Dream Time, can you also read Chinese, or do you just speak it?

By the way, there are words lacking in Japanese, as well as Chinese, Bengali, etc. It all depends on the focus of the people who speak the language as to what concepts they will have words for. Apparentely English speakers never considered the concept of ki, so we have no word for it. On the same note, the Japanese have no word for intriguing, so they seem to have not focused on that concept. I guess for them, omoshiroi is enough. ☝

I can speak and read Chinese

when I look at the lyrics of Chinese and English songs
I sort of feel that the Chinese lyrics have deeper meanings [not the idol pop songs],they are like poems,especially when comparing to nowadays English songs,
it might have to do with the lyricists' abilities,I don't know
but in the nowadays English songs,some words always appear in the songs,such as 'I love you','baby','my heart'...etc
I think the older English songs have better lyrics,such as 'The Rose' 👍
 
It is certainly true that American pop is mostly focused on love, sex, and, well, I guess that's about it (maybe drugs, too). I suppose that's all well and good, but it would be nice to hear about something else for once and a while. I guess most people don't care about that, though. As for the older songs, maybe it just seems that way because only the good ones have survived. :D
 
Brooker said:
Aaaaah, so desu ka? I've heard of the Chinese "chi".

you know the anime/comic named DragonBall?
one of the explanations of 'ki' in Japanese and 'chi' in Chinese has stuffs to do with martial arts

it means internal energy
the DragonBall guys use it to fly,attack and shoot energy blasts
 
That works for that sense of it, but then there is 気が変わる (ki ga kawaru), "to change one's mind." Of course, this begs the question as to whether the Japanese and the Chinese think about it differently. And let's not forget one of the best in the list, 気が気でない (ki ga ki de nai), "to be very uneasy about..." Of course, literally, it's more like "energy isn't energy." See what I mean about it not having an English equivalent?
 
Ki in the budo (martial arts) sense means to be your spirit, your energy, your lifeforce. Which is of course air :D
Ki in the sense of those phrases is more like your attitude.

Some of the words you've brought up are interesting, but im sure the opposite is true. Paranoid has no good word in japanese. Neither does fortnight. tabehodai is close to buffet, nomihodai is kinda like 'open bar'.

A gender inspecific 3rd person word would be they. "What time will they be arriving?" "Do they know how to do ....." "Are they qualified?" But I know what you mean, japanese has alot of pronouns 👍
 
Brooker said:
It seems that Japanese is usually much more general than English. For this reason many Japanese companies write their legal documents in English (even when no non-Japanese companies are involved) because in a legal content English specifies things much more and leaves less room for various interpretations.

Wow! I'm kind of surprized to hear you say that (no arguement, it's nice to hear different opinions of course and everybody deserves it). Anyway, I have to disagree because with Japanese you can be more specific in details (especially with only Japanese companies). Also, the aim in English depends on who they are dealing with (especially if the aim or business is with a foreign company) and because English has become accepted as a universal language (nothing to do with specifics or context of the language).

Well, I'm looking forward to your reply.
 
Ewok85 said:
Ki in the budo (martial arts) sense means to be your spirit, your energy, your lifeforce. Which is of course air :D
Ki in the sense of those phrases is more like your attitude.

Like I said before, there's no word for it in English.
Ewok85 said:
A gender inspecific 3rd person word would be they. "What time will they be arriving?" "Do they know how to do ....." "Are they qualified?" But I know what you mean, japanese has alot of pronouns 👍

The only problem there is that without context you have no idea whether you're talking about one person of unspecified sex or a group of people. Also, it just sounds strange to me to hear "I saw my doctor today." "What did they say?" I realize that "they" has become the pronoun of choice for people whose sex is unknown, but I think that we should have new ones.

On a tangent, it annoys me when people say "there's five dogs in the cage," and the like. It's gotten so bad that people now say it without the contraction: "there is five dogs in the cage." You'll even hear educated people say this. What happened to subject-verb agreement? I want it back. :auch:
 
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