JapanesePod101.com Blog

English speakers say “Silence is golden,” but we don’t mean it. After all, would chat rooms have become so popular if we didn’t feel the constant need to voice our opinions?

For What’s Golden in Japanese …

I imagine that our cultural attachment to the idea of silence has Puritan roots. But silence also serves the most un-Puritan of motives. For instance, lawbreakers are notorious for saying “No comment.”

Of course, silence doesn’t always indicate evasiveness. The following expressions give a sense of the possibilities inherent in silence:

言い落とす (iiotosu: to leave unsaid, neglect to mention)
     to say + to fail (to do something)

With 言い落とす, the omission of words is accidental. Someone forgets to say whatever needs saying. Originally, 落とす meant “to drop,” so it’s as if a person has dropped words. The situation is somewhat like a cell phone call that’s breaking up, only 言い落とす happens out of absentmindedness.

言い残す (iinokosu: to leave unsaid)     to say + to remain

With 言い残す, the omission of words can be either intentional or accidental.

A Sample Sentence with 言い残す …

言い難い (iigatai: difficult to say, inexpressible)     to say + difficult

On the Yomi of 難 …

言い渋る (iishiburu: to hesitate to say)     to say + to hesitate

I “hesitated” with this breakdown, because 渋 has such disparate meanings, including “sour” (e.g., unripe fruit), “subdued,” “reluctant,” “to hesitate,” and “to have diarrhea”! Interestingly, when English speakers refer to “diarrhea of the mouth,” they mean quite the opposite of “hesitate to say.”

For More on the Meaning of 渋 …

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Mina-san,

Recently we started tagging lessons with Album Artwork that is viewable in iTunes, your iPod, Windows Media Player or any media player that supports Album Artwork. If you’ve already downloaded previous lessons, the artwork probably won’t update automatically without a new download.

If you’d like to apply the artwork manually, it’s really easy to do in iTunes!

1) Download the artwork to your desktop.
http://www.japanesepod101.com/images/itunes_logo.jpg

2) In your “Podcasts” directory, press CTRL-A (on Mac press ⌘-A) to select ALL.

3) Right click and select “Get Info” (on Mac press ⌘-I).

4) Drag the album artwork from the desktop into the Album Artwork Box.

5) Click OK.

Depending on your computer’s speed, it may take a few minutes to update all the lessons.

Marky

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing a Japanese architect (in English!) for an article about architecture. Again and again, he returned to a core fact of Japanese existence: nonverbal communication. He noted that, being Japanese, he conveys thoughts and feelings without words, a habit that ultimately caused an impasse in his marriage to a chatty American.

He nevertheless spoke to me for hours about his inner life. Out came a waterfall of words about insecurities and humiliations, wartime suffering, learning disabilities, divorces, tragic deaths, anger at a parent, and much more, all of it deeply moving. Unless I missed something, he didn’t employ nuance or indirection. He said quite clearly whatever what was on his mind. It makes sense that he has learned to do this after living in California for a half century. It also makes sense that he became chatty during an interview. But … he was so good at expressing his feelings! Could this have been the first time?

When I asked whether he thinks he still communicates nonverbally, he responded that because Japanese culture shaped him indelibly in his early years, he remains very much a nonverbal communicator. It’s a habit he can’t break. And he said I would know this if I ever lived with him (a possibility that we did not explore further!).

I did see his nonverbal side when I asked about his architecture. “It’s very difficult to verbalize and communicate,” he said. I’ve heard other architects be similarly reticent about their work; one told me that he designs precisely because he can’t put his creative impulses into words. So I asked the Japanese architect whether that’s what he meant. No, he said, referring once again to his ingrained habit of nonverbal communication.

The more he spoke, the more confused I felt about that concept.

Sweet Talk, Muddy Words, and the Naked Truth

Last week we began talking about 言葉 (kotoba: word, speech, language). If we look at expressions containing 言葉, maybe we’ll gain a better sense of how the Japanese view the art of conversation (or nonconversation, as the case may be). But first, let’s examine what English speakers say about the topic:

• Actions speak louder than words.
• A picture is worth a thousand words.
• An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

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Today we’re going to start with a quiz.

• What is fragment + writing?
• What is word + fragment?

While considering this conundrum, you can read quotations about fragments. I’m hoping these quotes will block the answers from view as you ponder the issue ….

Need a hint? OK, here you go:

• Fragment + writing: 葉書
• Word + fragment: 言葉

Does that clear things up, or not yet? Well, here’s an extremely big hint:

• Fragment + writing: 葉書. The yomi is hagaki.
• Word + fragment: 言葉. The yomi is kotoba.

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こんにちは、皆様。ジェイソンです。 Hi, everybody! Jason here to tell you about some enhancements we’ve recently made to JapanesePod101.com.

Due to spam attacks on the forums, we’ve implemented a couple of security features to help prevent future attacks. One is that new users who have less than 10 posts will be required to enter a randomly generated security code when making a post to confirm that they are in fact human and not a spambot. The other is that new users will not be allowed to post images until they have both made at least 10 imageless posts and have been registered for at least a week. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to new forum posters, but we hope you will bear with us as we try to protect ourselves and our members from spam. These changes will not affect established forum posters.

In addition to the forum security enhancements, the word dictionary in the Learning Center has also received some upgrades. You now have 4 search options: Contains (match your search query anywhere), Is (match your search query exactly), Starts with, and Ends with. The dictionary will also now match class 3 verbs (verbs that are made of a noun+する) whether or not you include する in your search query. You can see both of these new features in action in the screenshot below.

Thank you all for your continuing feedback and support! Without it we simply could not do what we do. We hope you’ll like these new features and those that will come. 今後とも、よろしくお願いします！

In the last blog, we saw how poetic leaf-related words can be. But don’t let these words lull you into thinking that Japanese is always abstract and dreamy! Far from it. Many leaf-related words have astounding and even crazy degrees of specificity.

For instance, we already saw two words about fallen leaves in the last blog. Here’s yet another term in that vein, this one emphasizing that the fallen leaves have become wet:

濡れ落葉 (nureochiba: wet fallen leaves)
     to get wet + to fall + leaf

With the water radical making a double appearance in the compound, these leaves certainly look wet! The appears inside 落 because 洛 originally meant “falling water,” according to Kenneth Henshall. But meanings change, and nowadays 濡れ落葉 refers figuratively to middle-aged men, particularly those who have retired. They lie around, posing a nuisance to their wives, who find them as difficult to sweep away as wet leaves in the streets.

For Other Highly Specific Leaf Words …

Photo credit: Treve Johnson

Flavorful Foliage

On the subject of craziness with leaves, check out this concept:

朴葉味噌 (hōbamiso: magnolia leaves grilled with miso and onions)     magnolia + leaf + flavor + boisterous

It’s easy to conclude from this that people actually eat magnolia leaves, possibly relishing their “boisterous” flavor! But I’ve found that the magnolia leaves mainly serve as a base for food grilled on top. Still, they do impart some of their flavor to that food. Hmm … doesn’t sound too tempting!

For More Magnolia Dishes …

I’ll shift over to a leaf that seems more appetizing:

葉茶 (hacha: tea leaf)     leaf + tea

I love the repetition of the grass radical at the top and the trees（木) at the bottom. Well, the second kanji doesn’t quite include a tree, but you know what I mean. It does contain a lovely set of sloping lines, almost like the cascading roofs of a pagoda. Such soothing symmetry lies in 茶!

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