Dazzled By Japanese #1 - Nuances
A language of nuances and implied meanings
I’ve never been a great communicator.
I’ve always tried too much to say the exact right thing, making me end up saying, well, nothing. After all, I could hurt my interlocutor’s feelings or, worse, get myself misunderstood. And I tend to believe it’s better not to be understood than to be misunderstood. A stupid mindset but one that’s stuck with me my entire life.1
My friend and writer
recently said during one of our regular calls the following:Words mean nothing but words mean everything.
That felt so true I was at a loss for words.
But why does this matter? Well, Japanese happened to be a language where words matter a lot. And their absence does just as much.
Me, myself, and I
One of the early realizations of most Japanese learners is the use of the personal pronoun “I.”
There are countless ways to express the concept of oneself. From the well-known watashi 私, boku 僕, ore 俺, atashi あたし to the slightly lesser-known ones like uchi うち or jibun 自分. And what I love about them is what they each imply.
While in French or English, the word I is simply what it is, in Japanese, a man saying atashi would raise eyebrows because that’s usually used by women. Similarly, using ore in a business setting would likely surprise the interlocutors because that’s quite casual and often over-masculine.
I knew of these differences long before I set foot in Japan for the first time in 2012. Back then, as an intermediate speaker with little experience speaking the language, I just stuck to the standard watashi. It was just easier.
One day a friend told me it was funny how my Japanese sounded quite feminine. I switched to ore and got stuck on using it in informal settings. Since then, I’ve tried to switch to the less “tough-sounding” boku but it never truly stuck.
But these aren’t the only ways to express this pronoun.
Another option some (mostly women apparently) choose is to use one’s own name, as in Chiharu ha kyou chotto tsukareteru 千春は今日ちょっと疲れてるwhich literally translates to Chiharu is a bit tired today but can mean I am a bit tired today if said by Chiharu herself.
You could also said jibun, which means “myself” as yet another way to say I. Or you could use uchi if you’re a woman in Kansai. Or washi わし if you’re an older man. In some rural dialects, ora おら might be used instead though.
There’s a lot more, especially if you want to look into the older words like sessha 拙者, mi 身, chin 朕, soregashi 某, etc, but you get what I mean.
The simple fact of using a certain pronoun impacts what you mean in Japanese: how formal you are, what your relationship to the person is, how humble or proud you are, etc.
Using the “correct” pronoun for the right situation matters and I love how clear it is.
Not everything’s gotta be clear.
In my first job in Japan, I helped French companies find importers in Japan to export their products. I joined many meetings and was always amazed at how many misunderstandings arose.
French people are very straightforward. Too much sometimes even. If they mean no, they say no.
Japanese people avoid saying no. Instead, they’ll go with things like:
Sore ha chotto… それはちょっと。。。(“That’s a little…”)
Muzukashii kamoshiremasenga… 難しいかもしれませんが。。(It might be difficult…)
Kangaete okimasu 考えておきます。／ Mou sukoshi kangaesasete kudasai もう少し考えさせてください。 (I’ll think about it. / Let me think about it a bit.)
Anybody speaking Japanese would understand these mean no (although the last one could still be a “maybe” depending on the context) but my French clients often heard those as a “maybe, why not?” and tried harder to convince them even when the conversation was already closed.
It’s common in Japanese to avoid hurting the other person’s feelings by saying potentially hurtful things in a mild manner.
And so we come back to what I said at the beginning.
Japanese has a lot of subtext.
What is said is not anywhere close to what is meant.
You don’t just have to take into account the interlocutor’s personality, your choice of words, the way you move, and the intonation all leave clues to get the full meaning—to me, even more than in any other language, although Korean is a close second.
Japanese sometimes requires overly long sentences like こちらの案件につきましては、詳細を確認させていただきました上で、改めてご連絡させていただきますので、少々お待ちいただけますでしょうか。 that could get translated into “I’ll get back to you” in English.2
But it also can end up being shorter if context allows it: 行く予定です literally translates to “there’s a plan to go” but that’s because another way to say I in Japanese is to skip it. This sentence could therefore mean “I’m planning to go there” because, if we’ve also been talking about a specific place, I don’t need to mention it again.
Just as an experiment, I checked the uses of I above in this piece.
There are about 20 uses (not counting the ones where it’s not used as a subject or the ones in examples). A whopping 17 could have been implied had I written this piece in Japanese!
And all this is without mentioning a very common type of ending: ~nakereba ～なければ. This verb ending originally means “if [Verb in the negative]” as in “If I don’t go” (行かなければ) but it’s often used as a contraction of ~nakereba narimasen ～なければなりません which indicates an obligation. For example, in the proper context, 行かなければ could mean “I have to go.”
Context is everything, even in the absence of words.
Writing brings force
Most (all?) words have a certain history behind them. Where they appeared for the first time, how their meanings evolved, how their writing or intonation changed all fascinate me.
They also help a lot in understanding a new word you’re discovering.
European languages like French or English often make it hard to figure them out. Japanese makes it easy once you start understanding Kanji, the Chinese characters.
Kanji was my first love-hate relationship. I fell in love with the sound of Japanese when I was 14 but it was the discovery of Kanji that made me want to dig deeper.
Each Kanji holds (at least) one meaning and the radicals that build them hold their own meanings. Combining two or more Kanji then brings yet a new meaning.
Each word carries weight.
Nihon 日本 means “Japan” and nobody sees it thinking of its characters’ meanings but if you know them, you can understand it’s the combination of “sun” and “origin” and therefore means “[the land of] the rising sun.”
But then you also get other beautiful words like komorebi 木漏れ日, which literally translates as the “sun leaking through the tree” and represents just that. It’s a simple word combined to others to create a new and beautiful meaning.
Similarly, my favorite seasonal word in Haiku is iwashimizu 石清水. It represents the water trickling on rocks and is a combination of “stone” and “clear water.” How mesmerizing is this word picture?
Kanji are the bane of every Japanese learner but they’re also a beautiful tool I reckon most high-level speakers adore.
It’s served me countless times while reading books or news articles that used words I didn’t know but could guess from the context and their Kanji.
Final thoughts
Japanese is the language I love most for one simple reason. It’s the language I can recognize myself in the most.
It’s strict in its rules yet flexible. It’s very direct in some aspects but kind enough to avoid hurting the interlocutor’s feelings with strong wording.
Sure, I sometimes wish Japanese was more direct. A straight “no” can make things easier. But despite the frustrations it’s caused me, it’s this kindness that stands out to me most.
And that’s why I love it.
Or as I’d say in Japanese: dakara-koso suki da. だからこそ好きだ。
See? No trace of an I.
It’s also why I often don’t answer messages quickly because I want to make time to respond and instead end up forgetting I had a message to reply to.
The literal translation would be something like “Regarding this request, please allow me to first verify the details before allowing myself to get back to you so could you please wait for a little while?”