Monthly Archives: February 2006

というか、I have to go

Posted on by

A friend of mine from college spoke in the most interesting fashion because she could seamlessly weave Japanese and English together in the same sentence. She would say things like, 「Meは行かないけど、Youは？」, which amused me to no end.

You see, she had attended American School in Japan, a school filled with students completely fluent in both Japanese and English, so I guess there was no problem speaking in a hybrid language that only 1% of the world’s population would understand. I know, it sounds like a great school to send your kids to because they will become bilingual automatically. The only problem is, unless you’re a diplomat or simply rich, spending a little less than $20,000 a year for tuition might be a bit tough on your wallet.

Anyway, to finally get to the point of this whole spiel, my friend and a bunch of us were chatting in the language lab when she suddenly realized that she had to leave. She promptly left the scene after saying (much to my delight) “というか、I have to go.”

Now, what did she mean by 「というか」 and why didn’t she just say, “I have to go” instead? How does adding that extra phrase change the meaning of the sentence? I previously discussed how to use 「と」 and 「いう」 to talk about the very thing itself. In this post, I’ll try to give you an idea of what 「というか」 means and when to use it.

Ok, to finally get to the point

「というか」 attaches the question marker 「か」 to 「という」, so it’s reasonable to assume that a questioning element is being added here. In fact, 「というか」 is used in order to indicate that you want to rephrase or express the same thing in a difference way. Literally, it means “I might say this or something else (in order to express what I’m trying to say) ” This expression is obviously the most useful in actual conversations when you might say something and want to rephrase yourself in mid-sentence. The order goes like this: [the first expression]というか[the same thing rephrased].

それは、良くないというか、やばくない？
– Isn’t that not good, or to rephrase, serious shit? (read about やばい)

As you can probably tell, this phrase is great for when you’re not sure how to phrase something like the following example.

Ａ：みきちゃんは、あんたの彼女でしょう？
– Miki-chan is your girlfriend, right?

Ｂ：う～ん、彼女というか、友達というか、なんというか・・・
– Um, you might say girlfriend, or friend, or something…

That last example was very hard to translate but it should make perfect sense if you understand the fact that he is rephrasing how he defines Miki and adding the question marker 「か」 to show uncertainty.

This phrase is especially useful for people learning how to speak Japanese because I’m sure you’ve experienced plenty of times when you didn’t know the exact word for something in Japanese. With this phrase, you can throw out several alternatives that kind of get at what you’re trying to say.

というか、I have to go

Going back to the original question, why did my friend add 「というか」 when saying just, “I have to go” would have been perfectly fine? I think it’s important to realize that she was in the middle of a conversation at the time. Essentially, she wanted to rephrase what she was talking about in order to correct it into the fact that she had to go. In effect, this is equivalent to saying, “Hey, what am I talking about? I have to go.”

By using 「というか」, you can backtrack and correct things said earlier and at the same time imply, “Hey wait a minute, that’s not it!” This is especially the case when everything has already been said and you are starting a new sentence with 「というか」.

In other words, 「というか」 can also be used to correct yourself or others by rephrasing what has already been said.

Ａ：他の女と付き合っているらしい。
– I hear that [he’s] going out with some other woman.

Ｂ：というか、それは単なる浮気でしょう！
– That’s just another way of saying [he’s] cheating!

This is the second of three posts discussing 「言う」.

The first post discussed “Defining things with 「いう」“.
The third post is about “Various ways to say 「いう」“.

日本語教科書の落とし穴

Posted on by

I briefly mentioned 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」, an interesting book I recently picked up while killing time at a bookstore. I’m very cheap so it’s very rare for me to spend 2,000 yen on a book and actually feel happy about my purchase but this is definitely one of those books.

「日本語教科書の落とし穴」 is very interesting because it describes common pitfalls that occur from teaching textbook Japanese. This book focuses on that delicate area of Japanese where something should be correct, but upon hearing it in real-life, one is left feeling that something just isn’t quite right.

The book explains it like this.

実際の言語運用においては、言語の構造以外にもいろいろなことに気を配らなければなりません。
（省略）
学習者は教室で教えられたとおりに文を作っているのに、その文が実際の発話としては不適切になる場合があるわけです。

これらの不適切性は、初級段階では不可避の面があるとはいえ、決して放置しておいてよいものではないでしょう。文脈や場面から切り離された抽象的な「文」が作れるだけではなく、特定の文脈・場面の中で具体的な「発話」を適切に行い、相手の意図もくみ取ることができて、初めて、その言語が取得できたと言えるはすです。

Each chapter starts with a short conversation between a teacher and student. In each conversation, the student says something that should be correct according to standard textbook material. However, because of either social or contextual subtleties not explained in textbooks, what the student says ends up being incorrect. I’ve already used one of these conversations in the previous post.

Each chapter starts with a conversation like the following.
L：先生、どうぞ座ってください。
T：どうもありがとう。でも、「どうぞお座りになってください」や「お座りください」と言う方が丁寧ですよ。
L：はい、わかりました。
（数日後）
L：先生、どうぞ推薦状を書いて、あ違った、お書きになってください。
T：？？
L：(あれ？丁寧に言ったのにな）先生、どうぞ推薦状をお書きください。
T：こういうときには、「書いていただけませんか」という言い方がいいですよ。
L：はい（う～ん、難しい）。
（数日後）
L：先生、疲れているようですから、どうぞ座っていただけませんか？
T：？？（う～ん、難しい・・・）。

The rest of the chapter provides explanation on where the problem lies and provides suggestions on what the teacher should do to help correct her students. It’s obvious from reading the explanations that the authors has given a great deal of thought on aspects of Japanese that native speakers usually never consciously think about and how it causes confusion for non-native speakers. If you’re interested in finding out where the problem lies in the conversation above, get the book!

Because the entire book is in Japanese and geared toward people teaching Japanese, I highly recommend this book for advanced Japanese speakers interested in teaching Japanese or simply in learning more about the intricacies of the language.

There are a lot of good topics contained in this book and I will be going over some that caught my eye in future posts so stay tuned!

Defining things with 【いう】

Posted on by

The verb, “to say” is an useful word in probably just about any language. However, 「言う」（いう）, the Japanese word meaning “to say”, is practically essential because in addition to the simple action of gabbing, it is also used to define or describe things. In this post, I will go over how to combine the 「と」 quotation particle with 「いう」 to define things.

I remember back during my tender years in Japanese 101, one of the first phrases I learned was 「”XXX”は、日本語で何と言いますか。」, which means “How do you say “XXX” in Japanese?” (I’m not talking about porn here, the “XXX” is a placeholder for any word.) Of course, at the time, it was written more like 「”XXX”は、にほんごで　なんと　いいますか。」 because exposing Japanese 101 students to kanji would instantly render them blind. Anyway, my point is that this is one of the first expressions we dutifully memorized and already it uses grammar that involves the 「と」 quotation and 「いう」.

While the 「という」 combination, of course, can be used to quote things people actually say, it can also be used to describe what something is referred to as.

彼は「はい」と言いました。
– He said, “yes”.

「ライブドア」というサイトは知っている？
– Do you know the site referred to as “livedoor”?

There is no good way to translate this usage directly into English so we have to settle for similar expressions such as “referred to as”, “called”, or “known as”. This method of defining things can be mighty handy when you want to ask about definitions of words in Japanese. For instance, here is conversation from 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」, a book I will be talking about in another post.

L: 田中先生、名字は何ですか。
T: 名字は田中ですよ。
L: ？・・・名字は何ですか？
T: ？？？

The problem here is that the student wants to know what 「名字」 means but ends up asking, “What is [your] last name?” What he really wanted to ask was, 「名字というのは何ですか。」, which means something along the lines of, “What is the thing referred to as 名字?” or more literally, “What is the thing that’s said 名字?”

Basically, this grammar is used anytime you want to talk about the thing itself.

日本人はお酒に弱いというのは本当か？
– Is it true that Japanese people are weak to alcohol?

As you can see in this example, the thing that is being discussed is the actual phrase 「日本人はお酒に弱い」 itself and whether it’s true or not. Here’s another similar example.

朝ご飯を食べないというのは、あまりよくないですよ。
– The thing of not eating breakfast is not very good.

In this fashion, the 「という」 is defining the very action of “not eating breakfast” and describing it.

You can also combine 「こう」、「そう」、and 「ああ」 with 「いう」 to define things in general. In this case, you do not need the 「と」 so you end up with 「こういう」、「そういう」 and 「ああいう」 to means “things like this”, “things like that”, and “things like that (far away)” respectively.

A: 眠くて、学校に行く気が全然なかった。
– I was sleepy and didn’t feel like going to school at all.

B: そういう時、よくあるよね。
– That kind of time occurs a lot, huh?

The reason why you hear 「って」 all the time

If you’ve spend any length of time speaking in casual Japanese, you may have noticed 「って」 being used all the time. That’s because 「って」 is an all-in-one, magical casual abbreviation for 「と」、「という」、「というのは」、and 「とは」. Because 「って」 is so short and flexible, you end up wanting to use it basically anytime you want to talk about the thing itself.

A: マイクが呼んでいるよ 。
– Mike is calling you.

B: マイクって、誰？
– Who is this “Mike”?

A: まだ仕事が決まってないんだ。
– The job has yet to be decided.

B: 就職活動って、大変だよね。
– The “finding job” thing is tough, huh?

Conclusion

As you can see from the examples, using 「という」 and its casual counterpart 「って」 to define things is a vital part of the Japanese language. Sometimes, it’s optional; for times when you want to emphasis that you are talking about the thing itself. Other times, like the 「名字は何ですか」 example, it might be required or else you end up saying completely different. In either case, 「という」 and 「って」 is very useful whenever you want to define and talk about the topic itself.

To see if you truly understand the distinction between using and not using this grammar, try out these neat questions from 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」 .

１．
ちょっとそこの雑誌を取ってくれませんか。
（Ａ：雑誌は／Ｂ：雑誌って）これですか？

２．
あ～、のどが乾いた。（Ａ：冷たいビールが／Ｂ：冷たいビールって）飲みたいな～。

３．
この（Ａ：チョコレート／Ｂ：チョコレートって）、お子さんにあげてください。

Feel free to post your answers in the comments. I’ll be waiting!

This is the first of three posts discussing 「言う」.

The second post is about “Using 「というか」 to rephrase things”“.
The third post is about “Various ways to say 「いう」“.