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Dec. 1st, 2004 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI'm following with interest No-sword's foray into the wonderful world of Japanese 四字熟語 (pronounced yo-ji-juku-go, means four-character idiom). I first learned about these from the useful and always entertaining columns over at www.kanjiclinic.com, but had sort of forgotten about them as time went by.
Turns out, according to languagehat, that these are also a feature of Chinese. Who knew? And there was a bit of cultural clue that totally passed me by in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... the damn title is one of those four-character idioms. I think my life needs more footnotes so that I don't miss out on this sort of interesting information.
I wanted to give all ya'll some samples of four-character idioms and I didn't want to use the ones carefully explained and set forth with helpful, easy-to-read English commentary from the sources above because you can go read them on your own time, so here's a big honking list of 四字熟語 (site in Japanese, explanations of compounds in Japanese, contains no English anywhere).
Some of them, like 七転八起 (fall seven times, get up eight), are pretty clear. One should grasp the general idea there pretty quickly. It'd make a good sentiment for a Motivational Poster for your workplace, if you wanted to encourage your cow orkers to flay you alive. Others, like 悪事千里, didn't strike me as all that informative. Literally, I got "evil deed, long way". What am I supposed to take from that? Fortunately, each entry in the above-linked resource for 四字熟語 has a line of explanation underneath the compound and its pronunciation. For 悪事千里, the explanation is 悪いことはどんなに隠してもたちまち評判になり、世間に知れ渡ってしまうということ。 My best-guess reading of the explanation is It is said that when someone tries to hide an evil deed, knowledge of his actions spreads throughout the world, instantly. -- so, evil deed, long way.
I don't think everything idiomatic or proverbish in Japanese is a four-character compound. They also appear to have regular proverbs or sayings, like 白猫であれ、黒猫であれ、ネズミを取るのが猫が良い猫だ。 (White cat, black cat -- any cat that catches mice is a good cat.) Here, you can match up some English proverbs with the corresponding Japanese versions of them. It's got answers, in case you suck at it as badly as I do.
Turns out, according to languagehat, that these are also a feature of Chinese. Who knew? And there was a bit of cultural clue that totally passed me by in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... the damn title is one of those four-character idioms. I think my life needs more footnotes so that I don't miss out on this sort of interesting information.
I wanted to give all ya'll some samples of four-character idioms and I didn't want to use the ones carefully explained and set forth with helpful, easy-to-read English commentary from the sources above because you can go read them on your own time, so here's a big honking list of 四字熟語 (site in Japanese, explanations of compounds in Japanese, contains no English anywhere).
Some of them, like 七転八起 (fall seven times, get up eight), are pretty clear. One should grasp the general idea there pretty quickly. It'd make a good sentiment for a Motivational Poster for your workplace, if you wanted to encourage your cow orkers to flay you alive. Others, like 悪事千里, didn't strike me as all that informative. Literally, I got "evil deed, long way". What am I supposed to take from that? Fortunately, each entry in the above-linked resource for 四字熟語 has a line of explanation underneath the compound and its pronunciation. For 悪事千里, the explanation is 悪いことはどんなに隠してもたちまち評判になり、世間に知れ渡ってしまうということ。 My best-guess reading of the explanation is It is said that when someone tries to hide an evil deed, knowledge of his actions spreads throughout the world, instantly. -- so, evil deed, long way.
I don't think everything idiomatic or proverbish in Japanese is a four-character compound. They also appear to have regular proverbs or sayings, like 白猫であれ、黒猫であれ、ネズミを取るのが猫が良い猫だ。 (White cat, black cat -- any cat that catches mice is a good cat.) Here, you can match up some English proverbs with the corresponding Japanese versions of them. It's got answers, in case you suck at it as badly as I do.
