I’ve noticed a few things about the Japanese words I’ve learnt.
1. The word is used differently than in English. E.g having a wider or narrower application.
2. The meaning of the word is a bit different than the translation given. ie Envy is different from jealousy but they’re synonyms and the translations I see just list one of these words or a bunch or synonymous words.
I’ve noticed these things during my italki lessons when I try to apply a word that I’ve learnt. My teacher sometimes says “we don’t use that word for living things etc. Or we use this word in this case and another word with a similar meaning in another case.
I’ve also noticed while watching anime with a popup dictionary that the way they say some things is a bit weird compared to English. For example they’ll say “good” in the past tense, in response to someone they know being okay. But you realize it’s more along the lines of I’m glad, or I’m relieved. Then there are connotations… of words which I dont see taught anywhere and will probably be difficult to pick up for a foreigner.
Is there any way to get a more precise understanding of the word without seeing it used a million times in different contexts, or being told by someone fluent that you’re not using it properly?
2 comments
I dont think this exists, English and Japanese aren’t related at all, every word has a spectrum of meaning developed through hundreds/thousands of years of usage and changes. Your best option is probably monolingual definitions, even then you often still need to see it used in different contexts
Unfortunately, no. Not that I’ve heard of.
From a linguistics standpoint, Japanese developed from a different, unrelated language family compared to English. Basically what that means is that there’s never going to be a simple word-to-word translation that applies every time compared to English with something that’s in the same language family, for example, German: where “vergessen” corresponds to the English “forget”.
You may use Japanese-to-English dictionaries (I like jisho.org) and flashcards to help you learn the most likely meanings, but otherwise, only seeing the words used in context will help you know which meanings corresponds to what is being said.
Once you get to a high enough level (which, imho, is being able to know what common kanji mean), you’ll be able to google around for certain words or phrases that definitely aren’t used in textbooks (an example I encountered recently is “メンヘラ[製造機](#fg “せいぞうき”)”, which literally means “mental health manufacturing equipment”, but is used to describe a person, usually a man, who is so twisted they end up causing mental health problems in their partner).
Nobody said it was easy…