Last night I had a strange dream seeing the use of a Japanese word I had never seen before. I was traveling Japan with my dad and we went to a sushi restaurant. I let my dad order in English but it was clear the chef was having trouble understanding what my dad was saying. They both then looked at me, expecting me to help him order in Japanese and so I pointed at the menu and said “これ、一貫ください”. I ordered my own food in Japanese as well, using the 貫 counter verbally before eventually waking up.
I’m still a total beginner to the language and barely conversational, if at all. I have never heard, seen, or used this word before in my life, but after I woke up and checked the dictionary, sure enough [it’s in there, and the definition is correct](https://jisho.org/word/一貫).
Has anyone ever had any strange experiences like this with their dreams, or an explanation to how this happened? I’m absolutely positive this word is not in any of my Anki decks so I’m curious whether I had unknowingly seen it before in the past and internalized its meaning in my subconscious mind.
15 comments
what other explanation is there? a spirit put the word in your brain while you slept?
>I’m curious whether I had unknowingly seen it before in the past and internalized its meaning in my subconscious mind.
I think the most likely scenario is that you saw the counter being used in a similar situation to your dream while you were watching a drama, anime, etc. After all, that exact sentence isn’t uncommon.
Words that I don’t know from Japanese get stuck in my head when I deliberately listen to a lot of Japanese conversation.
The weirdest one was わかりません. I just kept hearing it. “わかりません”, “わかりません”. I didn’t know what I meant. I ended up googling it a few days later and it literally means “I don’t understand”. Which I find hilarious.
I think it could be just a coincidence/your subconscious being creative. It happens quite often to me that come across some word or name in a dream that I’ve never heard about before. Just recently I met a girl who introduced herself as Binna in my dream. And if you google it, you’ll see it’s used as a name. Heck you’ll even find a picture of someone who looks just like her.
Or maybe this is just evidence of something supernatural …
intuition 😀
I get this sort of thing too. The conscious mind is a mere speck compared to the subconscious mind.
Theres a dude that woke up from a coma and suddly became fluent at Chinese, probably the same phenomenon as this
Haha, no way! This also very recently happened to me. I’m a few months into WaniKani and I remember studying bogus new words that absolutely don’t exist, and woke up trying to immediately forget them like corrupted files in my brain
just as a semi related fun fact, while most places nowadays serve 一貫 as 1 piece of sushi, some (traditional) places still serve 一貫 as 2 pieces, the definition of unit “貫” has actually changed many times over the year
in the edo era, a popular way to serve sushi was in the form of 箱ずし (box sushi), it came as a tray weighing 360g cut into 9 pieces, it was named that because 一貫=3.75kg, and a commonly used currency [銭](https://imgc.eximg.jp/i=https%253A%252F%252Fs.eximg.jp%252Fexnews%252Ffeed%252FJapaaan%252FJapaaan_63891_3.jpg) was 3.75g, however for some convenience tax reasons (?) [銭差し](https://makeshop-multi-images.akamaized.net/yamatobunko/itemimages/000000018142_AHCO8FA.jpg) was 96 coins x3.75g = 360g, and 銭差し一貫 was 360×10=3600g, someone went like ya close enough nice coincidence let’s call it 一貫すし; then someone named 華屋与兵衛 (also the creator/popularizer of the modern form of nigiri sushi) realized that people wanted to be able to choose the fish they like, because box sushi usually had only 1 type of fish per box, so he started selling pieces individually, over time 一貫 became 1 piece, each still weighing 40g; however some other places started selling 2 pieces and advertising it as “一貫” such that you get 2 different choices of fish for the price of 1 but each being half the size, on top of that in the edo era, because sushi was [MASSIVE](https://topics-img.tbs.co.jp/files/rcms_conv_webp/files/user/article/konosa/108/1_2_1541063329.webp?v=1585644805), nigiri sushi was basically the size of modern onigiri, so halfing it made it a lot easier to eat; but then some shop started advertising their 一貫鮨 as sushi with fish of the original “一貫” size but with halfed size rice, basically doubling the fish to rice ratio, that caught on and somehow became the current standard
sorry it wasn’t what you were asking, i only wanted to share this because one time i ordered 一貫 and i got 2 and went on a big rabbit hole lol, however there are many other theories as to how the unit 貫 came to be and what it actually means so take it as what you will
I had a similar experience, many years ago and I’ll never forget the word.
​
I had a dream, and talking to someone にんじん was mentioned. I woke up, google’s translate didn’t exist, went to work… And the word was just stuck in my ears.
​
I finally asked a Japanese co-worker “What the heck is ‘にんじん’?”
​
I laughed so hard when I learned it was carrot.
I often have situations like this when I’m awake. I’ll be saying a sentence and come to a word that naturally comes to mind but I’ve never studied it before. It’ll feel right but I don’t actually know so I’ll usually look it up before I say it and it’s correct. I’m sure it’s because I’ve heard the word in conversation in context enough times that I picked it up unknowingly.
I think our brains comprehend language faster than we consciously realize. You probably saw the counter system and it got filed to the back of your mind, only for it to pop back into you dream later. Crazy right?
I know that I’ve “learned” vocabulary and grammar this way. Like it will come out of my mouth unconsciously in a conversation and I’ll just stop and be “oh woah” it’s pretty exciting
I have been watching a lot of older movies that aren’t specifically Japanese but do take place in japan at some point in the movies. I sometimes dream about the words I see in the movies even tho I have no idea what they mean and didn’t even realize my subconscious picked up on them well enough to do that. Although sometimes jumbled. I didn’t even realize they were from the movies until i saw them in the movie again. The mind can be a crazy place. Especially when it dreams.
One time I woke up with “tonikaku” lingering from a dream. Weird. Why is my brain making up Japanese-sounding words?
So I looked it up, just in case it was a real word. And it was! I learned a new word, and apparently rabbits have horns.
Tonikaku, later that day, I continued to binge watch Bleach. Guess what word they use all the time?
The human brain is a complicated and incredible thing. We have enough grey matter for multiple life times. We can learn multiple languages as well. What an amazing thing it is!
I have had the good fortune to learn a few languages. My first language is French. I then learned Spanish to a certain degree from my best buddy,Miguelito and his family, who lived nearby among the almond, cherry and peach orchards that surrounded our family homes in the central valley of California. English was next, when I started school. Then in time I learned Italian and German, and now, as a retired man, after teaching French for 36 years, I am now learning Japanese.
What you describe is common to all language learners who reach a level of language acquisition that causes our brain to process discreet items in sleep. What is happening is simply the subconscious sorting out the puzzle that is the language we are learning.
Dreams are similar. We see, hear and experience many things in a day. At night, the brain sorts through them all to dump what we do not need, and store in longer term memory what we do need to keep.
It’s not magical, but it is wonderful, amazing and causes us to marvel how marvelously we are made. Enjoy the mystery of it all!