Like why 低い枕 for thin pillows? Why are rooms usually 広い or 狭い instead of 大きい and 小さい? Why are noses 高い rather than big or long, (or even thick if it’s referring to the bridge)？ And I get the difference between 太い and 厚い on an intellectual level but I second guess myself all the time. Soup can be 薄い but if you want to compare it to stew, which is thicker, I’m not sure which word to use (wouldn’t 濃い be the flavor?).
Why are Tokyo and Hokkaido ‘east Japan’ while the more southern Kansai and Kyushu ‘west japan’? Everything’s backwards! (This last one’s a joke)
A little unrelated, but I’ve also realized that 暑い / 熱い is almost never a good thing in Japanese but in English we have expressions like ‘hot coffee’ and ‘nice hot beach days’. Perhaps there are more insights like that that I’m missing.
I’ve just been copying how I’ve noticed native speakers saying things but when I want to produce a sentence with a novel subject I’m often second guessing myself. I feel like there’s some underlying logic to these words I’m missing (perhaps 大きい usually refers to whole objects as seen from the exterior rather than interior empty spaces?).
I expect the answers to be It Just Is™ , but maybe there’s some insight I’m missing. Share your tips, insights and struggles!
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It might help to step back and consider that a Japanese speaking person might say exactly the same thing when learning English, but in reverse. 🙂
These are all really excellent examples of why we can’t just “find and replace” word for word when trying to say something in a Japanese. There’s really no other recipe than to gradually learn and internalize these ways of thinking about (and therefore expressing) the world. It’s all part of the fun!
Learning cultural differences goes hand-in-hans with the language. The big surprise for me was and still is “have a nice day”. So easy to say in Japanese, and to my English mind, translates with simple understanding, but it is culturally not easily translated. They will understand but look at you funny. Actually お元気ですか、is similar. They do not use that term in the same context as we do. They understand our meaning if we say it to them, but amongst themselves it is not casually used as often as an American would say, “how are you” to just about anyone. I find the cultural nuances of the language fascinating. And it has broadened my horizons to thinking outside the box.
Legs can long, but not tall.
A man can be tall, but not long.
A hand can be big, but not long.
A hot day is 80degF. Hot soup is 180degF.
A commute can be big or long to indicate time.
The rules are all made up and just are what they are. Don’t seek meaning in language. Everything is made up!
I love it when native English-speaking Westerners discover that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily think or speak like them.
Not all languages are American English.
i don’t understand why’re you upset.
I think the solution to your issue would be to use the next level of vocab.
Using your example, a room is big, “big” is a very basic description that does not have depth. However, change it to a room is “spacious”, now it has a basic description and depth.
This may not solve every similar questions however it explains all of your examples for me.
Btw, Japanese are pretty critical of themselves when they use words that are too basic. You can often spot apologies on youtube videos when they keep spamming すごいい.
Lol @ the passive aggressive/slightly racists comments. The funny thing is it’s obvious your post is about your curiosity towards the language but they see it as you’re insulting the language or something. How can they criticize your understanding of Japanese if they can’t even understand the obvious light tone of your post which is in plain simple English lol
Don’t think too much about it, back in the day when I was learning english it didn’t make any sense at all in my mind, I had to accept that the way they communicate was different. Don’t try to make sense of everything, when you get more familiar with the language you will naturally grow used to its quirks.
the issue is that there are no cognates between english and japanese, they’re too different from each other. you have to learn a lot of things without making parallel assumptions about usability, and it’s just the way it is. there will be literally thousands more of these things, there’s no list because it’s the entire language. i don’t mean for that to be discouraging, it’s just that you need to be aware to always be suspicious of reusing a word for a new purpose just because what you think is the equivalent word in english also can be used for that other purpose. in fact, many parts of speech don’t even line up – there’s no adjective for hungry or thirsty, they’re verb phrases in japanese. there’s no single word for necessarily, the concept is conveyed using a different sentence structure (わけじゃない). just keep an eye out and stay curious and keep studying!
I’m sorry about the other comments lol, it seems like everyone is trying to take the most bad faith interpretation possible.
I’m also very interested in this sort of thing, the true meaning behind words that are more-or-less equivalent to English words but not actually 1-to-1 correspondents and so on.
I am really no more knowledgeable about this than you, but I will offer some thoughts I have on your questions:
1. I think the reason for the 大きい・広い etc. distinction is that 大きい is significantly broader in scope. Japanese seems to have a lot of cases where a word with a broader definition doesn’t sound right where a word with a narrower definition would apply (unlike in English, where there is a tendency to describe things with the broadest word available unless specifically calling attention to a given quality of the thing in question). In a piece of homework I did at university once, my teacher explained to me the difference in nuance between 大きい図書館 and 広い図書館 – 広い in this sense strictly describes the size of the building, whereas 大きい also implies the library is big in other ways, such as having a large amount of books, etc.. So basically in this case I think 大きい・小さい would be avoided to describe the size of a room because it is likely to be inferred that you’re referring to some other property of the room besides its physical space.
2. It is very likely that I’m the one mistaken here, but I was under the impression that having a 高い nose is not the same as having an 大きい nose – as far as I am aware it’s the same distinction as in English. In English we might say ‘high-set’ rather than just ‘high’ though.
3. I know you said it was a joke but the East/West distinction (as opposed to a North/South distinction, which is what you seemed to be suggesting is the more logical distinction) is probably to do with the fact that Japan is an island. Even though it becomes more or less vertical at the top, for the most part it has a north and south coast, so north Japan would be taken to refer to the northern coast (and vice versa). Also pre-modern understandings of geography probably has something to do with it as well. Remember that Hokkaido was not part of Japan for most of the country’s existence. If you cut out Hokkaido, it’s really not that much of Japan that could reasonably be considered ‘north’ rather than ‘east’. Just my hypothesis though.
4. Honestly I have really struggled with words for thickness as well, so that is probably the point I can offer the least insight on, but I think 濃い can be used to refer both to strength/depth of flavour *and* thickness/consistency (when talking about food).