So recently Wanikani has been giving me a lot of new words with 辺. One of the vocab versions was 辺り, which is said “あたり.” Wanikani says it just means “area,” but この辺 means “this area” or “here.”
So while these are starting to stew in my brain, I’ve been getting them mixed up with which one accepts “here” as an answer. And the other day, I came across what sounded like “あたり” in a demo for the upcoming game Balan Wonderworld (which sadly seems to not shaping up to be very good, but that’s beside the point). Anyway, the context was, the character had a few canned lines he said when handing over gems to these little magical creatures that ate them. One of those sounded like “あたり,” and I was like, “Ah!” He must be saying “here,” like we would say in English when we give something to someone. I felt very proud because I’ve not been listening to all that much spoken Japanese, so it’s still unusual to pick something I know out of what someone said. But when 辺り came up in my reviews tonight, it did not accept “here.” I think it really just wants “area.”
So my question is, can 辺り mean “here ya go,” or is it really just limited to meaning a physical location? And do you think I heard the character right, did he really say “あたり,” and if so, what would that likely mean if not “here”?
I always think it’s interesting when we use the same word for two concepts in English that are not particularly related… only to discover that Japanese uses a single kanji for both concepts as well. For example, we might say “way” in English both to mean a direction (which way) or something more abstract like a method of doing something - “way of doing.” There’s no reason for me to believe another language would also group together those concepts. And yet Japanese has 方… that really surprised me when I first learned that one. So now I’m just really curious if “here ya go” and “here where I’m standing” also share a kanji… or if I’m just totally misunderstanding.