In Pokemon I keep coming across the expression 効果は今ひとつのようだ whenever “It’s not very effective” would have been shown in the English version.
I think it translates to something like “RIght now, the effect looks like a single thing.” so it seems to be some kind of expression. Does anybody know how to explain the meaning behind this expression and under what circumstances it can be used?
Jisho.org gives this result for 今ひとつ:
今ひとつ - Jisho.org
As for usage, I’ve not seen it before, but if you google the phrase, you might see it in more contexts, which might help.
Yeah, if you think something might be an expression, searching the dictionary for combinations of words and not just individual words can lead you in the right direction.
I’m not confident about explaining the origin of the expression, but it seems that there’s a bunch of similar expressions like 今一（いまいち）、もう一つ、もうちょっと and あと少し being listed by dictionaries in the definitions. I think most of these are meant to be references to what someone might say in a situation where something is lacking, even if what’s already been done is not completely wrong, ineffective or irrelevant. Think of phrases in English like ‘come on now, just one more push!’ I believe that’s the sort of sentiment that’s being conveyed by the Japanese phrase. 「あと少しだよ！」, for instance, is something you might hear in a scene where a team is being encouraged to make a final effort or to walk a little further, because the end is near in sight. (Side note: I’m really sorry that I’m not able to affirm that this is exactly how it might work in real life, because almost all my exposure to conversational Japanese is anime-based. Dramas would probably be a bit more representative of real life, but for now, I’ll just have to assume that what I’ve seen of such phrases in anime isn’t completely false, and that I’m not spouting nonsense as I explain this.)
In any case, I guess a literal translation would be ‘[just] one [more] now’, with the idea of not being very effective being replaced by the idea of an additional effort being needed.
The expressions don’t seem that similar to me.
もう一つ means “one more” where “もう” basically means “more” (if I remember correctly it’s not the same もう that means “already” it has a different pitch accent). It’s not indicating that anything is missing, it just means adding more onto what already is there.
With あと少し it’s similar, where あと means something like “remaining” as in what’s missing to complete something.
I’ve never seen 今 having meanings like that. 今 just refers to the present moment with no additional nuance that I’m aware of.
This is one of those expressions where I have to think for a second to make sure I get the context. いまひとつ or いまいち, usually written in hiragana, or even katakana, in the context of your sentence means “not enough”, or “something is lacking”. Typical phrases would be いまひとつ、わからない or イマイチ理解できない , meaning, “I don’t quite get it” or “I don’t understand it at this moment”
So the translation for 効果は今ひとつのようだ would be “the effect seems to be lacking” or “it does not seem to be effective”
I agree that the expressions are not all that similar in terms of their form and the literal meaning of the words they contain. However, the dictionaries I’ve consulted use them to explain 今一つ, and one of them listed one of the meanings of もう一つ as being appropriate 「もう少しというところで」, which is literally ‘in a situation/at a point where one says “a bit more”’, and less literally ‘a “just a bit more” situation/point’. That was the moment where I realised that at least some of them (at least based on what I’ve seen in anime) are expressions that one can use verbally as a form of encouragement or in order to indicate that additional effort needs to be made. In that sense, they are all similar, because they share a use case i.e. they’re all used in a similar way and in a similar context.
You can see it that way, but strictly speaking, あと (often written 後) simply means ‘after’ or ‘later’ in this case, which is then translated into the idea that ‘after [this point], [just] a bit/little [is necessary/desirable etc]’. もう、あと and いま are all time words, and I strongly believe that all the phrases we’re discussing are simply extensions of their temporal meanings. By the way, the major dictionaries I’ve checked (大辞林 and 大辞泉) list two definitions for 今一つ:
So that idea of incompleteness or something ‘remaining’ is present in 今一つ too. The Wisdom EN-JP Dictionary doesn’t have 今一つ listed separately, and instead refers readers to もう一つ, for which it gives the same definitions.
In 大辞林, both words are listed under one definition, with both pitch accents being listed as acceptable. The meaning for which a specific pitch accent is indicated is ‘more’ or ‘additionally’, and the pitch accent for that is [0], meaning one starts low, goes high, and stays high when connecting to the next word. For the other meanings, no particular pitch accent is indicated, though it’s true that in general, the pitch goes down (accent pattern [1], 頭高（あたまだか）＝’head high’) for the ‘already’ meaning. The point is though… I don’t think the two meanings are meant to be taken separately. 大辞泉, which is the dictionary made available by the Japanese search engine Goo, also lists the two definitions in the same entry, and even includes the word いま as part of the explanation under the ‘more’ definition. It may similarly interest you to know that one way which 大辞泉 explains the ‘already’ meaning is 「現に、ある事態に立ち至っているさま。」= ‘the condition of presently being in a particular state’. もう is not as clearly separated from the present – the ‘now’ – as one might assume. Also, there are more than two definitions listed, with the idea of ‘already’ being used to mean ‘about’ being listed under a separate definition (e.g. ‘it’s about to end’=‘the end is already here’. They’re not strictly equivalent in English, but they’re quite similar, and もう is one way of translating ‘about’ in Japanese.) My point is that the ‘more’ meaning of もう is in fact a result of its use to refer to what’s already true/about to be true in the present moment, which allows it to be used as a basis for comparison in order to indicate that something similar can be added. As 大辞林 says,
③ すでにある基準や状態に達しているのに，さらに加える意を表す。さらに。「―一杯飲もう」「―少し右へ寄って」「―一度やってみよう」
That is,
‘expresses the meaning that even though one has already reached a certain standard or state, one further adds [to it]. Additionally. [examples]’
They’re the same word. The two meanings are connected.
Finally,…
Here’s an example sentence from 大辞泉’s entry on もう: 「今泣いた烏がもう笑った」= ‘the crow that just cried has already laughed’. いま isn’t just confined to the present moment, and can also refer to the time period just around it, including the recent past. In this sentence, もう, strangely enough, refers to a more recent time period than 今, which is usually ‘now’. That’s an example of an additional nuance.
Simply put, everything I’ve just quoted from the dictionaries quite clearly shows that the line between もう and 今 is far from clear. The two words are used differently in general, but there are overlaps in the ways they are used and the time periods that they can be used to refer to. In any case, the fact that multiple major Japanese dictionaries explain 今一つ and 今一 using もう一つ, もう少し and あと少し should suggest that 今 does in fact have an additional nuance. As I suggested previously, I think the most intuitive way (for an English speaker) to understand this usage is to see phrases like 今一つ as verbal interjections of some sort: ‘[just] one [more] now’. In a sort of broken/expedited English, you might say ‘Now! One!’, and if you imagine a situation in which only one more effort is necessary (e.g. a whack-a-mole arcade game in which you’ve spotted the final mole that your friend needs to hit in order to beat the current high score), you might see why the Japanese expression is appropriate.
However, if you want evidence that 今 has the specific nuance we’re looking at right now, which it should share with もう, and to a lesser extent with あと (because like I said, I think the way one reaches that meaning for あと is through a logical extension of the idea behind ‘after’, whereas both もう and 今 encourage a comparison with the present, established state in order to discuss an ‘addition’), here’s the specific definition from 大辞林:
二（副）すでにある状況や状態にさらに少し付け加えるさま。さらに。もう。「―しばらくお待ち下さい」「―一度確かめる」
That is,
2. (adverb) The condition/state of further adding a little to a situation or state that already exists. Additionally. More. [examples]
Notice in particular that it lists さらに as a synonym, which is also the case for definition of もう in both 大辞林 and 大辞泉. More importantly, notice that もう is listed as a synonym for this particular meaning of 今. That proves that they share this nuance. Finally, note the fact that the language used by 大辞林and 大辞泉 is similar in the two definitions I’ve quoted even though one describes 今 and the other describes もう. Both discuss the idea of ‘further adding’ (さらに…加える) to an ‘already existent’ (既にある) ‘state’ (状態・基準・状況). They’re being used in exactly the same way here. 今 does have this nuance, and as I said, I believe that it’s very literally an expression of the idea that ‘one [more thing] in the present’ might make a difference.
The phrase I have in Japanese in my head is 「今、一つで、…」= ‘now, with one,…’, which isn’t even an example of the expression being used. To me, this is an example of how we might derive the meaning of the expression. If we knew that ‘right now’, using ‘one’ of something, we could accomplish or complete something, wouldn’t that mean that we’re aware that we need to add one more thing to the present state? Wouldn’t that then logically morph into the idea of incompleteness or insufficiency? This is just like how certain expressions in English morph into adjectives or adverbs even though they were originally verbal interjections or catchphrases. Think about sentences like ‘He’s a dime a dozen,’ or ‘It’s time to go all in.’ Consider the word ‘one-upmanship’. ‘A dime a dozen’ clearly isn’t an adjective, but it’s an observation of sorts that turned into an adjectival phrase. Similarly, ‘all in’ is a reference to games like poker, but the idea of staking everything on one thing has spread to other domains of everyday life as well. In British English, one can even speak of an ‘all-in fee’ at, say, a restaurant, in order to say that the fee in question includes everything that needs to be paid for, though this usage probably has nothing to do with gambling. Finally, it’s pretty clear in the last example that the idea of being ‘one [thing/point etc] up’ compared to someone else became a descriptor of sorts that allowed us to form the word ‘one-upmanship’. The same thing probably happened here, and I think this additional sense of 今 is quite a natural extension of what it originally meant based on how it can be used in phrases and various situations.
That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
I just had not come across any other uses of 今 so far, while I had seen many different uses of words like もう and あと, so it seemed to me that it was a simpler word than the others and the expression didn’t really make much sense to me in that context.
About 今泣いた烏がもう笑った, if I hadn’t learned about the nuances from your post, I would have interpreted that as “Now, the bird that cried is already laughing” which does sound kind of strange but I still have a lot to learn.
Hm… to be honest, I was really caught up in the whole question of ‘other meanings of 今 and もう’, so frankly, I could have missed something. I have a feeling both interpretations are possible, but like you said, the version that starts with ‘now’ sounds a little strange at first glance. I kinda jumped to conclusions because there’s no comma after 今, which made me assume that it was in the same ‘block’ as everything before が. However, the more I think about it… the more I think that interpreting 今 as ‘now’ in this context might be more natural, particularly since もう clearly means ‘already’, which uses the present as a reference point. The one thing I’m not sure about is whether or not interpreting 今 as ‘now’ would create problems in terms of tense agreement, since 泣いた and 笑った are both in the past tense, which doesn’t indicate the order in which they happened. However, I’m probably just relying too much on tenses in European languages, since I learnt Japanese using French and drew parallels. Chinese doesn’t have multiple tenses for the past either, and indicates order using circumstantial elements and time markers. In other words, I might be wrong as far as literal translations go.
The rest of what I said should still hold, nonetheless, and in defence of what I gave as a translation… as it turns out, the example sentence I quoted was a 諺（ことわざ）, and quite a few of the explanations involve ‘crying’ as an initial state (as expressed by 「今まで泣いていた…」 or 「泣いていても…」, which is how some of the explanations start), so saying ‘just cried’ or ‘cried just now’ isn’t too much of a stretch. One explanation was somewhat ambiguous, and started with 今泣いていたかと思うと, which is roughly ‘just when you thought, “Was he/she crying?”’ The problem is that I’m not sure if 今 describes 思う or if it describes 泣いていた. I think proximity makes it more likely that 今 describes 泣いていた, but I’m not 100% sure. Again, it seems both interpretations are possible. Either way, what the saying actually refers to… is someone’s mood changing rapidly, especially that of a child, since children can cry one second and start smiling the next (e.g. because someone’s passes them a sweet or a gift).
By the way, it’s 烏 (からす), not 鳥 (とり). 烏 means ‘crow’ or ‘raven’. I made the same mistake initially, because I’m not used to seeing the traditional form of the character. The difference is that 烏 lacks a horizontal stroke in the middle of the ‘head’ of the bird. I’ve seen a theory suggest that the reason that stroke is missing is that the eyes of a crow or raven aren’t very visible because they’re black. I don’t know if that’s the actual reason, but I agree that that stroke looks like an eye. In simplified Chinese, we have the same parallel: 乌 is the equivalent of 烏 (crow), while 鸟 is the equivalent of 鳥 (bird), and that dot definitely looks like an eye if you ask me.
Whatever it is, I’m glad to have been of service, and I’ll just leave you with one final example which is very simple, but in which 今 most certainly can’t refer to the present moment alone: 今起きた=‘I just woke up’. You can’t literally wake up in the moment that you say that, so it has to refer to the immediate past that leads up to the point at which you say that. So 今 is slightly more ambiguous than what we tend to learn about it as beginners, even when it’s being used to mean something like ‘now’.
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