(The increasingly less) Daily senryu thread

Japanese Language Reading
1289

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Previous senryu

  1. 俺だって 診断結果は チョイ悪だ
    おれだって・しんだんけっかは ・ちょいわるだ
    My health check: / as always, just a / tad bit bad

Notes:

  • チョイ means “just a tad”, “a bit”. Why katakana? I think I’d like @LaVieQ’s teacher: “なぜなら、日本語は日本語ですから”

  • だって is a bit trickier.

    @pm215 is right, it’s this definition: 特別のように見えても他と同様であって例外でない、という意を表す. Something that looks special but isn’t actually anything exceptional. The sense of "even … " comes close.

    Grammatically, it’s a 助詞(じょし) (particle) that introduces a topic like も or は. (Note to self for my diagramming rules!)

    Examples:

    -「子供に だって できる」'[It looks difficult, but] even a kid can do it"

    -「一日 だって 休まない」'[One day sounds great, but] it’s hardly a break" (talking about getting receiving a one-day holiday)

    • 「君も困るだろうが、ぼく だって 困るよ」“[I know] it bothers you, [but] it bothers me, too.”

  • Here, I believe the sense is that the author’s health exam results might look bad, but it’s nothing to worry about — the results are always bad.

Current senryu challenge

Volume: School

  1. 答案に「お願い」とだけ書いてあり

This is what I love about learning kanji. If I heard「とうあん」 spoken or saw it in hiragana, I’d struggle to imagine what it meant. It’s not a vocabulary word taught on WK, nor one I’ve ever come across before. But seeing the kanji and knowing the context was school, I could at least guess at the meaning (it means an “answer sheet”, a submission for an assignment — I can’t think of a better English word).

Remember to please use the spoiler tag with your translation attempts! Also, please include the reading in kana with your submission.

Everyone is encouraged to participate, no matter your level! Questions and comments are as valued as translation submissions.

Please try not to be disappointed if your translation isn’t selected or if you disagree with the daily choice: the judge isn’t terribly consistent with his grading (and has awful taste!).
Online tools like dictionaries, sentence databases, and even AI translation engines are fair game and can be extremely helpful. Yomichan is particularly handy if you use the Chrome or Firefox browser. The 語源(ごげん)由来(ゆらい)辞典(じてん) is also an excellent resource for researching the etymology of various words and expressions.

Here are the links to the 356 Japanese originals (spoiler free) and to the the spreadsheet with all the upcoming senryu as well as the translations to date.

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