(The increasingly less) Daily senryu thread

Japanese Language Reading
997

Friday, August 5, 2022

Previous senryu

  1. 妻の友来て当てもなく家を出る
    つまのとも・きてあてもなく・いえをでる
    Wife has friends over / Time for me to leave and / Wander aimlessly

Notes:

  • I went with the 16 syllable version this time since it seems to capture the feeling best (without feeling too wordy). This version captures the vibe of 当てもなく pretty well.

  • Welcome @macha1313! I know exactly what you mean. It’s incredibly fun and motivating when you’re able to read all or most of these. It’s why I started the thread: nice bite-sized but whole-thought fragments of the language that cover a LOT of ground both grammatically and culturally. In my case, I’m unsure how much of it is daily senryu and how much is just from getting to higher levels on WK, but either way (or both) my reading ability has improved leaps and bounds since starting this thread. I also learn something new almost daily from @Myria and others! (laugh)

  • Another good point: not only does Japanese tend to leave out subjects, plurality is also open to interpretation. It still amazes me that my German and Japanese friends both say the other language is fairly easy for them to learn to pronounce, while the languages are so different otherwise. From my tiny little bit of high school German a million years ago, my interests in technology and precision, and countless jokes, the German language is all about precision with little (unintended) ambiguity. (Polite) Japanese is almost entirely subtleties, indirection, and implication with almost nothing stated directly! At least I’d be surprised if German has one word that can mean to go, to come, to stay, to welcome, or even to exist like いらっしゃいます!

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Intense

  1. 陽当たりのよいマイホーム昼は留守

I’m completely mystified by this one on first read despite knowing the words!

Hoping you folks can clue me in. My best guess is the sad feeling of leaving home in the dark and coming home in the dark (which I remember from parts of my career, especially in the winter months).

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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