The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

What’s the difference in connotation between 登る and 上る? Is there any?

1 Like

Essentially the same thing. If you take a page like 「上る(あがる)」の意味や使い方 わかりやすく解説 Weblio辞書 you can read the section [補説] to see in which case which form is preferred. But it’s just a tendency. You can use all three for everything and it wouldn’t be wrong.

1 Like

jisho tells you what kanji to use with what usage. I’m not sure how strict you need to be - you can substitute any of them and not be misunderstood, like @downtimes suggests, but I guess it would look bad in more formal writing

2 Likes

I might be wrong, but I always saw 登る in reference to climbing mountains (登山する). I feel 上る refers to climbing in general.

1 Like

This indeed. 上る = small-scale things like stairs, 登る = large-scale things like mountains, 昇る = cosmic-scale things like the sun rising.

You can also run them through Google Image Search to get a generall feel for the difference (though admittedly a few of the same images show up for all three, because they’re featured on pages about “what’s the difference between these kanji?”).

10 Likes

Now added to the Visual Dictionary of WaniKani and Nuance Index

1 Like

I know perfect translations from English to Japanese basically don’t exist, but how would I be able to express in Japanese that I miss someone without wanting to see them again? Like I know I could say 会いたい, but you don’t always want to see someone you miss. For example, if I broke up with a partner and although I never wanted to see them again, I still missed them. Would the closest Japanese just be something like:

元彼女と別れて悲しい
or 元彼女のせいで悲しい (questionable)

The only issue is that this puts the focus on you being sad because of some reason, rather than the nuance the English has. Is this just the trade-off you have to make when expressing this in Japanese, or is there a better way?

1 Like

Are you saying there’s a way to say you miss someone in English that implies you don’t want to see them (without explicitly saying you don’t want to see them)?

3 Likes

Maybe “I miss what I had with my ex” would be a good phrasing in English?

2 Likes

Then we’re kind of splitting hairs between “missing the person” and “missing the situation” but I guess Wantitled can explain more what they mean.

EDIT: Perhaps I just inverted it in my head. Not a suggestion that the English implies not wanting to meet, but that 会いたい does imply wanting to meet while the English doesn’t imply wanting to meet explicitly (I still think it would be pretty strongly inferred by the listener though, which is probably where my thinking went astray).

That being said, I do feel like いなくて寂しい is roughly equal in its not implying wanting to meet directly.

If the objection is merely that “to miss someone” is a transitive verb in English while いなくて寂しい is an intransitive verb plus an adjective, that kind of thing happens all the time.

4 Likes

I think even just 「寂しい」 is a good replacement in this case as well, if you don’t want to go so far as to mention the now ex-partner. Yea, it technically translates to “lonely”, but I think its everyday usage expresses what the speaker is actually feeling more closely.

I think it’s easy to overlook the nuance of “missing someone” in English, where you can want to see them while still knowing that you probably shouldn’t/can’t.

2 Likes

I meant missing the person, which was why I thought it was difficult. いなくて寂しい is good, but I feel like that suggests being in the situation of not being with them is the reason. Maybe that’s my interpretation though and it’s such an abstract thing, even breaking it down in English is difficult :thinking:

I think if most people broke it down in English, it would be something like “I am sad that I am no longer with my ex”, but I don’t think that represents the feeling of “missing” completely accurately.

I avoided 寂しい as, at least in English, “lonely” doesn’t have the right feeling to it, although it could be a case where I’ve just failed to consider the nuance of the Japanese equivalent.

3 Likes

To miss means “To become aware of the loss or absence of; to feel the want or need of, sometimes with regret.”

Their absence is the thing that provokes the feeling… same as Japanese?

I think this is a pretty common thought among Japanese learners. I still struggle with saying I miss certain foods or activities from home without using something like 何かを食べたいなぁ. It’s one of the handful of phrases that’s super useful and I wish had a direct translation in Japanese.

It definitely has a slightly broader nuance in Japanese than in English, in my experience, which is why I suggested it. As an anecdote, we just had our 離任式 at school last week to say goodbye to all the teachers headed to new assignments. The phrase 「この寂しい日がいよいよ来てしまいました」, or ones like it was used in more than one of the speeches from students/teachers. I’d find this hard to translate into English as “This lonely day…” because describing a day as “lonely” just seems weird to me. I took it as more of a word to describe the sadness that comes with separating from a person or place. It even extends to the bittersweet side when someone is moving on to bigger and better things, like a promotion, graduate school, or a dream job.

Ultimately, I agree with you and think it’s incredibly difficult to properly convey the same meaning, at least in any sort of simple way. Running into these types of abstract ideas that don’t translate from one thing to the other has been the most frustrating part of the language for me. Especially when I’m being put on the spot to come up with a quick translation as if it’s as simple as plugging numbers into an equation.

1 Like

Yeah, looking at one of the meaning of 寂しい in the スーパー大辞林:
あるはずのもの,あってほしいものが欠けていて,満たされない気持ちだ。
I would translate as “A feeling of unfulfillment because of the lack of something that should be there, or something we want to be there” (not sure about the あってほしい though). It’s a bit different from “lonely” and maybe closer to what you have in mind @Wantitled ?

3 Likes

I think it’s less that’s it’s abstract and more that there are so many shades of nuance. I think that’s why there’s difficulty because you’re trying to pin down which shades you intend when trying to express it in Japanese.

Honestly, 懐かしい kinda fits here because it expresses nostalgia for something without necessarily the intent to to go back to that thing.

1 Like

I think to use 懐かしい there’d have to be some kind of trigger. Like if you saw a picture of your ex, then you could probably use it. Maybe you could still use it if you just suddenly remembered something without a clear trigger, but I don’t know.

3 Likes

I also thought about 懐かしい when I saw this topic yesterday. IMO “nostalgia” is one of the many shades of “missing”, so it could work.

@seanblue Is really 懐かしい used only as a “reaction” word? I thought it had broader usage.

1 Like

It’s hard to say. One definition I read mentions seeing or meeting someone/something and remembering. The other definition skips the seeing/meeting part. In both cases it uses 思い出されて, not 思い出して, which I’m honestly having trouble understanding. So I suppose if you just spontaneously remembered something it could still be 懐かしい. But how would you express that something was 懐かしい without the trigger giving context? If you saw a picture of your ex and just said 懐かしい you’d probably be understood. If you just spontaneously remembered her or some event with her or some aspect of her, how would you say that so the person you’re speaking to understands?

2 Likes

I would agree with sean on this. I mostly see 懐かしい as a comment/observation on something being nostalgic, not necessarily expressing the feeling of missing someone/something to that person.

2 Likes