The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar)

It makes some logical sense I guess. I can’t find anything of the sort either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course.

Judging by monolingual dictionaries I’ve checked it doesn’t seem to have any other meanings, really.

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I don’t blame them if they do because oftenly the translators are not even interested in the show or just translate from the script and never have seen the actual shows.

I tried Thai Subtitles (my native langauge) and it translated as “dead” too. However, Thai subtitle on Netflix are usually just a bit better than Machine Translated subtitle lol.

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Yee its dead in this case

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I assume you’ve watched/read 呪術廻戦

So she’s talking indirectly about Itadori Yuji is not her type?

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I’m not familiar with the anime, but I found some article explaining this scene: 釘崎野薔薇がかわいい!呪術廻戦のツンデレ?好きな男のタイプも紹介! (just scroll down to this image).

I think she said something like: “「かきくけこ」はマジで無理”, so it means that men with “those traits” are not good for her. 無理 in this context is more like “not good” rather than “can’t stand it”.
So basically she meant that men who are “事切れてる” (dead) are not good enough for her.

On a side note, translating is sometimes really hard, especially to get some slang nuances or to translate some word play or something like that to english and on top of that make it feel natural in another language without losing meaning. Sometimes you need to accept some less literal, make another joke or something like that to make it more natural in another language.

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Thank!! I will take my time reading it tonight. It’s look like a good article. It might help me understand more about naunce and word play in this anime/manga.

Have not watched or read but if he can be considered dead (or he has died at some point) in any way, then yeah, that could well be what she’s referring to

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ah sorry, no I haven’t seen it so idk who the heck that is

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I might be missing something here, but doesn’t 無理 usually mean “no good” (well, literally “no reason”, but) and can be used broadly like this?

So what she’s saying is “(men like that) are seriously no go/good”?

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The most common use of 無理 is probably “impossible.” But it has a wide range of uses.

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Yeah, I’d interpret that as those things being deal breakers, personally.

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無理 has a really broad meaning: 無理 - Jisho.org
Probably most dictionaries translates this as “unreasonable” as the first meaning, but in common speech especially it is used quite frequently.
It can be said about something when it’s impossible to do (or you don’t want to do this), when something is not good enough, you can’t do something in specific time (eq. you can’t meet with your friends on particular day “この日は無理”) and so on, even person can be 無理. It even can be used to say that something is for example “too good that you can’t even” “これは良すぎて無理”. Or simply say “無理” about anything really. Say 無理 with a blush when someone wants you to do something “エッチイ” and run away (commonly used by girls in anime (probably not really in real life)).
It is used in many slang phrases, so literal translation of this word sometimes doesn’t really work.

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I think the key takeaway from that is 無理 is pretty definitive in meaning. It’s a hard no, not a “probably not”. It’s 100%, definitely, without a doubt, not good, not possible, not right to do, not something you want to do, whatever meaning you use it in - in this particular case, (at least as far as she expresses) there’s no way in hell she’d date someone with any of those qualities. If it were a “I consider these bad things but I guess for the right person I’d be able to look past it” kind of thing I feel like a softer term would be used.

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I could try to track down if there’s a basis for the scene in the manga, but I think it’s an “arson, murder, and jaywalking” style joke.

Like, for her someone’s completely out of the question if they’re good for nothing, poor, stinky, miserly, or dead. The punchline’s that requiring a partner be alive is a lot less picky than the other requirements so it’s a funny note to end on, and from her tone with the others, it casts being dead as like, a criticism of or gripe about a potential partner. Like they had promise, say, but had to go and die just to spite her.
That kind of joke’s hard to translate confidently since the jarring note tonal-wise is where the humor comes from!

(oh yeah and I just put together what you meant in the spoiler part, yeah if this took place during that particular part of the story when Itadori is considered dead then yeah I could see part of the joke too being her specifically going out of her way to exclude Itadori.)

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Right. What I was trying to emphasize with the “no good” is that, to me at least, 無理 is a “flat” expression. It doesn’t by itself value whether something is or isn’t “good enough” for someone. Something is “no good”, or “impossible” as Leebo said.

EDIT: …and I just realized I confused 無理 with ダメ (the actual “no good”) in the process. :man_facepalming:

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Is there any general pattern in Japanese vocab? Like does the order of kanji have any pattern that affect its meaning?

For example, 炊事 = cooking so does it mean the main meaning is 事 and 炊 is working like adj. and 日帰り so 日 telling us that 帰り in a day(日). Of course, I’m talking about vocabs that follow the meaning of their kanji.

I know this is confusing. I’m so sorry English is not my native langauge and I found it difficult to explain technical stuff like this.

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I feel like it’s hard to generalise that because words are not necessarily compounds of the kanji’s meanings. Quite simply put, kanji are not words, and treating them like words is going to trip you up in some situations - like this one.

In some cases, a word may be a compound of multiple words, with the preceding words modifying the last word in the compound - like 青葉, where the 青 acts as a modifier for 葉, or your 日帰り example which is not so much 日帰 with a り after it as it is a compound of 日 and 帰り, but I don’t feel like that’s a general assumption you can make when seeing multiple kanji, as there’s no inherent guarantee multiple kanji also means the word is a compound of multiple words or meanings (even barring ateji).

That said, there are some kanji that almost seem to act like a suffix, 事 and 物 for instance almost tending to act like a suffix meaning “and act or thing with these properties” - but I feel that also makes it more of a compound word than a collection of kanji with a meaning dependent on their order, if that makes sense.

But do know that these are just my thoughts, and I’ve never taken a dive into the subject from a linguistics perspective.

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There some kanji combinations that have a slightly different meaning depending on the order, but otherwise I never noticed a particular pattern, especially when okurigana is involved.

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The ones borrowed from Chinese are based on Chinese grammar concepts. But they do fit into set categories.

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For Jukugo (2 kanji words, generally speaking) yes there are a couple main patterns. If you ever decide taking Kanken (kanji proficiency exam) you will be asked on recognizing them.

They are mainly:

  1. Kanji with similar meaning forming one single word: 寒冷、永久、河川、増加、思考、etc

  2. Kanji with opposite meaning forming one single word: 上下、左右、盛衰、開閉、往復、etc

  3. Second kanji being negated by the first: 未来、否定、不安、無料、etc

  4. Subject + Verb structure: 円高、国営、地震、etc

  5. First kanji modifies the second: 強風、鶏卵、最悪、和食、etc

  6. Verb + Complement structure (a bit weird in Japanese, but it’s actually inheriting Chinese grammar): 握手、洗顔、閉店、求人、etc

Other than that you have some minor cases:

  • Kanji repetition: 時々、人々、散々
  • Actual suffixes: Anything with 的、性 and so on
  • Jukugo abbreviated from proverbs and such: 矛盾、蛇足

For “native” Japanese words, the patterns might not be so clear.

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