Thora Wrote:masaman, I think it's a misquote. That was magamo. (funny that you should confuse us given your 2 names)

Thanks, that was a misquote. But My 2 names??

I meant I was having trouble not mixing up masaman and magamo.

Thora Wrote:This adorable laid-back surfer dude, always slouched in the back and never saying a word, suddenly wakes up with a "That's easy! Stick it where the sun don't shine!" The class erupted.

The actual meaning is: [for Mentat's reading pleasure]

「灯台」は、昔の室内照明具のこと。灯台のすぐ下は却って光が届かず暗いことから、身近な事情に疎（うと）いこと。身近な事は、案外分かり難いものであるという喩え。

So a 'similar' English one might be more like "It was right under my nose".

I'll stick with the "stick it where the sun don't shine" analogy

Thora Wrote:I meant I was having trouble not mixing up masaman and magamo.

Oh, that's right. I didn't realize they look pretty similar.

masaman Wrote:

Thora Wrote:I meant I was having trouble not mixing up masaman and magamo.

Oh, that's right. I didn't realize they look pretty similar.

For real? When I saw your posts, I thought I should have chosen another handle because even I was confused. Maybe I should pick a striking avatar.

As for "stick it where the sun don't shine!", I was asked to translate a similar but slightly naughtier English meme into Japanese...

magamo Wrote:

masaman Wrote:

Thora Wrote:I meant I was having trouble not mixing up masaman and magamo.

Oh, that's right. I didn't realize they look pretty similar.

For real? When I saw your posts, I thought I should have chosen another handle because even I was confused. Maybe I should pick a striking avatar.

Yea, your avatar is 鴨 and you are マガモさん、so my internal image of you is like this.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1090/1400...636d99.jpg
or even better, like this
http://kamokan.up.seesaa.net/image/8FAAB...3F3F3F.jpg

but I forgot this is just me.

magamo Wrote:As for "stick it where the sun don't shine!", I was asked to translate a similar but slightly naughtier English meme into Japanese...

You had to be reeeeally creative I assume

magamo Wrote:

vosmiura Wrote:It's not so complex I think.

Oh, really? How do you explain these?

腰の低い人 modest person
次元の低い話 vulgar talk
低い評価 poor marks (I know you can say "low marks" though.)
低い声 deep voice
声が低くてよくわからなかった He spoke so softly I didn't catch it. (Note that his voice isn't "deep" in this sentence.)
一段低く見る despise

時間は短いものだ Time passes by so fast.

I think even the greatest rule has tons of exceptions that render it useless in practice. Rules are only good for beginners and linguists, I guess.

What I meant is that I don't think it's necessary to think of 低い and 短い as having oddly overlapping meanings in Japanese that can only be learned one by one.

Translating both to "short" in English makes them seem hard to distinguish, but that's just a problem of imprecise translation, so forget about that translation as the basis for these words.

Rather, I think it is helpful to think of 低い as "low" and 短 as "short in length like a piece of string". That will give you a more accurate understanding than thinking of both as just "short". Also, that should help make the words distinct in your mind, and use that to your advantage when learning idioms.

Having said that, I think English & Japanese use is not that different.

"短/長 short/long" generally measure distance, time, temper.
"低/高 low/high" generally measure height, quantity, level, pitch, price, value, quality, esteem, and other abstract things.

vosmiura Wrote:Rather, I think it's simpler to think of 低い as "low" and 短 as "short in length". That should help make the words distinct in your mind, and use that to your advantage when learning idioms.

Sure. I think it's one of the main ideas behind Heisig's method. As you know, it's quite efficient for beginners, but learners should grow out of it sooner or later. If a word is more complicated than a character, it stands to reason that a similar method only works for beginners, don't you think?

For example, 時間は短い is pretty much the same as "time is short" as in 時間は短いので要点だけで済ませます (Since time is short, I will be to the point.), but 時間は短いものだ is more like "Time passes by so fast." or "Time flies." Neither 時間は短い nor 時間は短いものだ is an idiom. They look pretty much the same. But the meanings are quite different and can't be deduced from a simple rule. Can your rule guess the difference between these two 短いs about 時間:

え、私の時間そんなに短いの？ and はぁ、時間って短いよねぇ。

There are a lot of finer points you missed in your "A = low B" examples, but I know I better leave off. I agree your simple rule is quite useful. What I wanted to say was that one is good at a foreign language when he has trouble translating a phrase into his mother tongue even if he completely understands the semantics of it.

There is no simple rule to turn Japanese expressions into idiomatic English expressions. That's not what I was trying to say.

My intention was not to give the definitive translations for the words, but rather to say that I think the use of the two words is not very irregular or complex (in Japanese). It seems overly complex due to translating in English. I agree about the difficulty in translating.

Quote:Neither 時間は短い nor 時間は短いものだ is an idiom. They look pretty much the same. But the meanings are quite different and can't be deduced from a simple rule.

I don't quite agree. Or maybe I don't understand. When I think of the two phrases, the function of 短い is the same in both: shortness of time; one referring to a specific instance of time, and one to time in general. Should I be attributing some special meaning to 短い other than shortness in these examples?

vosmiura Wrote:There is no simple rule to turn Japanese expressions into idiomatic English expressions. That's not what I was trying to say.

My intention was not to give the definitive translations for the words, but rather to say that I think the use of the two words is not very irregular or complex (in Japanese). It seems overly complex due to translating in English. I agree about the difficulty in translating.

It is not a problem of translation.

I think the difference between, say, 与えられた時間は短い and 時間とは短いものだ lies in the Japanese language itself. The meanings of 短い are intrinsically different in these examples. It becomes more apparent when you try to translate the two, though, because a foreign language most likely assigns a different word to each of the two senses.

Of course, it is a matter of definition whether a given pair of two senses are distinct. In fact, it is often said that monolingual individuals tend to assume a given word of their mother tongue has fewer senses because its semantics is roughly continuous, at least to their eyes. But it is also known that when you learn a foreign language, your command of L1, i.e., your mother tongue, improves as well because the foreign language helps you grasp subtle differences of words of your first language.

Also it seems that skilled individuals such as professional writers do differentiate this kind of difference in meaning regardless of whether or not they speak foreign languages. I think it is safe to say a given pair of senses are distinct, as long as skilled people consider them different, even when the average native speaker of the language finds it difficult to differentiate one from the other.

The differences I pointed out in previous posts are not relative, but intrinsic, and hence I do not think usage of words is "regular."