00:11
Okay, so that was a long detour that we took from our original topic that we tried to talk
about. By the way, before we fully go back onto the original path, can I just teach you
another Japanese word in accordance of elephants? So talking about elephants in the room, I
quickly googled just now and the Japanese equivalent of that apparently is not as fun,
but it's kind of catchy in terms of the sound. So you would say, 見て見ぬふりをする。
見て見ぬふりをする。
見て means look, 見ぬ means don't look, ふりをする means pretend to be. So you look, but you pretend to not look.
It's quite literally what it means. Oh, I love it. Okay, yeah. But it sounds cool because
it has the like a, this is also frequent in like idioms or ことわざ. It has like a weirdly old
timey phrasing of languages. Like a typical one that I can think of right now is like, 急がば回れ。
Do things slowly when you're trying to rush. Like it's like a thing people would say when you're
like frantically running around things. They'd be like, Len, calm down. It's 急がば回れだよ。
It's like, you should slow down. And if you rush, you would actually take longer to finish it because
you're going to make a mistake. Right, right, right, right. And nobody today would say 急がば回れ
or 急がば which is the rush part. Don't like rush. If you rush or if you want to rush.
Right, so 急がば. No one would say that. Modern Japanese would say 急ぎたかったら.
Right. Okay, yeah. So this, here's a good reference on this. I can follow that because
this is, if I'm correct, this is the verb 急ぐ, right? 急ぐ. Yeah. And so the, what was it? 急がば。
Is the, well, I guess the ば form, which I can't remember the English. Well, see already like 急が
03:02
and then ば. I guess if you were to cut the conjugation, it's 急が, cut, ば. But
because 急が means if you were, if you were to. And then like ば is like the to part of 急がば.
So like, and, but I'm saying this is like an Edo period way of saying things. It's like that old.
It's like, it's from way back when, but because it's like an idiom, people just carry that sound
with you. And like, so, so people will learn that as a phrase and then don't really think
it's weird. They just know that it's like, oh, that's how old people would say kind of thing.
Yes. But I think it's extremely confusing to language learners to like suddenly like here's
a new version of conjugation that we didn't teach you. There are, I'm, I don't run into those ones
in particular, but I know the sensation that you're describing and seeing as a challenge for
language learners, right? Because it's, I haven't run into them because I'm not at that level to
run into them. Right. I was going to say like, you're probably not at the, at the level of
incorporating idioms in your daily languages. Right. I have gone out of my way at times to like,
like look into something though. Right. And you arrive at those, those strange places.
It's the, I've told people before, cause it can surprise some people that I'll have knowledge,
especially about like a particular Kanji or like I can read a certain thing or like whatever it
might be. And it's not that I have all of the knowledge leading up to that point. Yeah. It's
that I have, I have the destinations. Yeah. I have that one single Island, right? That's, that's what
I have. Um, so yeah. Okay. I love, I love that phrase. I actually did just look it up. Uh, the,
the one for not for looking, but not looking. And I should probably look up the other one as well,
but I'll ask you to give it to me again at the end. Um, those are like, they, they're idioms,
but they almost have the, um, it's sort of in between idioms. Okay. Cause like, I mean,
this, this might be another divergence from the original, but I guess, um,
and I don't know if this is like academic or legitimate classification. So don't at me. If, um,
I won't add you because there are any linguists out there. Um, I will be butchering their theory,
but in my personal opinion, I think there's like two tiers of idioms in Japanese. One that is
common enough that people know and use fairly frequently in daily lives. I think, uh, it's
06:05
similar to English too, but like, I think most English idioms stay in this first tier category.
And like it's, it's, if it's not common, it's not really idiom. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean,
there might be some regional discrepancies or like generational preferences, but
mostly speaking, the whole point of idiom is that you share this common knowledge.
There's yeah. English is weird in a sense that we have so many and perhaps even idiom at some
points is kind of a loose usage of the phrase maybe, but like we have so many of these
phrases that inherit and or have a meaning. I mean, you get off the bat, right. A quick search
and you've got like lists of a hundred idioms for English. Right. So it's almost insane what gets
made up in the English language. Yeah. And perhaps, I mean, and also I think it's maybe
English is more conducive to like people being able to make up. That's fair. We could get into
some of that space as well. Right. I was going to say just the, the way that they've been baked
in as well, which perhaps maybe has something to do with the flexibility of making it up,
you know, as you go and sort of the design, but because of that baked in this, they fit
first category, the thing you're talking about. And idioms, by the way, in Japanese is kotowaza.
Right. Okay. So yeah, there's kotowaza that everybody knows, everybody learns,
picks up at some point. And then there's like second tier sort of like advanced kotowaza
that maybe only grandmas or grandpas would use. Okay. Or like, or, or like only really
well-read person would use. And, or like, it's, this is a variation of kotowaza,
but there's another one called yoji-juku-go. So yon for, yeah. And then four letter juku-go.
Right. And these mostly come from Chinese, like heritage, but it's just like a series of four
kanji characters that mean something together that otherwise individually does not go together.
Right. And these are, I think if you, if you know how to insert yoji-juku-go in like a relevant
way in your conversation, you sound smart as fuck. And, and, and I don't know, I think it's,
it's controversial that you shouldn't be throwing this in everywhere because you're just going to
sound like a snobby person, but a well-placed advanced kotowaza, the second tier kotowaza
09:01
slash yoji-juku-go could make people like, like people will be surprised, especially coming from
you or me even, you know, cause like they just don't expect that someone who only lived in
Japan for eight years, even though I'm Japanese, would have this much, like this level, you know,
the second tier level of like mastery in Japanese language. So I recommend you to,
if you want to, if you're looking for new books to buy, buy like shougakuseiyo toka no like really,
really friendly ones, like ones that almost comes like a manga, right? Like kotowaza jiten
that is like that, and like that would definitely up your idiom games to the next level. And it's
just kind of fun because it's so much cultural links and cultural context that you need to
understand in order to be able to make it make sense. And now that you have lived in Japan
and have a bit more understanding of these Japanese cultural contexts, maybe some of these
things would click better to you than, you know, maybe previously when you learned it in school,
where you just like learned it as a new phrase, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And pick the one that
comes with like comics, like, like it's the one, the ones you should go for is like the ones for
shougakusei. And that already basically covers most of this tier one kotowaza. Okay.
I, this is reminding me that I, I recently got a library card for the library that is very close
to me. And they actually have a pretty large, like, you know, shougakusei sort of section,
like you can tell, right, that there's quite a bit there. Probably be a good place for that. So
because the only kotowaza that I, I know, except I always forget what it is, I just had to look it
up again, is the, I guess in Japanese, it's, I don't know if that's the right, that's the right
one. It's the one that when the nail sticks out must be hammered down. What does it say? Whatever
you have it on there. I think I know what I'm, what it is, but I want you to say it.
There's a seed of a thought, which with neither of us being linguists, I don't think we're
perhaps in the best position to do this. Yeah. Qualified is the word I was looking for.
But in a separate discussion that I've had with a friend of mine about, it was about
12:06
rakugo, I think, and comedy and sort of theatre and the idea of this in general.
The short version is you have similarities in the type of theatre or the framing that comes in like
the, I've forgotten the name of this already, you know, demonstrated of not an expert in this field.
But, you know, the funny guy and the straight man or something, right? The sort of two pairing,
one of them acts like a fool. That's yeah. Okay. So one of them acting like the fool,
one of them acting like the straight man exists not only in Japan, not only in other cultures
and in the States, but it doesn't necessarily mean it came from one or the other. They could
have simply blossomed out of like the artistic. Yeah. Yeah. It might have independently come to
life. Yeah. And not always, you know, things are not always what conversion evolution or something.
We might converge them. Right. But they could have simply arrived at different periods and then
gone from there. Right. I feel like we cannot claim that anymore with amount of crossing that's
happening in like modern times. But like, yeah, the traditional comedy, traditional sort of theatrical
format and things like that. Yeah. Like Nakugo is kind of like stand up comedy,
except they don't stand up. They usually are sitting down.
And yeah, it's like, you know, maybe it doesn't matter which culture you're from. You'd like
to be entertained. And yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, back when the literacy rate was so low,
the main form of entertainment was these spoken stories. And maybe maybe that's what it is.
Mm hmm. But OK, let's like I'm going to cut this episode right here. And let's actually
try to talk about what we started to talk about in the next recording. And let's call it a day.
Yeah, that sounds good. I'm going to stop right now.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening. And find us on x at
Diego de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C. See you next time.
