Jisho.org Forum

I wondered this too. Japanese people typically refer to their own skin as yellow. They don't use some politically correct term, and the word "Asian" makes no sense logically since it refers to a continent which is removed from Japan, not a race. The anthropological term in Japanese for the mongoloid race is 黄色人類　where as the caucasoid and negroid races are 白色人類 and 黒色人類 respectively. None of these terms are offensive, so I thought... well why not 黄色ちゃん ? Many Japanese people are quite pale if not exposed to the sun, so why not 白ちゃん ? Women generally hate being tan and regard the concept of 美白 very highly.

But, being that pale, many new born babies and small children often have rosy red cheeks. I did a search on google for "赤ちゃん　なぜ赤” and I found some yahoo discussion topics that just said "That's how Japanese babies look when they're first born." If you're in Japan it will make sense (especially if you visit a 保育園) ;^)

Ok I found a link to the official explanation via that conversation thread. It basically says what I wrote, but in Japanese. Enjoy!

http://gogen-allguide.com/a/akachan.html

I was thinking about it a bit too... If you're looking for a "logical" language, Japanese is unfortunately not the right language for you. I would try German instead.

I was thinking about how many times every single day people use "申し訳ないですが、_______" as an apology. It literally means "there is no excuse"
but often the blank is filled in by the excuse for why someone can't do something. Haha. I hate going to 飲み会 (after work drinking / dinner parties with co-workers)
because I can't drink alcohol anymore, and I can't stand the smoke.
To get out of going to one of those, in Japanese I literally say "There is no excuse, but since I have a disease I can't drink alcohol, therefore I can't go. Sorry" The disease is obviously my
excuse for not going. （笑） It's a totally contradictory and illogical sentence, but that structure is used millions of times every day all across Japan.

More common is お世話になります (literally "You take care of me") used as a sort of greeting and a thank you.
99% of the time it is said to someone who doesn't do anything at all for you. In fact, they may be a nuisance. Every week, a string of solicitors come into Japanese public schools trying to sell crap from mattresses to jewelry to spices/seasoning to yogurt drinks to educational materials. Most of the time no one buys anything, yet to be "safe" all the school staff say お世話になります
Sometimes when the staff room is super busy it would be much nicer if these salespeople would take a hike!

Then there's the counter "system" (more of an organic mess than a system haha). There are counters for gods （柱）, mountains （座）, and even eye-drops　滴
most are obsolete and not used (you can use them to impress your Japanese friends :0)
The number may be chinese derived いち、に、さん etc. or native Japanese ひと-　ふた- みっ- etc.
The worst thing I've encountered is counting nights of a stay. It randomly switches to native Japanese for 2 nights, but that's all.
一泊 (いっぱく) 二泊 (ふたはく) 三泊 (さんぱく)

So really, the anomaly is that 赤ちゃん IS based on something logical.

I'm not really following the purpose of your rant, by your logic, there's no such one language that's logical. The majority of East Asian languages have counters, and English to some extent has various words that could technically fall into this category. The Chinese language has nohing to do with the Japanese numbers and counter words. And if your idea of useless apoligies is a basis for strangeness, you really ought to come to Canada, where some people say 'please' and 'thank you' a million times, and use an array of different expressions for apoligizing. English, and easily German as well, is by far no exception, and has lots of expressions that, in the eyes of a foreigner, would seem absurd.

As for the use of the kanji in 赤ちゃん, like you pointed out, it is logical when you consider that newborn babies have much more reddish skin.

I agree with you Hakaku. English has far too many illogical things about it to mention. I don't know so much about German, but the one that often comes up with European languages is the fact that nouns are 'masculine' or 'feminine'. Of course, in German they are masculine, feminine or neuter, making things even more confusing. And then you get the strange fact that a girl isn't feminine but neuter, 'das mädchen'.

Well, I'm not saying German is especially illogical, just that all languages have their illogical aspects.

If you understand Japanese people's polite way of speaking, you can appreciate its LOGIC.

The expression of "申し訳ないですが" is like:
"I am so sorry that I cannot find a good excuse for my fault, but if you kindly allow me to say something for myself, I would say that....... I know it is not a good exucuse but I hope you still can accept my apology".

"お世話になります " means:
"No matter what you do (or not do), I know it is for my benefit, so I fully appreciate your kindness". Of course it can be applied to a solicitor even you do not like him very much.

Personlly, I do not see anything illogical in these expressions.

As for the English, there are a lot of "irregularities", for example, why "write, wrote, written" instead of "write, writed, writed"? And there is a thick book for all kinds of idioms that can only be memorized because you cannot catch up the meanings just by looking at the words. All these things would be regarded as utterly illogical in the eyes of a foreigner.

Haha ok sorry for using you guys as a support group for my woes. It can be rough living in the Japanese countryside. :-P My view of things is probably skewed a bit.
But I don't believe I said English has LESS irregularities anywhere. As far as reading and writing, I was however able to know the pronunciation of every native German word I saw written in German within 1 year of studying it. Loan words derived from Latin or Greek or English are typically the only ones that don't follow the rules. You need to be some kind of genius to do that within 1 year in Japanese, and I am not that smart.

Aside from grammatical irregularities (which are probably close in number among most languages),
I guess what I meant to say, is that I see many times, parts of Japanese language do not match science or reality.
I have heard Squid and Octopus (and I've even heard whale) referred to as "fish," which is biologically incorrect. It's like saying "starfish" in English when
the correct modern term is "seastar."
People still call chalkboards 黒板 when every one I've seen in Japan is green. In my opinion there is very little drive in
Japanese culture (or at least the culture of the countryside area where I live) to question what already exists. I believe that also explains why the government was ruled
almost exclusively by 1 party since after WW2, until the recent election.
I often hear people say しょうがない about their problems when in fact they COULD do something about it. It sounds so
defeatist to me. Many of my students say しょうがない about being "bad" at English, when that's certainly not the case. I tell them to "never give up!" and that I believe in them.

I also have heard the word 欧米人used interchangeably for 白人 (I heard it today!). That implies everyone in the USA is Caucasian, which is NOT the case.
I have 2 African-American friends living in Japan and they are tired of being considered "not" American, especially when you think about who is currently in the US whitehouse.
One of my friends shaves his head (the school he works at wouldn't let him have anything looking like an Afro haircut), but then many people outside of work started asking him what "military base" he works at! Not cool.

BTW I know what お世話になります and 申し訳ないです mean, and I've confirmed those meanings with native speakers (friends, girlfriends, co-workers).
I work with native speakers for 8 hours a day :-P
You are free to translate them into English as you please. ccpan's translations are lovely ;^)
I always use those phrases, and I say お先に失礼します when I leave work. Those are just pleasantries. In reality, there's nothing rude about me
leaving work earlier than other people, when my official quitting time is 4:45, and I don't get paid for anything after that. These are all just to be "safe" in terms of politeness.

My qualm wasn't about politeness itself, it's that I believe the Japanese language generally hasn't been modernized to reflect advances in science/logic and also modern thinking about male-female equality. There was a seriously sexist article in the reading part of the July 日本語能力試験 of this year (I can send it to anyone who is interested). I couldn't believe what I was reading, and it was hard to "answer" correctly because I had to think like some kind of male chauvinist who makes generalizations about women being vain and just wanting attention from men. Also I was asked to translate a speech about "Mother-Daughter volleyball" into English this Fall. Two mothers were speaking, one of them said "Oh, sorry I'm late, my husband came home" and the other woman said "That's ok, I just arrived too." There was no further information, so a direct translation makes no sense. Jokingly I thought, is the first mother some kind of slave or something? Did the husband beat her up? But if you think about it, the reality isn't so funny. The sentence implies the woman had to make dinner for the husband, further implying that Japanese men never make dinner for themselves and automatically expect that of their wives (despite knowing the wife has plans to spend time with the daughter).

Things are changing, but slowly. The more people in Japan (and especially the Japanese countryside) start going abroad, and as the older generation retires, I'm hoping the kooky old ways of speaking and thinking will disappear. I believe that If children grow up in a world where many people "freely" use incorrect or offensive language, they will imitate those around them and it will shape their opinions.

Well, I guess it is a culture shock. When I went to US, there were also many things quite startling me, too.

It is quite likely that many Japanese husbands, if not most, do not make dinner for themselves. It is said that Korean families are the same. My female Korean friend told me that she usually wakes up at 5:00 AM to prepare breakfast for her husband. I really cannot imagine how she is able to do that.

Now back to the language issue. It is interesting that in Chinese, the octapus is called "章魚", the whale "鯨魚", but they are not "魚" at all. Also the chalkboard is called "黒板" although it is not black. However, it seems that no one want to change the words. It seems that those words are just "labels" which do not necessarily reflect the fact.

As for しょうがない, しかたない, たまらない, and so on and so on, I usually regard them as being sort of emotional exclamation, and do not take them seriously.

It's nice to let off steam sometimes. I disagree with quite a lot of paulusmaximus' post, but I don't want to split too many hairs. Still, that's the first time I remember hearing the word 'seastar' - there are still millions of people using 'starfish' in Britain at least.

I wanted to mention something similar to the fish thing though. I go to elementary schools and teach the kids a bit about the world as part of my job. This is usually entirely in Japanese. However, teachers at schools frequently call it '英語'. This slightly bugs me because I'm not teaching English. I tend to think that the definition I have in my head that 英語=English language must be wrong, though perhaps I'm being too accommodating and the teachers are 'making a mistake'. It would be interesting to hear a native speaker's opinion (actually I should probably just ask at work tomorrow).

So Richard, what happened with that?

You are certainly a much kinder person than I am :-) I I've had some really bad experiences in life (and in Japan) which caused me to
start speaking up a lot more. I would have corrected them by now if I'm not actually teaching the English language. Maybe it makes me a more abrasive guy, but I won't let another person call an apple an orange. Also, my B.S. is in computer science, so you can bet it makes me more of a stick in the mud about logical stuff. :-P

I realize Japanese has maaaaany many shades of gray, but still, when I see the way English is taught in jr. high (and how strict the high school entrance exams are
graded) I know there are ways to communicate very precisely.

You're totally correct though. They are wrong. What else could 英語 mean? Isn't what you're doing like a 国際交流 type thing? Or hmmm as a subject it could be called 社会 ... maybe ( ? )
Do the elementary schools you visit have classes where English language is taught? The area I live in is VERY poverty stricken, but somehow they managed to have English classes at most of the elementary schools (at least for now!).

most of you are way more knowledgeable than i on the subject of the Japanese language, but i'd like to offer my opinion anyway. i think no one will dispute that language is a reflection of life being lived, so it is changing as we go [sometimes it happens quickly & sometimes not so]. be careful what you wish for. i live in the US where the Japanese used is almost "frozen in time" comparatively speaking and you can often hear the remark that modern Japanese have lost the "Japanese flavor" as many words have been imported into the language. Americans/westerners as a whole are more direct [i tend to be this way] and we feel that it allows us to understand one another better. however, when you live in a small nation w/as many people as Japan [China/Korea/etc] has, speaking in shades of gray gives them more emotional space [in place of physical space?]. my take on it is that decorum/politeness/shades of gray-isms is like the grease that makes the wheel move easier. i'm concerned that as time marches on and the young use shortened termenology
[due to texting and faster life style] there will be too much rubbing of the shoulders [and banging heads].

I think one of the beautiful things about the Japanese language and culture as a whole is it's ability to embrace other cultures and it's own heritage at the same time.