An interface between the two languages

[torakris]

3.  How do you say hot tea pls? is ocha kudasai understood that it's hot?

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when asking for tea (ocha) or coffee (couhii) is is understood that it is hot, if you want it cold you need to specify that.

aisu couhii is iced coffee and aisu tei is iced tea (black tea)

green tea is rarely served cold but other teas like oolong, etc will be served either way. In this case rather than iced you would ask for it tsumetai (cold).

and don't forget your wo!

ocha wo kudasai.

[torakris]

4. when someone brings something over, and u want to thank him or her, can i say dozo instead of arigato?  Thanks!!

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I think you are thinking of domo rather than dozo. You could use domo but I personally would stick with arigatou. Domo just sounds a bit curt to me, especially coming from a woman..

dozo is sort of like please but not in the sense of asking someone to do something but rather inviting them to do something. Such as please sit down, please go first, etc.

So if you say dozo to a waitress bringing over your food she may think you are inviting her to sit down with you!

[Hiroyuki]

Is it understood that を (wo) is actually pronounced "o"?

[dornachu]

Is it understood that を (wo) is actually pronounced "o"?

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Wo is pronounced as "o"??? Thank you so much for telling me!!! Otherwise, i'll be running around saying Uni WO kudasai...

[dornachu]

4. when someone brings something over, and u want to thank him or her, can i say dozo instead of arigato?  Thanks!!

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I think you are thinking of domo rather than dozo. You could use domo but I personally would stick with arigatou. Domo just sounds a bit curt to me, especially coming from a woman..

oops, i meant domo,. is it blunt? I should stick with arigatou? Thanks,

[dornachu]

Another thing that puzzles me:

Goodbye-

I watch alot of japanese dramas, and I hear them say "Ja-na" spelling?

IS that a casaual way of saying good bye?

When they use "sayonara", it is usually like that girl doesn't want to ever see a guy again, or they are not gonna see each other for a LONG time.. is this correct?

Thanks again!

[Hiroyuki]

Is it understood that を (wo) is actually pronounced "o"?

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Wo is pronounced as "o"??? Thank you so much for telling me!!! Otherwise, i'll be running around saying Uni WO kudasai...

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One webpage explaining this:

http://homepage3.nifty.com/idehara/en/jtm/jtm01.htm

You will get more by googling with "actually, pronounced, o".

[Hiroyuki]

Another thing that puzzles me:

Goodbye-

I watch alot of japanese dramas, and I hear them say "Ja-na" spelling?

IS that a casaual way of saying good bye?

When they use "sayonara", it is usually like that girl doesn't want to ever see a guy again, or they are not gonna see each other for a LONG time.. is this correct?

Thanks again!

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I think you are right. Jaana is a colloquial expression used by males.

Compare:

じゃあな　jaa-na (used by males)

じゃあね　jaa-ne (used by both males and females)

(じゃあ means then.)

You can also say:

またな　mata-na (used by males)

またね mata-ne (used by both males and females)

(また means again.)

As for "sayonara", I think it is just like "good-bye", but as you point out, it can have such a connotation when spoken bluntly or strongly.

[Grub]

Sorry to post an off-topic message here, but couldn't think of a better place to ask...

Since Japanese makes use of Chinese characters, are their meanings the same in both languages?

I saw a wrestler with a kanji tattoo that I looked up, and found to mean "sheep," which seemed a bit strange. The sign was YOO (on) / hitsji (kun):

On the off chance that it was a work in progress, the only derivative kanji I noticed (in my Kanji & Kana -- Hadamitzky & Spahn book) one that meant ocean, foreign or Western. That doesn't seem like a very sensible tattoo either, but better than "sheep."

So I'm wondering, unless there is a different meaning in Chinese, maybe this dude made a mistake (or had a trick played on him, heheh).

[Hiroyuki]

The character means sheep in Japanese, as you say.

I looked it up in my Kanji dictionary. It says that the Chinese pronunciation of it is yang. I can't tell whether the character has a different meaning in Chinese. Maybe you should start a new thread in the China Forum.

[Tepee]

Yes, in chinese(mandarin), it's 'yang' which can mean sheep/goat/lamb/ewe/ram. Perhaps he's born in that year -----> its attributes .

Edited September 22, 2005 by Tepee (log)

[anzu]

I used to teach both Chinese and Japanese at a university in the UK.

It wasn't all that rare for people completely unrelated to the university to come in to the department with a copy of some kanji that they had come across in a tattoo parlor and wanted to get a tattoo of, but before getting it done they wanted to know a) what it meant or (b) if it meant what the people in the tattoo place said it meant.

A lot of the characters were either wrongly written, or were made-up nonsense that looked vaguely like a kanji if you didn't know any, or the meaning they were told was quite wrong. I still quite often see people with kanji tattoos that are absolute non-words.

In the broader sense of your question, there are some characters that do have a different meaning in Chinese and Japanese, but there are not all that many of them. The most famous pair is 手紙, which means 'letter' in Japanese, but 'toilet paper' in Chinese. While on the subject, there are also a certain number of 'made in Japan' Chinese characters which no Chinese will recognize. 辻 (crossroads) is one example. Vietnamese also used to be written with Chinese characters, and there are also a lot of 'made in Vietnam' Chinese characters as well.

Maybe your person just liked the symmetry of yang/you? (Maybe 'wood' 'sun' and various others that are also symmetrical are still to come. )

You know, I'm quite shameless. I wouldn't let on that I know either Chinese or Japanese, and I'd go up to him and ask him all innocently what it meant.

[jackal10]

Does he have a character that sounds like "ying" on the other arm?

[Hiroyuki]

A lot of the characters were either wrongly written, or were made-up nonsense that looked vaguely like a kanji if you didn't know any, or the meaning they were told was quite wrong. I still quite often see people with kanji tattoos that are absolute non-words.

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Yeah, I know. What we do with English (see this thread) they do with Kanji. Visit this blog, which is really funny.

[dornachu]

Thank you so much!! I learned so much here!!

[Grub]

Thank you so much!

[dornachu]

When you interupt someone, is it "sumimasen, chotto" or Chotto, sumimasen? Thanks

[torakris]

When you interupt someone, is it "sumimasen, chotto" or Chotto, sumimasen?  Thanks

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For most purposes just a sumimasen will suffice.

here is a chart that shows the different ways to apologize/interupt with different degrees of formality...

[Hiroyuki]

Warning: This is my personal opinion as a native speaker of Japanese. Different people may have different opinions on your question.

Chotto literally means a little, but in "Chotto sumimasen", chotto is used to address someone. "Sumimasen chotto", in which chotto is added as an afterthought, is possible, but to me (and probably to many other native Japanese), chotto sounds as if it were followed by another expression like "onegai shimasu" (I'd like a favor of you) or "otazune shitain desuga" (I'd like to ask you a question).

[dornachu]

When you interupt someone, is it "sumimasen, chotto" or Chotto, sumimasen?  Thanks

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For most purposes just a sumimasen will suffice.

here is a chart that shows the different ways to apologize/interupt with different degrees of formality...

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Jo dan ja nai wa yo!!!! (this is the first phrase of jap i learnt, ehhe) You have that many levels of formality to apologize?? Amazing!!

Thanks!!!

[AzianBrewer]

4. when someone brings something over, and u want to thank him or her, can i say dozo instead of arigato?  Thanks!!

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I think you are thinking of domo rather than dozo. You could use domo but I personally would stick with arigatou. Domo just sounds a bit curt to me, especially coming from a woman..

dozo is sort of like please but not in the sense of asking someone to do something but rather inviting them to do something. Such as please sit down, please go first, etc.

So if you say dozo to a waitress bringing over your food she may think you are inviting her to sit down with you!

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If she's cute, I will invite her to dine with me....Definitely, keep "dozo" in mind.

[jeniac42]

This is not strictly food-related, but... I hope nobody minds the question.

I have my Japanese midterm tomorrow (it's an oral interview) and I have promised myself that if I do well on it, I will buy myself either a Japanese dictionary or a book (maybe a cookbook) in Japanese that I can use. I already asked about food magazines in another thread; I was hoping that since there are other Japanese-language learners here that maybe someone could recommend something that might be good.

Arigatoo gozaimasu! (And wish me luck... )

[jeniac42]

I think the midterm went OK, but no grade yet, so....

I am sorry to have so many questions, but I wondered, can someone tell me what this means:

日記

I think it must mean "blog" or something similar; I saw it on the delicious.ne.jp site and it's also on my LiveJournal.

[Hiroyuki]

I think the midterm went OK,

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Glad to hear that.

日記 (nikki, にっき) means diary.

[Hiroyuki]

Arigatoo gozaimasu!

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In this situation, we say

(Douzo, douka) yoroshiku onegai shimasu

(どうぞ、どうか）宜しくお願いします

rather than Arigatoo gozaimasu.

After your request is granted, you will say

(Doumo) arigatou gozaimasu (or gozaimashita)

(どうも）ありがとうございます（ございました）.

Edited November 2, 2005 by Hiroyuki (log)