Things You Lie On...
Watching some anime today. Got it from a Portuguese friend of mine, so, naturally, it's subtitled in Portuguese.
Now, for me, it's really hard not to pay attention to subtitles if they're there. As it would turn out, Portuguese is not nearly hard enough to understand to kill off that habit.
It was pretty convenient, though, because they are different enough from English that I don't watch them as much, but they're similar enough that if there's something I don't get from the Japanese, I can figure out from the subs. I was surprised at that.
It took me 15 episodes to stop reading the subtitles constantly. I mean, this is nearly 10 years of conditioning I'm trying to fight here.
I'm watching a samurai drama, and I don't know if I'm a lot worse at understanding speech than I thought I was, or if it's the bucketloads of formal speech and antiquated words that are making it difficult. If it weren't for the subs, I would've never figured out that jabura is the same as samurai. It's not in my dictionary, that's for sure.
Speaking of my dictionary, I've got it set up to search through the antiquated words databases, and I found a great little gem of an expression. I don't know if it's actually antiquated, or what, but... Well, here you go:
女房と畳は新しいほうがいい
nyoubou to tatami wa atarashii hou ga ii
Wives and tatami are best when they're new I have to wonder if we have an expression like this in English.
Now, for me, it's really hard not to pay attention to subtitles if they're there. As it would turn out, Portuguese is not nearly hard enough to understand to kill off that habit.
It was pretty convenient, though, because they are different enough from English that I don't watch them as much, but they're similar enough that if there's something I don't get from the Japanese, I can figure out from the subs. I was surprised at that.
It took me 15 episodes to stop reading the subtitles constantly. I mean, this is nearly 10 years of conditioning I'm trying to fight here.
I'm watching a samurai drama, and I don't know if I'm a lot worse at understanding speech than I thought I was, or if it's the bucketloads of formal speech and antiquated words that are making it difficult. If it weren't for the subs, I would've never figured out that jabura is the same as samurai. It's not in my dictionary, that's for sure.
Speaking of my dictionary, I've got it set up to search through the antiquated words databases, and I found a great little gem of an expression. I don't know if it's actually antiquated, or what, but... Well, here you go:
nyoubou to tatami wa atarashii hou ga ii
Wives and tatami are best when they're new
posted by William at
8/16/2008 12:59:00 PM
5 Comments:
I tried looking this up in the Japanese/English idiom book I have. I didn't find it there. I was hoping that if it was there it would give a reference idiom in English, but no luck. Couldn't find anything like it either direction.
It's pulled word for word from my dictionary.
so what is a tatami? Wives I know , had a couple. Don't think I had a tatami. Maybe once in thailand during the war.
Flooring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami
And the title to the post refers to...?
Sounds like the old $100K pyramid game...
"A bed, the floor, your back, a resume, your wife, tatami, ..."
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