Oh the joys of (mis-) communication in a foreign language. What you think you are saying and what the other takes as an answer can often be different, so even small mistakes can have unintended consequences.
I’m in charge of a project building a new facility, and learning many new Japanese vocabulary words along the way.
To understand what I was going to email, you need to know that Japanese sentences often have the subjects and objects not specified when they are understood by both parties.
There’s a rather cute project manager and I’ve been emailing our requirements, which includes having a wall built with an opening so this thing can go through it.
I started to write to her (with the missing subjects and objects in parentheses) “(I) would like (it) to go through the wall” but the kanji word processing program used an a synonym and it kicked out “(I) would like to have an affair.”:eek:
Fortunately, I know enough kanji to correct it before I sent the email, but who knew that “go through the wall” was a synonym for “have an affair?”
And since it was corrected before sent, I guess I won’t be finding out her theoretical reply.
Is that an idiom that comes from old Japanese buildings? You know, the ones with the paperwalls we see in the movies. There are similar old western sayings about going in through the window.
I sense a whole new world of euphemisms and double-entendres here.
“Hey, have you seen the new chick in Accounts Payable?”
“Aww, yeah, man; I’d go through her wall, you betcha.”
“So, do you think Angelina Jolie is a good actress?”
“I dunno. I mean, I wouldn’t mind goin’ through the wall with her–hey, my wife already knows she’s on my ‘wall’ list–but as an actress I guess she’s kind of hit or miss.”
Suburban wife-swappers’ proverb: The grass is always greener on the other side of the wall.
That’s a great story! Now, just think of all the times that have probably passed in which you didn’t catch your mistake … :):eek:
I know next to nothing about Japanese, but took a 3-week course between semesters in college that was, of necessity, not a course in Japanese language so much as a course about Japanese language, if you see the distinction.
I remember being taught that “Seiko,” as in the name of the watch company, means precision, success, and sexual intercourse, depending on context. So “going through a wall (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)” and “having an affair” being represented by the same word doesn’t surprise me at all.
No, I’m pretty sure the OP meant homophone, not synonym. The words sounded similar, but they were ‘spelled’ (written) with different characters. The sounds were the same, but they were different words. Like the difference between wait and weight. The only real similarity is the way they are spoken.
I think the words in question were kantsuu-suru (貫通する) ‘pierce’ and kantsuu-suru (姦通する) ‘commit adultery’. Both share the same character for tsuu which can mean ‘to pass through.’ The difference is in the kan. Both of these characters just happen to have the same onyomi, or sound-based reading deriving from ancient Chinese. The first means ‘pierce,’ the second means ‘licentiousness; rape.’ The suru at the end is the verb ‘do,’ and, in this case, is used to verbalize a noun. Japanese is, photosyntactically, very restrictive compared to English, and, consequently, has a large number of homophones. So basically you have one glossed literally as ‘piercing-passing-through’ and another as ‘licentiousness-passing-through.’ Passing through by manner of piercing and passing through into the realm of the wicked, if you will.
You can make what giggles you want to about the possible connections between ‘piercing’ and ‘adultery,’ but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just an amusing coincidence.
Reminds me of another story…don’t know if it’s true or UL.
The HR department of a large company requested some information from a foreign subsidiary. They requested a list of employees in all departments broken down by sex.
They received a list with this footnote:
“None of our employees are broken down by sex, frankly in our country alcohol is a far greater problem”.
I just wanted to say that I absolutely love that metaphore (or is it a simile? I can never remember the difference). I don’t know when the opportunity will come up to use it, but when it does, I’m totally using that.
I still giggle at one a boy managed to pull in high school. He was the class clown, and one day after he’d been acting up a little the teacher suggested he move his desk up next to hers. What he wanted to say was “I’m not completely insane.” However, forgetting what the French word for ‘insane’ was (fou), he did what we all normally did–bastardize the English one, which in this case sounds nothing like its translation.
So what he wound up saying was “Je ne suis pas completement enceint,” or, “I’m not completely pregnant.”
Just think of what this could mean to understanding Pink Floyd’s The Wall. For that matter, what about Reagan’s, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The possibilities!
My anecdote would be funnier if I knew how to spell it, but…
A college professor was having dinner in Montreal. He wanted to say something in French to her, but he wanted to sound like a Real American, what with a southern drawl and all.
The Russian language has a similar problem - the verb ‘gulyat’ is an all purpose verb that means to spend time in an idle manner, to knock off, to take it easy or to have sex outside the relationship. Context is used to determine which one is meant, and foreigners are (sometimes) advised to just avoid the verb altogether.
There’s a line in the Tchaikovsky opera “Queen of Spades” that is supposed to mean ‘What a joy it is, in truth, to pass the time here’, but in an other context would mean ‘What a great place to go through the wall.’
