politeness - Myriad of Leaves

Myriad of Leaves

politeness

A collection of 16 posts

Aggrandising Japanese Keigo

Whilst browsing through some of the linguistics that I own, I encountered this gem from Bjarke Frellesvig's excellent A History of the Japanese Language, p. 371: The inventories of forms used in these functions have changed over time, as have rules for their combinations. However, with a few

Morbid honorifics

When a person succumbs to the mortal coil and passes away, we have in all cultures words of varying degrees of formality and respect to refer to this posthumous state. Japanese being the focal point of this blog and seeing as Elizabeth II just recently passed away, it may be

Japanese - Ways of saying thank you

The various ways of saying "thank you": There are in Japanese various ways of saying thanks, these cannot easily be translated nor equalled to a precise English expression and as such, a bit of explanation is in its place: サンキュー (sankyu, "thank you") Derives from the

Third person pronouns in Japanese – 3rd Person Neutral

In Modern Japanese there are two 3rd person pronouns that correspond to the Western mode of masculine and feminine ones, namely: 彼 (kare, “he”) and 彼女 (kanojo, “she”). For “it” there is もの (者・物, mono), using two distinct kanji, the former for persons and the latter for objects or

Line Individualism - Yura

SPOILERS ARE AHEAD! Yura in Elden Ring takes the role of a wizened veteran hunter of “bloody fingers”, i.e. people having gone deranged with bloodlust, thus he effeche ctively is a bounty-hunter of sorts – he is also along with a few other characters, representing the samurai class arch-type. Voiced

Line Individualism - Boc

Heed the Spoiler Warning! Boc is the demi-human (read: goblin) seamer and manservant of the player, should they chose to save him during the game. He speaks like the greater half of the game’s cast in a Cornish English accent, and moreover he is the only demi-human that actually

Bernahl's Line

SPOILERS ARE WITHIN THE POST In Elden Ring, during the last stages of Bernahl, a knight clad in ferocious armour and member of a secret order of assassins of the clandestine Volcano Manor, makes a solemn pledge against the omniscient presence known as the Great Will, the English lines are:

Benefactives

~kudasai is no doubt a word that you have heard before if you have ever partaken of any Japanese media, where it is typically translated in dubs or subtitles as "please (would you this favour for me)", but Japanese has more expressions and words like these and we

X-Men vs Street Fighter - Victory Quote Commentary

Capcom's fighting game X-Men vs Street Fighter was nothing less, but a cultural phenomenon in the arcade halls of both Japan and in the West, in the year of 1996 (and later home-releases in 1997 - 1998). Taking the cast of one of the most popular fighting game

Quick Post - Old Sport

In the seminal novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the titular character of Jay Gatsby is a showman and playboy whose ostentatious lifestyle draws the attention of the protagonist and narrator of the story, a young journalist called Nick Carraway, whose enquiries into the life and secrets of

New Year Post - Back to the Future

The year is drawing to a close and I thought I would include one last short translation comparison to round off the old year and herald the new year. What more fitting to do that than taking a look at two instrumental phrases from the science fiction trilogy Back to

Yule Post the 1st - Grantræet

We begin this year's Christmas themed posts with a look at one of Hans Christian Andersen's few yuletide fairy tales, aside from Den lille pige med svovlstikker ("the little match-stick girl"), wherein a sentient fir-tree experiences the existential crisis and threat over first waxing

Archaic language in SoulsBorne

The popular action RPGs by From Soft are famed for their fair if fierce difficulty and a minimalist approach to tutorials, rather wanting players to learn by experience rather than by obsequious text-boxes. Text is indeed the very bread and butter of this blog, though more specifically the dialogue. If

Hallowe'en Post - Darkstalkers

This quick and short obligatory All Hallow's Even post will be looking at a few interesting speech patterns from the horror-themed beat 'em up, Vampire. The roster boasts everything from ancient mummies to insectoid hive-mind demons that along with bizarre and unique move-sets - fighting game term

Gemming Your Pardon?

Here is a quickie in regards to discovery I made in terms of a weird if interesting variant way of writing an old polite imperative or optative mode of constructing a verb, namely tamau (たまう, "to beg [a superior] to grant [a wish]"), which is typically written with

SNK and Samurai

SNK has a long and time-honoured tradition of "creative" translations and this is primarily concerned with their fighting games that were released during the nineties. Often these translations would reference American pop-culture, contain strange slang and sound completely unlike the line that was in the original. Inspired by