#japanesewords
Are you a polyglot? @queenhorsfall is! ️ I like to learn words in other languages but like many Americans, I can only speak English.
I’m a third-generation Japanese American (sansei) & have lived in Seattle for six decades. Most of the Japanese I learned were niceties to say to my grandparents, but as a kid, I also picked up essential words like “baka” (idiot) & “hanakuso” (booger).
This week I learned “Shikata ga nai,” means, “It can’t be helped.” Podcast host @GuyKawasaki described it another way: “It is what it is, so stop feeling sorry for yourself & suck it up.”
Guy did a podcast with Jeanne Wakatsuki, the author of a memoir, Farewell to Manzanar. Manzanar was one of 10 camps built to corral Japanese Americans during WWII. In his prologue, Guy says Jeanne has traveled to educate people with the hope that nothing like this happens again. I hope that, too. ⚠️
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor led the US to enact #ExecutiveOrder9066 to stop espionage. ️♂️ Fear, suspicion, & war hysteria led to the three-year incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese American citizens.
During the war, my family was dispatched to a concentration camp at Tule Lake in northern California. ☀️ It’s the Japanese way to quietly endure & overcome. My bestie & I (both sansei) have talked about how the camp experience did a real psychological number on our parents.
Can you imagine in current times locking up people because of their ethnicity or beliefs? How about their medical status?
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I discovered the #RemarkablePeople podcast through my professor @erickoester. Guy has fascinating conversations with interesting people—remarkable people, actually . I hope you’ll check out & subscribe to his podcast. The link is in my bio.
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Family update: oldest son arrived home safely! Photos: #roses #hydrangea #chrysanthemum #funeralflowers #godspeed #summercolors #summerflowers from #Charmaine&Bill #pixelphotos #googlepixel #Seattlesummer #Seattleinthesummer # #macro_delight #japanesewords
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CR-3fCbrB9M/?utm_medium=tumblr
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The Japanese language uses three writing systems: kanji, hiragana, and katakana.
Kanji are logograms – each character has a specific meaning. It is used to write “content” words such as nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives.
Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries – each character represents a single syllable sound rather than a meaning. Hiragana is used for showing verb inflections, for prepositions, and other “function” words. Katakana is used for imported words of non-Japanese origin.
My work above contains 5 kanji characters:
春 (spring)
日 (sun)
鳥 (bird)
還 (return)
飛 (fly).
My name is not Japanese, so it is written in katakana : ビクトリア.
To learn more about the way Japanese writing systems are used, take a look at this article by StoryLearning:
https://storylearning.com/learn/japanese/japanese-tips/how-to-write-in-japanese
The first character 猪 means “wild boar”, so the image is of a wild boar stampeding, not stopping until it has reached its destination.
My Japanese teacher taught me this “yo-ji-juku-go” (Japanese 4-character idiom) because both me and her were born in the year of the wild boar.
“the bittersweet realization of the ephemeral nature of all things”
Explore Takayama in Japan with me, also nicknamed the ‘Little Kyoto’ :o) - and a new Japanese word!
https://snowflakesareallaroundme.com/2021/08/20/rainy-days-and-a-guided-mediation/
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