> ???? (jisakujien ; self-made self-staged ; for example, used for the act of creating a staged situation and then acting as if it were genuine)
The original meaning was a screenwriter-actor performing the script they wrote, which is a perfectly fine thing to do. It can mean 'sockpuppeting', too, and that other use might be more common nowadays, though.
I see. Having no knowledge of Japanese, I found it interesting. Coming from China, I could say that both Mandarin and Cantonese have popular literal translations for the expression, albeit most Chinese find it cheesy and prefer to use English instead.
Japanese has ?? jukugo, which is similar (if I understand the concept of a chengyu correctly): a set phrase of Chinese characters. The famous case are the 4 character set phrases, ???? yojijukugo, which are mentioned in the article, but there are other kinds too.
Besides that, there is ??? kanyouku, which means just an idiom in general, and isn't restricted to kanji expressions. And ????? kimarimonku, which means something like a "cliche phrase".
I recently starting (re)-learning Japanese, and I realized that they have a lot of clever slang! My favorite one is ?(saba) which means mackerel, but they use it as a slang for server/game server, because it sounds similiar to ???? (saba) which means server in Japanese. There are many others, I'm pretty sure, but this is the one I can think of.
Handy template: <Japanese name for doing something>, ancient Japanese technique/art of <doing something>.
For example:
Aruku, ancient Japanese technique of moving around. Written as ?? and literally meaning 'walk' is movement of feet Japanese have perfected over thousands of years.
> > "Sajeonogi," or "Knocked down four times, rising up five."
> Is Korean really that much more efficient than English, or is that word a label?
No, it's a ???? (sajasongoh), or 4 character idiom. They originally come from Chinese, in which they're called chéngyu (?? or ??, in simplified and traditional characters, respectively), meaning "set phrase", and also exist in Japanese, in which they're called ???? (yojijukugo, literally "four character Chinese idiom").
Because of their origin in classical Chinese and their brevity, they're impossible to understand unless they're explained to you. In Asian countries, memorizing/understanding these proverbs is a big part of schooling.
I don't know the details of this particular sajasongoh, but I'm guessing that it either comes from classical Chinese or is a modified version of one that does. Modifying these proverbs to fit a particular situation is a common form of wordplay in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. For example, the Chosun Ilbo (a big Korean newspaper) loves doing this in their headlines.
"Sanpaku ?? literally means “three” ? “white” ?. It is used to describe eyes positioned in such a way that the iris does not touch the bottom eyelid, showing how the sclera is all connected."
(if you google for ?? images you will find many examples).
I thought it odd that a language needed a word for something like this (shades of the myth about Eskimos having hundreds of word for snow), so I asked my Calligraphy teacher about this (she is Japanese).
Specifically, I just asked her: I mean, "the fact that someone is looking at you in a way that a slim portion of the white of their eyes is showing either below or over the iris" is something that is often a topic of discussion?
Her answer:
Not really, but in the past, people defined it as a criminal face and didn't really like it.
Nowadays it seems like it's a part of beauty.
They put Audrey Hepburn as an example.
(also, you would probably write ???, - Just ?? would be, "the snow falls on the first three days of the year" - or a horse with three white legs, like https://images.app.goo.gl/JBU1d9bQaAYmVVfj9 )
Sharing some Korean Yojijukugos (originating from China)
????(????) wii rok ji ma
To point at a deer and call it a horse. Used for suck ups who says agrees to things that are clearly not right.
????(????) ub cham ma sok
To behead Ma Su (name) while crying. In the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang had to behead his favourite general Ma Su as he wept because Ma Su ignored the given command resulting in losing the war. This is used when you have to be fair for the greater good.
There are also fake yojijukugos which were created on online forums. These are not based on Chinese characters but made by taking letters from Korean phrases. But they caught on because they kinda sound like real yojijikugos :D
???? nae ro nam bul
Romance for me, but adultery for you. Used for people who are lenient to themselves but strict to others.
???? ja gang doo cheon
Fight of two strong-sprited geniuses. Used when two strong characters butt head with each other.
Murahachibu: shunning, public ostracism. Originally meant being excluded from eight (out of ten) aspects of village life. The two jobs which a person under murahachibu were still allowed to perform were firefighting and undertaking, considered the meanest, dirtiest, and least desirable jobs. Handling corpses was thought to make a person "unclean", and persons who did so were isolated to the slummiest village districts called buraku; from these are descended the burakumin, who (much like blacks in the USA) have been historically an oppressed underclass and yet have contributed much to the modern street culture of Japan.
Modern murahachibu is practiced in a less severe form: if you fail to kiss the right asses and scratch the right backs in your professional or social life, you will find yourself without help when you most need help.
Daikon ashi: thick legs (on a woman). A daikon is, of course, a long thick radish used in Japanese cooking. It turns out that Japanese women are at least as self-conscious about not having a "thigh gap" as are Western women.
Tachiyomi: to "read standing up". When you're in a bookshop and you pick a book off the shelf and start reading it right in the shop. Manga fans love to do this; bookshop owners will sometimes throw people out for doing it. Brings back memories of being an early teen and heading straight for the magazine racks to read ALL THE GAMING MAGAZINES while my mother did the shopping.
???? (issekinichou ; literally: one stone, two birds ; I'll let you guess the meaning (yes, it's very close to an expression in English))
???? (jigoujitoku ; reap what you sow)
???? (jisakujien ; self-made self-staged ; for example, used for the act of creating a staged situation and then acting as if it were genuine)
???? (jimonjitou ; answering one's own question)
???? (jiboujiki ; self-abandonment)
???? (jigajisan ; singing one's own praises)
???? (jikyuujisoku ; self-sufficiency)
???? (jiyuujizai ; free/unrestricted)
(Yeah, I have a thing for the ???? ones)
reply