Culture different from language

 

March 13, 2021

 

Culture different from language

It is interesting to observe culture different from language point of view:

Example 1:

In English 🐧“ I miss you”

In Japanese:😸 “きみはいなくてさびしいです。

 

Example 2”

In English  🐧“ I love you”

In Japanese 🐺“ 君のことがすきです。“

 

Notice that in English, the emphasis for both sentences are “I”, the verb “ Love” and “Miss” are active .

In Japanese, the emphasis was not “I”, in fact, “I” often be omitted.  There is no active verb, instead, replaced by adjective, “feel lonely”, “ like”

 If we were to translate both sentence from Japanese into English, it will become:

“Without you, (I) feel lonely”

“Your things, points (whatever ことmeans) (I) like”

Can you see the difference?

 In English context, feeling lone is not equal to “missing you”, there can be thousands reason of feeling lonely; but “ I miss you” is so clear to state “ You, is the one I miss, and now I feel lonely”

 In English, it is clearly said “You, as whole I love” not because of some of your ことs.  Also I love, not only like.  There is big difference of love and like in English.

 In one of Anime, there was script saying “ in Japanese “愛“ is equal to “無関心”, therefore, Japanese only use “好き“ but not “愛”

 I may never really understand 😊

 Anyway, Happy White Day, another unique day, may gentleman in Japan clearly convey their messages to their loved one . It is okay to say “ I love you and I miss you!”