Again I will unravel some of the intersting vocabulary ( hope I spelt that correctly) in the Japanese language.
You hear all the stories about how structured Japanese is and a distinct lack of humor compared to western languages.
Well with a little digging not only can you uncover the weirdness but you can also baffle a few of your Japanese friends.
Todays word is genkijanakunai, split it up as follows. Genki ( 元気） means strength/vigour/power. Basicall people will ask if you are genki , genkidesuka (元気ですか)meaning are you well. an “o” can be added at the start for politeness.
The second part is a particle, ja (じゃ), which is then/anyway, then we have naku (なく) which derectly translates to “It is not”. Finally we have nai(ない） which adds the negative form to “na” adjectives(you see and hear this all day long).
So when you put it all together you get “feeling well-im not-no” which is kind of “im not not feeling well”, which actually means you are genki!!…yep, a double negative…in Japanese….hard to find but they are there.
so next time you are asked “ogenkidesuka” you can replay “genkijanakunai” and get a few laughs. But as you see if you try to explain it to people who don’t get it, it will lose the humor pretty quickly and end up being a japanese lesson… and it’s surely time to move on in the conversation.
happy japaneseing…in all senses of the word!!!!
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This post is tagged Japanese for the Day
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