Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Japanese Lingo - "無謀な挑戦"

There are plenty of resources online where you can learn "regular" Japanese, so here I decided to let you know about words and phrases that I learned not from any textbook, but during conversations with native Japanese speakers.

Recently when I was at my local sushi restaurant, Yoroi, I told the chef about my friend Rory who was driving his Gentsuki, or moped/scooter, all the way from Yokohama which is in the middle of Honshu up to Hokkaido, which a completely different island in Japan.

At the thought how crazy this was, he used a word that I had never heard before which was "無謀な挑戦" and in Hiragana it's "むぼなちょうせん." In normal English pronounciation, or Romaji, it's pronounced "Mu-bo-Na-Chou-Sen." It's a combination of two different words, the first meaning "reckless, mad, or foolhardy" and the second word meaning "to challenge, or to attempt." The "na" in between the two words, as far as I know, marks the adjective of the first word.

Although everyone at the time he used it understood the word perfectly, I have gotten some strange looks when I've used it in other situations. However, after showing the person I was talking to the kanji, or Chinese characters, involved in the construction of the word, they instantly understand and got a good laugh about it.

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