Learn about 年功序列 and 半信半疑
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| INTRODUCTION |
| なつこ:こんにちは、なつこです |
| Peter: Peter here. |
| なつこ: 四字熟語 |
| Peter: Lesson 20. Japanese You Will Have A Hard Time Believing. Natsuko san, |
| なつこ: Yes. |
| Peter: Today we have two more great idiomatic phrases. |
| なつこ: Great. |
| Peter: Now the first one I really like. |
| なつこ: Really? |
| Peter: Again it’s very Japanese. |
| なつこ: Oh yes right. |
| Peter: Now before we take a look at the first one, in these lessons, Natsuko san, what do we do? |
| なつこ: We look at Yojijukugo. |
| Peter: Which are four character kanji compounds that when taken together form an idiomatic phrase. |
| なつこ: Uhoo… |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Peter: Okay and the first one. |
| なつこ: The one Peter likes. |
| Peter: Natsuko san, what do we have? |
| なつこ: 年功序列 |
| Peter: Seniority based system, promotion by seniority. Break it down. |
| なつこ: ねんこうじょれつ 年功序列 |
| Peter: Let’s take a look character by character. The first character is |
| なつこ:年 |
| Peter: Year. |
| なつこ:功 |
| Peter: Achievement. |
| なつこ:序 |
| Peter: Order. |
| なつこ:列 |
| Peter: Row. Year achievement order row. |
| なつこ: Kind of makes sense. |
| Peter: Even more I think if we take a look at the two kanji character compounds inside of this four kanji character compound, they will become even clear. |
| なつこ: You are right. |
| Peter: What’s the first one? |
| なつこ:年功 |
| Peter: Which is seniority or long service. |
| なつこ: The next one is序列 |
| Peter: Ranking, grading, hierarchy. So we take it altogether |
| なつこ:年功序列 |
| Peter: And it means a rise in salary and job, a rise in salary and job position according with age and length of service in a company. |
| なつこ: So it’s like achievements made in order of age. |
| Peter: Okay Natsuko san, can you tell us about the usage. |
| なつこ: It can be used like年功序列で昇進した |
| Peter: Which means someone got a promotion because of seniority. Now here it’s used in its adverbial form. Basically we have the phrase |
| なつこ:年功序列 |
| Peter: Followed by |
| なつこ:で |
| Peter: So the particleで is modified here. |
| なつこ:Uhmm |
| Peter: Now it can also be used as a pronominal modifier. So before a noun and in that case, we need |
| なつこ:の |
| Peter: Okay can we have a sample? |
| なつこ: As in年功序列の給与システム |
| Peter: Seniority based salary system. |
| なつこ: Kind of typical system in Japanese company – well it used to be, may be not recently. |
| Peter: Changing a bit. In the past, your salary and everything went according to kind of how long you’ve been with the company. |
| なつこ: Uhoo… |
| Peter: Not necessarily based on results. Okay now, this particular Yojijukugo, this term is very well known and it’s often used as a system. You can often find this four character kanji phrase with one more kanji. So it’s actually a five character kanji compound. That is |
| なつこ:年功序列制 |
| Peter: And the制 is system. Okay how about couple of sample sentences. |
| なつこ:彼は年功序列で部長になった |
| Peter: He was promoted to general manager because he had seniority. |
| なつこ:私の会社は年功序列の給与システムをとっている |
| Peter: My Company has a seniority based salary system. |
| なつこ:最近年功序列制から実力主義にかえる会社が多い |
| Peter: Recently many companies have been shifting from the seniority system to the merit system. That’s a very good sample sentence. Okay second phrase. |
| なつこ:半信半疑 |
| Peter: To be half in doubt, only half believing. Break it down. |
| なつこ:はんしんはんぎ 半信半疑 |
| Peter: What’s the first character? |
| なつこ:半 |
| Peter: Half. |
| なつこ:信 |
| Peter: Trust. |
| なつこ:半 |
| Peter: Half. |
| なつこ:疑 |
| Peter: Doubt. Let’s take a look at the two two character kanji compounds. The first one |
| なつこ:半信 |
| Peter: Half believing. Second one. |
| なつこ:半疑 |
| Peter: Half in doubt. Put it altogether |
| なつこ:半信半疑 |
| Peter: Unable to be completely certain that something is true. So it is pretty straightforward. |
| なつこ: Yes. So you can tell what it means just by looking at the kanji’s. |
| Peter: You can see them inside the PDF and the kanji close up. This one is a really, really good example of why we are doing this course. |
| なつこ: Uhoo… |
| Peter: Okay let’s take a look at the usage. Natsuko san, what do we have? |
| なつこ:半信半疑で聞く |
| Peter: To listen to someone only half believing. Now here it’s used in this adverbial form which means we have the phrase followed by |
| なつこ:で |
| Peter: The particle でand then we have |
| なつこ:聞く |
| Peter: The verb. So you notice, a lot of them in the adverbial form are followed byで okay. Now when you want someone to express that someone cannot be completely certain of something, you can say |
| なつこ:半信半疑だ |
| Peter: Kind of like hmm… |
| なつこ: Not sure or you can’t tell. |
| Peter: Let’s have a look at some sample sentences. |
| なつこ:私は彼の自慢話を半信半疑で聞いた |
| Peter: I listened to this big talk only half believing it. |
| なつこ:よくありますね |
| Peter: What do we have next? |
| なつこ:夫は残業で遅くなるといったが、私は半信半疑だった |
| Peter: My husband told me that he would be home late because he had to work overtime but I only half believed him. |
| なつこ: What is she doubting about? |
| Peter: I don’t know but I am getting the impression that half doubting is not a good thing. |
| なつこ: Well at least it’s worse than completely believing. |
| Peter: Natsuko san, it seems like you are a bit半信半疑の性格 |
| なつこ: 半信半疑の性格I think you don’t use it that way. |
| Peter: How can I say like it seems like you are very skeptical? |
| なつこ:疑い深い |
| Peter:勉強になりますね |
| なつこ: So when you are talking about someone’s character, you usually don’t use this Yojijukugo. |
| Peter: And that’s one of the reasons I really love these lessons because I am even learning as we go because I want to say things but勉強になっています |
| なつこ:私も勉強になってます |
| Peter: Okay. Next we have |
| なつこ:彼は必ずお金を返すと私に約束したが、私は半信半疑だ |
| Peter: He promised me he will pay me the money back but I am half in doubt. Now Natsuko san, the first phrase we looked at today was |
| なつこ:年功序列 |
| Peter: That is a very, very common one right? |
| なつこ: Yes. You see a lot of them. |
| Peter: Newspaper, economics, kind of the economic part, finance part of the paper. What about the second one? |
| なつこ: Well it’s also used very frequently but it’s more emotional word, isn’t it? So maybe you see more in stories or you know, people’s talking. |
| Peter: Okay Natsuko san有難うございます. Now be sure to stop by and pick up the PDF. Inside the PDF, you can see the characters which is the second part of this series. It can really help you understand the way Japanese people think. |
| なつこ: Yes. |
Outro |
| Peter: All right, that’s going to do for today. |
| なつこ:それじゃあまた |
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