Learn about 一挙両得 and 一心不乱
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| INTRODUCTION |
| さくら:さくらです。 |
| Peter: Peter here. |
| さくら: 四字熟語 |
| Peter: Lesson 6. Getting Two Birds and Losing Two Bugs. Sakura san, thank you again for joining us for this lesson of Yojijukugo which is idiomatic phrases based on four kanji character compounds. |
| さくら: Yes. |
| Peter: Quite a mouthful. |
| さくら:そうね |
| Peter: So now for those of you unfamiliar with the format, we are going to go over two main phrases, two idiomatic phrases and we are going to kind of delve into the meaning of it. |
| さくら: Yes. |
| Peter: Sakura san, |
| さくら:はい |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Peter: Which phrase would you like to cover first? |
| さくら:一挙両得 |
| Peter: To work both ways. Now it’s kind of similar to another phrase. |
| さくら: Yes. |
| Peter: Killing |
| さくら: Two words with one stoneね。一石二鳥 |
| Peter: Which we also have in English. |
| さくら: Oh yes same. |
| Peter: Yeah I think this one is in a lot of different languages. |
| さくら:そうなんですか |
| Peter: Two words, one stone. Now it’s kind of similar but there is a little bit of kind of difference. We are going to cover that in a minute but again the phrase was |
| さくら:一挙両得 |
| Peter: To work both ways. Now we are going to take a look at each one of the characters. Again, there is four characters here. So what does the first character mean? |
| さくら: One. |
| Peter: And the second one, |
| さくら: Behavior. |
| Peter: Third. |
| さくら: Both. |
| Peter: And |
| さくら: Gain. |
| Peter: So one behavior, both gain. |
| さくら: Yes. |
| Peter: One action, you get two things. |
| さくら: Huh! |
| Peter: Or you kind of get both things, both benefits. Now inside of these four character compounds, there is also two character compounds. So we are going to take a look at the first two character compound. |
| さくら:一挙 |
| Peter: Which means one action. The second, the following two letter compound is |
| さくら:両得 |
| Peter: To gain both. Now this expression actually comes from Sakura san? |
| さくら: The history book about Chinese dynasty清. |
| Peter: The 清dynasty. |
| さくら: 清dynasty. |
| Peter: And it’s similar to an expression we covered just before. Killing two birds with one stone. |
| さくら:一石二鳥 |
| Peter: Now Sakura san, let’s take a look at the usage. |
| さくら: Okay. |
| Peter: When can you have two kinds of benefits by doing one action? When can you use this phrase一挙両得 |
| さくら: You can say something, something は一挙両得だ |
| Peter: Which means to get both benefits from doing that thing. Okay how about a sample sentence? |
| さくら:このツアーは山と海の両方が楽しめて一挙両得だ |
| Peter: This tour is like getting two great things for the price of one because you can enjoy both the mountains and the sea. So the person speaking likes both the mountains and the sea and this tour goes through them both. So, |
| さくら:一挙両得 |
| Peter: And one more. Sakura san, how about your recent change in lifestyle? |
| さくら: Okay.自転車通勤はダイエットができるし、交通費もかからないので、一挙両得だ |
| Peter: So biking to work lets you diet and at the same time save money. |
| さくら:そう。 |
| Peter: Two great things for the price of one. |
| さくら: そうLose weightと no chargeね |
| Peter: It’s free. |
| さくら: Free. |
| Peter: And Sakura san really does this. |
| さくら: Yes I started only yesterdayなんだけど and it’s so hard in Tokyo but it’s good. I think many people are starting this because of the high gasoline prices and environment. |
| Peter: The environment, that’s right環境にもやさしいですね。 |
| さくら:そう、環境にもやさしい Environment friendlyね |
| Peter: Yeah and how long is the bike ride? |
| さくら: 30 minutes. |
| Peter: Yeah大変ですね |
| さくら: そんなことないよOnly 30 minutesたったの30分 |
| Peter:お気をつけてください |
| さくら:はい |
| Peter: Please take care of yourself. |
| さくら:有難うございます。 |
| Peter: Now, basically umm this kind of leads into the next phrase because I think you are going to need this to kind of keep going at it but before that, let’s take a look at the opposite. What is the opposite of一挙両得 |
| さくら:二兎を追う者は一兎をも得ず |
| Peter: Which literally means if you try to catch two rabbits, you won’t even be able to catch one. |
| さくら: Ah! |
| Peter: What’s wrong Sakura san? |
| さくら: My biking I am chasing two thingsね. I must be careful. |
| Peter: Yes頑張ってください |
| さくら:はい、有難うございます。 |
| Peter: But this is a really good expression. Literally the one two chases two rabbits gets none and if you try to do two things at once, it’s not going to work. |
| さくら: Right. |
| Peter: I like this one a lot. Story of my life人生をものがたっています. So kind of the story of my life, no rabbits. Okay on to our second phrase. |
| さくら:はい。一心不乱 |
| Peter: Single mindedness, deep concentration which you will need to continue biking to work. |
| さくら:そうですね。 |
| Peter: Every day. Okay so what does the first character mean? |
| さくら: One. |
| Peter: The second character |
| さくら: Mind. |
| Peter: Third character |
| さくら: Negative. |
| Peter: And fourth |
| さくら: Disorder. |
| Peter: One mind negative disorder and it means to concentrate single-mindedly on something without being distracted by other things like work or… |
| さくら: Yes一心不乱にペダルをこぐ |
| Peter: Single-mindedly pedal. |
| さくら:そう。 |
| Peter: You are very brave Sakura san. |
| さくら:はい |
| Peter: Now, when you are doing something, you are really concentrating much like Sakura san just said, you can say the phrase plusにする. Can we have a sample sentence? |
| さくら:私はテレビも見ず、一心不乱に勉強した |
| Peter: I studied heart and soul without watching TV. So here, the phrase comes before the verb and the verb and this phrase are separated byに. What else do we have? |
| さくら:彼は一心不乱にシュートの練習をした |
| Peter: He concentrated single-mindedly on his goal of shooting as in like soccer. |
| さくら: Yes shooting practice. |
| Peter: Yeah. So every day he was practicing and practicing. So it’s very easy to visualize Sakura san pedaling now. |
| さくら: Yes. |
| Peter: And it is probably easier to visualize if you stop by the site and go to about us, meet the team and there, you can see some pictures of Sakura san to really get a visual idea of the… |
| さくら:一心不乱にね |
| Peter: How do you say that Sakura san, game face, it’s like when you are真剣. You know you are serious about something and you are trying really hard. How can we say that like game face? |
| さくら:真剣な表情 |
| Peter: So you can picture Sakura san’s真剣な表情. |
Outro |
| Peter: Okay for these lessons, the PDF is very, very beneficial. There it has a write up, very detailed explanation, how to use it, what the expression means and there is also some other related expressions we didn’t have time to cover today. So you definitely want to pick up this PDF. Sakura san, thank you again. |
| さくら: Thank you じゃあみなさん頑張ってくださいね。 |
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