UZURA vs USAGI

 

We Germans like a good nice word a lot, not only the vernacular. And it is sometimes very nice that the words for different things are different also. After all there is lots and lots of space in Germany, unlike in the Japan which is tokidoki crowded. I always tend to be a little casual when I talk to my friends because you cannot misunderstand the words in German so easily. Not so in Japanese. The Japanese, they are very very resourceful and efficient and they are also this way with their words. You see, the Japanese I think they like to save a lot and so they do not want to have so many words and the dictionaries are already crowded like the commuter trains at 8 in the morning. They tend to use a single word for lots and lots of meanings but when you change a little thing in it the word means something very different all of a sudden. And this is a problem sometimes for lets say a relaxed speaker such as yours truly. For instance when I sat in my favorite izakaya last week with my friend Kenji and some of my other japanese friends, being maybe a little more relaxed after a beer or two. Well I wanted to show off my cooking skills to the girls and so I told them my favorite recipe and said that when I wanted to have a very very special flavor to it I put an egg or two of the usagi over the finished dish. But then the girls started to giggle and the boys rolled with laughter (Kenji even sprayed his beer over the counter). Hazukashiii. ..... I had wanted to say UZURA which means quail but I said usagi which means rabbit- and you do not have lots of fun eating rabbits "eggs" unless the rabbit happens to be the easter bunny. (But this one comes only once a year plus he brings not his eggs neither since they come from the chicken). So again I was the butt of the jokes of my friends for the whole evening afterwards, who kept telling me that two letters CAN make a lot of difference. But when I was a little more sober the next day day and looked into my language book, I was stunned: the two very different words for the two very different animals, a bird and a mammal do take the same counter - wa... 羽 ... how can that possibly be? (They also can take the hiki 匹 I think but this spoils the punchline a bit) So do the Japanese skimp on their words and do not waste much here or not? Honestly, I don't know. (Maybe I will have to ask my teacher at Asahi Nihongo's next time.)