Friday afternoon, I listen to an American
haiku and say to a poet friend of mine,
“In Japan, we call that a senryu, not haiku.”
“After I finish reading this book,” she
says lifting a book, “I’ll give it to you.
Tell me what you think?” The
title of the book was something like “How to Write a Haiku.”
“Haiku must include a season,” I say
although I’m not an expert, “Takahama Kyosi wrote a very good book on
haiku. He elevated the traditional art. I don’t know why some people don’t honor
that.” Some Japanese also call senryu,
haiku.
“Is it translated?” she says.
“I don’t know, but it should be.”
Earlier in the morning, on the same Friday,
I wrote a quick Japanese note and left a bag of kumquat at the door of my
Taiwanese friend’s house. She and her
daughter’s family together had treated me a Chinese dinner last Christmas. It was a feast. I wish I had something better than
kumquat. Many thoughts passed through my
mind. A lot happened to the family last
year. I hopped on my bike and delivered the
bag thinking whether I should have added the comparable “too” word in Japanese
to the sentence, “Please give this to your daughter.”
Tuesday,
over a phone, the Taiwanese friend says,
“My daughter happened to look at your note and
spotted a Chinese character. Daughter in
Japanese kanji is mother in Chinese character.”
Silence.
“What?” I say.
“What you wrote was mother in Chinese.”
“Wow!” I say, and we burst into
laughter.
I think many Chinese
characters were mistranslated into the Japanese language and also many were created
separately in Japan. Some of those Japanese
created kanji were exported back to China.
So it’s hard to tell what happened to each word or character. But here are a few samples. Run (走る) in Japanese means walk in Chinese.
Japanese “letters 手紙” is toilet papers in Chinese.
Like the toilet-papers example, some are disastrous but hilarious.
Today is Wednesday. This afternoon, I asked another friend of
mine while grocery shopping if there were English words that came from her
mother tongue that have different meaning.
She said no. “But,” she said
later, “At our last year festival, someone was complaining that a banner on a
festival car displayed a wrong English word.”
“What was the word?”I say.
“I don’t remember the word, but the word isn’t
important. What they said was
important. Why should we complain? This is the US, not our home country.”
I don’t agree or
disagree. Most of us would let it go
even if we agreed with complainers. Besides,
the word, complainers, is judgmental.
There is no harm in discussing about words. It’s actually more desirable to argue about
words than fighting in war. We should
iron out all the words, so we will be too tired to fight.
One word I haven’t given up is the ceremony
of “tea ceremony.” I dislike it because
the traditional Japanese art is not ceremony.
I’ve explained this many times.
In fact, every chance I get I would explain which I am doing it now. That Japanese traditional art is ocha. Can you say it, Ocha? Yes, it is ocha.
Next is “Pint.” It’s a bit different, but for the theme of
different meaning, it is the same. I
follow the blog by a Canadian blogger.
North of 49. From her recent
blog, I’ve learned from one of the comments that American pint and British pint
are different. Have you known that? I didn’t know. This reminded me of the complaints we used to
receive when I had worked for a small Japanese trading company in Los Angeles
in 70s.
The complaints
were related to the measurement for making rice using Panasonic rice
cookers. Our manager put a small ad in Sunset magazine. The problem came from the fact that the
Japanese measuring cup is smaller than the American cup. At first, we were confused of those
complaints, but we became used to it. Now
I think about it, the customers must have been really confused by that, but
they, too, got used to it, I guess. The product
became a hit.
Oh, about ocha, I wrote essays, short stories,
and a play. I’ve blogged about it time
to time, and I even wrote a first draft of a screen play about it. Since 1996 after my mother died, I’ve been
trying to complete my memoir about her, and her life was all about ocha. She
was an Ocha teacher. You are right. The art looks ceremonious in communal events,
and most people only see the art in such events. I’m not against communal events for their cost
effectiveness and democratic way, but experienced ocha practitioners prefer a
small intimate party among themselves. And I’m certain they have no such
ceremony idea in their heads, otherwise it would ruin their art.
Next word is very serious. The word is “holocaust.” Last month, I bought a book titled “The Arabs
and the Holocaust” by Gilbert Achcar to learn more about Middle East. In the page 6 of the introduction, there was
fascinating discussion on the word.
“It is derived from a Greek word, holokaustos, which
means “entirely consumed by fire.” More
precisely, it comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Leviticus
1:3) and has entered the Western language by way of Church Latin. The word refers to the ancient Israelites’s practice
of burning sacrificed animals as an expiatory offering.”
I
don’t think the first group of people who started to use the word “holocaust” as
the way we are using today knew the last sentence. What do you think? The book goes into more detail about the word
and other words such as Shoah and Nakba.
I read that the people who speak the Hebrew use “Shoah” instead. Also Nakba is an Arabic word. The title of the chapter is “Introduction:
Words Laden with Pain.”
Leaving the serious word and going back to ocha
again, did someone say, “What’s ocha?” Thank
you for asking. O is honorific, cha
means tea. Tea in many languages is cha
or close to that. A British writer just
told me that in Cockney London, people say a cup of cha. They probably don’t know how aristocratic their
word has become. So please remember
it.
One
more thing. We put “o” on many words to
show our honor and appreciation to the word and the receiver of the word. We most often refer to the art, “ocha,” in
our conversation. Sado and chanoyu are
also used to describe ocha, but they are used mainly in writing. So please learn this word, Ocha, ocha. Ocha! You don’t need to ask anymore question. Just say Ocha!
I think many words in the dictionary are
mistranslated at first, and we hardly take time thinking and researching their
meaning. We just use it. For ease of communication, we need words, and
as soon as they spread, the majority wins.
And once it goes into a dictionary, it’s hard to fight back. Just to
promote one word, ocha, I feel like an activist.
