Essay

Colorful language

By Samantha Loong

When I was an exchange student in Osaka many years ago, a few of us were taken on a trip to an international center, somewhere in the city. On arrival, the first thing one of us did was run to the library, head straight for the largest English-to-Japanese dictionary available, and look up swear words and abusive phrases.

She came back bitterly disappointed. "Look at this!" she exclaimed, while pointing at a photocopy of a dictionary entry. "It'll take me a week to say all that." I looked at the translations for a certain choice phrase that would be useful, say, if you wanted to forcefully and rudely tell someone to go away. In English, this is a succinct and powerful two-word phrase. In Japanese, the various translations of this phrase ran on for dozens of characters. As students who thought it was cool to swear in another language, how, we wondered, were we going to abuse each other in Japanese?

I delicately approached the subject of swearing with my first host family. I asked them what I should say, if I encountered any unwanted attention on a train. My eldest host sister proceeded to tell me what she once yelled at a man whose hand should not have been where it was. It was definitely not something I remember my textbooks teaching me. Nevertheless, I spent most of that evening practising the phrase with her, much to our amusement, and my host dad's embarrassment.

My host sister warned me it was a phrase I could only use for very specific situations. I had hoped for a more multi-purpose phrase, but then I realized that swearing, or "colorful language," doesn't quite work in the same way across languages.

I was 12, when an English friend first introduced me to the world of profanity. I picked up a lot of potty-mouthed things from her, but could never quite bring myself to use them liberally. In Japan, through mock arguments with friends and watching the odd TV drama, I found that being abusive to someone in Japan is not so much about what you say, but how you say it. In Japanese, it seems that a slight twist of a verb ending or inserting a rolling "r" sound, can make the difference between someone just leaving you alone, or running away fearing for their own personal safety!

Sometimes however, the most effective way to abuse someone, is to do it in your own language. I discovered this the one time I found myself yelling at a weirdo to "Back off!," although not exactly in those words. Even though he didn't understand English, without the help of any textbooks, dictionaries or translations, I think the way I delivered my lines opened his eyes and ears to a whole new spectrum of colors in the English language.

Shukan ST: August 6, 2010

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