of the subtle nuances of the language. I've never stopped studying, but now I try to learn only what I want to know and what I can use. I have not had a chance to speak to the Emperor and have had little need to read cursive script. What I would like is to enrich my everyday spoken language and to use more effectively the language I have already acquired. There is no better way to do this than to add a few of the colorful onomatopoeic phrases the Japanese put to such skillful use themselves.
There is no right or wrong way to learn Japanese. After an initial period of hard work picking up the basics, it should become fun. Whether you are seriously studying Japanese, hoping one day to become a great expert, or just grazing on the surface of the language, trying to decide whether you want to delve deeper, I hope this book will be of use to you. Above all, as you read the book, I hope you will enjoy thinking about the language and how you can make use of these expressions yourself.
I would like to thank Keiko Plater for her assistance in proofreading this text and the staff of the Charles E. Tuttle Company for their editorial guidance.
• INTRODUCTION •
If you have ever lived in Japan, you have undoubtedly come across the phrase pera pera, often used in praise and encouragement of any attempt foreigners make to communicate in Japanese. You've probably eaten shabu shabu in a Japanese restaurant. When you've barely met a deadline at work, you may have heard your boss mutter "giri giri da."
Strolling down a shopping street, you are likely to be struck by the noisy clatter, or pachi pachi, of millions of small steel balls coursing through the veins of Japanese pinball machines in pachinko parlors. If you get stuck in a traffic jam, you simmer with frustration at the slow driving pace, or noro noro unten. You are surprised when you discover that Japanese dogs go wan wan when they bark, rather than bowwow.
These expressions all belong to a very important group of words in Japanese, a group that defies our efforts to classify them. Are they adverbs or adjectives, sound effects or sound symbols? One scholar will call them sound symbolisms, another will carefully divide them into mimesis and onomatopoeia, with further differentiation between those words describing voices or sounds and those describing the condition of things or human emotions. None of this helps one to learn or appreciate the language, and the majority of Japanese themselves would probably have no idea what you were talking about if you tried to put these words in categories. However, they would begin to relax immediately if you could skillfully insert one or two of them into your spoken Japanese.
Because I needed to call them something, I have gathered these words under one general heading: onomatopoeic phrases. The Oxford English Dictionary defines onomatopoeia as the formation of a name or word by an imitation of the sound associated with the thing or word designated. Alternatively, it can be a word imitating the sound of the thing or action that it signifies. It is a Greek word in origin, formed from onoma, meaning name, and poiein, to make or to coin. The great 19th century language scholar, Max Müller, described onomatopoeia as "name-poetry." Onomatopoeic words should express that which strikes our fancy about a thing, rather than the most important aspect or specific quality of the thing.
Japanese onomatopoeic phrases usually, but not always, consist of more than one word: be it the same word repeated again, such as gota gota, the same word repeated again in a slightly altered form, such as dotabata, or a word plus a particle, such as kichin to. Doubled words, such as yama yama (many mountains), are not included in this book. The doubling of a word is not, strictly speaking, a basis for classifying the resulting phrase as onomatopoeia.
There are many colorful onomatopoeic phrases in English, such as boogie-woogie, chitchat, dillydally, splish splash, la-di-da, hodgepodge, teeny weeny, and yakety-yak, just to mention a few. Sources for English onomatopoeia are much more practical, and not as poetic as those for the Japanese. As we have lived in proximity to livestock and domestic animals, words imitating their sounds abound in English. The Japanese, on the other hand, have many more words describing wild birds and insects, which they like to refer to in their poetry. In general, their language is rich in words expressing feeling; English in words of action. Japanese verbs are less varied, so they need to be described and explained further. While we plod, stroll, strut, and swagger in English, the Japanese can only walk if they don't make use of onomatopoeia to describe how that walk looks, sounds, or feels. There are few Japanese words describing taste or smell, but the Japanese are extremely sensitive to how things feel, and there are many onomatopoeic phrases to describe the touch or feel of something, even how food feels in the mouth. As in any language, there are many words and phrases to describe what is important to the speakers, or what sticks out in their perception of their environment. Anyone who has spent a humid summer in Japan will not be surprised to know that there are numerous ways of talking about dampness. Always concerned about their feelings, the Japanese have many words for expressing anger and only a few to express a calm state. These expressions are the music of their language. They bring poetry to their everyday encounters and transactions with their fellow countrymen, and bring life to the basic and monotonal speech patterns of their language.
The Origins of Japanese Onomatopoeia
The first noises a baby makes are only sounds, from which words later emerge. Man's earliest attempts at language must have consisted of grunts and cries of joy or pain or imitations of sounds in nature. When I decided to write this book, I was eager to discover how far back in time I could go and still find examples of onomatopoeic phrases in the Japanese language. If our earliest words were just sounds, it would follow that there would be examples of onomatopoeia in the earliest Japanese literature.
This was not as simple a task as it might seem, because the first form of writing used by the Japanese was Chinese in origin, rather like European scholars' use of Latin in ancient times. No trace exists of any writing system predating the introduction of Chinese texts to Japan around a.d. 400. Scholars can read these ancient texts, but it is impossible to know exactly how the language would have sounded when pronounced by the ancients. Eventually, the Japanese began to use Chinese characters phonetically, to represent individual syllables of Japanese names or words. The Kojiki, which appeared in 712, and the Man'yoshu, also compiled in the 8th century, were written in a mixture of styles, but are considered works of pure Japanese literature. References to the use of onomatopoeia in these two works are the earliest that I have found: sawa sawa (Kojiki), to describe a rustling sound; hodoro hodoro (Man'yoshu), for falling snow; moyuru (Kojiki), for rain falling; koro koro (Kojiki), for raking over salt; and bishi bishi (Man'yoshu), for a sniffly nose. Sawa sawa still exists today, with its original meaning. Hodoro hodoro is no longer used but has become hadare or hadara, referring to specks or patches. Moyuru is no longer in common use but survives as moya moya, meaning foggy or misty, and is related to moeru, to burn or glow. Koro koro, now meaning to roll over and over, is widely used. Bishi bishi no longer refers to a sniffling nose but instead means to be strict or rigid, or to snap. The ancient phrase seems to have been transformed into the modern day bisho bisho, meaning dripping wet.
These very early literary examples of onomatopoeic phrases are not numerous, but this is because the sources are mainly songs or tanka poems of thirty-one syllables that were written according to a strict and lofty classical literary style. That they appear at all leads us to assume that they were undoubtedly numerous in the everyday conversations of the common people.
Japanese onomatopoeic phrases derive from three sources: first and most important, the native spoken language of the local people; second, Chinese words that were introduced into the Japanese vocabulary many centuries ago; and third, words coming from European languages, such as jigu zagu, to describe a sewing machine stitch or a student demonstration, or chiku taku, to describe the sound of a clock. This last is the source of the fewest expressions.
When the rapid addition of words of Chinese origin into the native vocabulary began to occur, a method for incorporating them as adverbs
