A little something I'd like to add on my own experiences;
When I first started learning Japanese, my favorite way to practice was translating songs, which really isn't ideal considering that some Japanese songs are very complex...
Anyway, here's a line that messed with my brains; "大切にしなくちゃ"
It took me a while to figure out that しなくち --> しなければならない but then, I had never heard of 大切にする. So I translated it as "I must do it importantly" and was really confused. Now I know it means something along the lines of "I have to take care of it/cherish it"
It's also funny how I had heard ちゃった
consciously maybe once or twice before and thought "huh, interesting" but as soon as SM pointed out that ちゃった--＞～てしまった the next time I watched a Japanese show I noticed that ちゃった must have been said at least 10 times. It's odd to think how automatically we tune out words we don't know (or maybe that's just me D: )
Recently, I called SM "the tits" (which is a very odd saying now that I look at it from a different perspective...
) My dad told me a story of how back in the '80's he had a co-worker who called everything awesome "the tits" (e.g. "That movie was the tits, man!") and my dad said it bugged the crap out of him... so of course my siblings and I used that term a bunch just to mess with him
But it seems like as soon as my family started using that term a bunch I started noticing it being used on TV
The point I'm making is it's easy to think "Japanese expressions are weird!" from an English-speaking perspective, but our expressions are pretty damn weird too -- we're just used to them
Awesome things are 'the feces' or 'the breasts' haha. Very strange huh?
"This food is shit!" (negative comment)
"This food is
the shit!" (
positive comment)
These are expressions are made even more confusing considering the Japanese language doesn't really have articles (the words 'a', 'an' and 'the')!