new expressions

P&T notes – ‘yes’ and ‘no’

the final joke

Let’s set straight the joke at the end of the scene. In the anime, it appears as if Kei is upset that Chinatsu is only willing to help Makoto if she gets a donut out of it; after Makoto requests permision to give her one, Kei appears to change his mind and claim that he also wants one. In the manga, the joke is different: Kei is upset that Chinatsu is only getting a donut for herself, i.e., what he minds is not that Chinatsu is blackmailing Makoto for a donut, but instead that he is not getting a share of the booty.

discrepancy

In this scene, there is an interesting discrepancy between the manga and the anime. We see these discrepancies often and their value, for us, is that they describe either corrections, or how to say something in different ways.

When Chinatsu is getting ready to blackmail Makoto for a donut, she explains that they sell donuts at the mall. In the manga she uses:

あそこに　うってる、ドーナッツ…

while in the anime it was changed to

あそこで　うってる、ドーナッツ…

The first thing is that うってる is simply the fast way of saying 「うって　いる」, i.e., “selling”. Hence, in both versions Chinatsu is saying “they are selling donuts over there”. However, we use に to designate a location, while we use で to point out the location where an action takes place, i.e., “over there” is where they are selling donuts. Hence, あそこに means “is over there”, while あそこで means “it’s happening over there”. For example, 学校にいる is “I am at school” (no action) vs. 学校でたべる is “I eat at school” (action happening).

Both the manga and the anime version mean the same thing; it is not rare for a person to start a sentence using に, to designate a location, but midsentence, the person rephrases and ends the sentence with a verb that would have required で. Since there is no way to go back to fix that に particle, the sentence remains with a small error. Hence, what might have happened is that Chihiro Ishizuka Sensei, the author, wrote 「あそこにうってる、ドーナッツ…」, indicating that Chinatsu had said a sentence incorrectly, like children usually do, and the manga editor either didn’t notice it or accepted it; later, at the anime stage, where every sentence is scrutanized, the anime’s editor changed it to 「あそこでうってる、ドーナッツ…」.

yes and no

Although this comment is beyond 1st-grade, it is worth bringing it up because it’s pertinent to a moment in this scene of the anime that doesn’t happen often, and because saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ should be as basic as they come. “legends of localization” has an article on the same topic as it applies to video game localization.

What is the difference between “I could care less!” and “I couldn’t care less!”? Although from the logical point of view, these statements are polar opposites, we understand the spirit in which we say them and thus, they actually mean the same: “I don’t care!”. With this background, let’s consider the following positively-posed and negatively-posed questions:

Above we respond ‘yes’ to both the positive and negative-posed questions because the spirit of the question is to find out whether Makoto is a girl; since the answer is ‘yes, Makoto is a girl’, then we abbreviate it and reply ‘yes’ to the question regardless of whether it was posed positively or negatively. However, in the 3rd column we have rephrased the question of the 1st column to use intonation instead of the query grammar form. Now we can see that there is something off with the English answer because we are asking for opposite things, and in both cases we receive the same reply: “yes”. “yes… Makoto is a girl”, and “yes… Makoto is not a girl”.

Japanese only uses the intonation form of a question; it doesn’t have a query grammar form. Hence, in Japanese to pose a question we just state a statement and then either add か, or change the intonation, or both. If we translate 「はい」 as ‘yes’ and 「いいえ」 as ‘no’, sometimes we get an answer that disagrees with the English answer:

In English, the answer to ‘Makoto is not a girl?’ is はい because Makoto is, indeed, a girl, and the spirit of the question is to find out whether Makoto is a girl; we don’t care about the positive or negative logic involved. However, in Japanese, the answer to ‘Makoto is not a girl?’ is いいえ because in Japanese we are taking into account the logic of the question: ‘it is not true that Makoto is not a girl’, so the answer is いいえ.

The issue is that はい doesn’t mean ‘yes’ but it actually means ‘I agree’ or ‘correct!’, while いいえ doesn’t mean ‘no’ but actually it means ‘I disagree’ or ‘incorrect!’. Now let’s see the questions again:

The first answer is saying that ‘I agree that Makoto is a girl’ (or ‘It is correct that Makoto is a girl’) so the abreviation would be ‘I agree/correct!’, which is はい; the second answer is saying that ‘I disagree that Makoto is not a girl (or ‘It’s incorrect that Makoto is not a girl’)’ so the abbreviation would be ‘I disagree/incorect!’, which is いいえ. This is the reason why in Japanese the correct answer for ‘isn’t Makoto a girl?’ is いいえ instead of はい.

Translating はい as ‘yes’ and いいえ as ‘no’ works the vast majority of the time because the vast majority of the time we ask positively-posed questions in both English and Japanese, and in positively-posed questions ‘yes’ means the same as ‘I agree’ or ‘correct!’, and ‘no’ means the same as ‘I disagree’ or ‘incorrect!’. However, these answers don’t agree the few times in which we use negatively-posed questions. To play it safe, though, we can translate はい as ‘I agree/correct!’ and いいえ as ‘I disagree/incorrect!’, which works 100% of the time.

In the dialog between Kei and Makoto of the scene above, such a negatively-posed question comes up. Makoto is asking for a store where she can buy stuff and Kei, amazed, asks whether the very large luggage she brought with her is not enough, e.g., a negatively-posed question:

The negatively-posed question is the reason we translate Makoto’s Japanese ‘hai (It is correct that they were not enough)’ as an English ‘no (no, they were not enough)’ instead of an English ‘yes (yes, they were enough)’.

Yes… this is confusing, but the Japanese have an equally confusing time answering negatively-posed questions in English. An example from real life. A friend from grad school was sharing an office with a grad student from Japan. My friend asked him, in English, “didn’t my wife call while I was out?” and the Japanese student replied “No”. My friend interpreted the asnwer as “No, your wife didn’t call while you were out”, but later he found out that his wife had called and what the Japanese student had meant was “No, I disagree with your statement that your wife didn’t call while you were out because she did call”. It didn’t help that this particular Japanese student was a man of few words and didn’t elaborate. Hence, be careful interpreting replies to negatively-posed questions.

Another example. Say this is our first visit to Japan; a guide meet us at arrivals at the airport and asks ‘You have never been to Japan before?’ and our answer should be… “Yes”, meaning “correct! We have never been to Japan before”.

Another huge source of problems with Japanese replies is their strong reluctance to say “no” to a request. If a Japanese replies “that would be difficult” to a request, they are not saying “That would be difficult but I’ll do it”; instead they are saying “No, I will not do it” in the most evasive way they can. It is a bit like someone turning down a request for a date without saying “no”, with a reply such as “Sorry but I have plans to do my laundry”.

Finally, in English we have several ways to say “yes” like “yeah”, “yeap”, and “mm-hmm”, “uh-huh”. These are a some ways to say “yes” and “no” in Japanese: