Teacher Discussion Forums

Recently a famous actor here called Jun Negami died.
His wife Peggy Hayama, a famous singer, was
talking about her husband on TV a few days ago.
She said MADARA BOKE. It was the first time I heard
the word, but I could easily figure out the meaning.
MADARA is 'dapple', 'mottle' or 'spots' according to
my dictionary. I think MADARA sometimes means 'not
constant'. BOKE is senility. Thus 'inconsistent
senility'. He knows things quite well now, but in
twenty minutes he is quite senile. But soon OK.
Some thing like that I think. Do you have a term
for that? inconsistent senility
Thank you.

maybe "periodic senility" or "periods of forgetfulness"?

Thank you for all the kind answers.
I'll miss you.

"Miss me"?But I'm not going anywhere!

I have to say that I enjoy hearing about concepts for which the Japanese have a specific word, one that may or may not have an English equivalent. Do these words just spring up spontaneously? Is there some media guru who uses them and makes them popular? In the States, some magazines have contests where readers send in suggestions for new words to describe a particular subject, but these are purely humorous and never make it into general usage.

'Miss' - that might be another language problem. Maybe my use was incorrect.
Anyway, about the urban words, my answer is yes and no. I think most of the words I posted are recognized by any average Japanese. Whether or not they will stay forever is unknown. May I categorize?
1. those which are very prevalent now but may soon disappear.
2. those which have been coined rather recently but are prevalent and registered in most dictionaries.
3. those which were coined a long time ago (some 100 years or so ago) but are still considered slang expressions.

One of the terms that I think are interesting is NUREOCHIBA (wet fallen leaf) - hard to shake off. This refers to a retired husband. This was recently reported by the Washington Post as a retired husband syndrome (RHS).

You could also say the husband has a "short memory (span)," if he forgets things quickly.

Sounds like you guys are believers in the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (big words for being fans of Sapir-and especially Whorf)...but as the answers to Itasan show, equivalents can be usually be found, even if the context is not always clear enough for the answer to be more than tentative (by that, I mean the hesitation in answering is not really due to English actually lacking the "Japanese" concept-word(s))...although some variation in exact phrasing of concepts (and/or fuzziness in understood meaning between languages - re differing semantic "frames") is to be expected.

(For an interesting discussion of the use of frame semantics in translation see Croft and Cruise's Cognitive Linguistics (CUP 2004) pp 19-21).

Oh, there's also the relatively straightforward 'I think he's going a bit senile' (in which 'senile' is modified, as in the Japanese; note also the use of progressive aspect); then there is the possible if not likely expansion by way of basic explication rather than colourful phrasing ('He knows things quite well now, but in twenty minutes he is quite senile. But soon OK (again)' etc), which is probably more similar still between the languages.

One word

'dotty'
Very much like dappled.

My mothers gone a bit 'dotty' in her old age.
He's a lovely man, 'dotty', but very nice.

Dotty is usually used affectionately.