does a tsu i mean more on the expensive side or tall side - Feed Post by marabean
does a tsu i mean more on the expensive side or tall side
posted by marabean
Comments 11
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "a tsu i".
Do you mean takai? （高い）
It is frequently used with both meanings.
It quite literally means "height". Depending on the context it can refer to the height of for instance a price (expensive) or physical height (tall).
I noticed something interesting recently...
高い can also be written instead as 高価い (both are pronounced the same 'takai'). This 高価い can only be used to mean 'expensive' though, whereas 高い can mean both 'tall' or 'expensive'.- That's right ^^. It can also be used as an adjectival noun when you drop the い and write it as こうか.
@mogさん 高価い is grammatically wrong. It's not listed in the dictionary. Someone made it up. I can imagine some Japanese people want to use it, because we can distinguish between high and expensive in Japanese.
高い and 高価（な） are correct.- 高価い【たかい】does look pretty strange grammatically.
Like TheHardSixさん mentioned, 高価【こうか】is already a 形容動詞 (~な adjective). Also, 価 on it's own cannot be used as an 形容詞 (~い adjective).
Some online dictionaries do list 高価い for たかい, although some these list it as irregular kanji usage like Denshi Jisho does:
http://www.jisho.org/words?jap=takai
Microsoft IME doesn't show 高価い in the conversion list for 'takai', however Google IME does...
Now, what about this one: 美味な【びみ.な】, 美味い【うま.い】, 美味しい【おい.しい】? This looks like it's exactly the same situation (maybe worse)! :P - I think the difference is that there is no redundancy in 美味しい and 美味い. 美 is simply beauty and 味 is simply taste, so put together they're tasty, right?
But 高い by itself already expressed the height of a price or distance from the ground, so adding 価 just makes it redundant. I think that's where the difference is :).
Strictly speaking though, the only thing necessary for this usage to be recorded in dictionaries is that enough people start using it, so maybe in 10 or 20 years.... ?
I'm out for today. Happy studying guys. - 美味ってあんまり使わないですね。ちょっと面白おかしく、美味なり。。。とか使う芸人さんがいます。うまいは、うまいか旨いですね。美味いは当て字です。
あ、当て字という言葉だ。
あてじ0【当て字・宛て字】
漢字の本来の意味とは関係なくその音や訓を借りてあてはめた漢字のうち，その語の表記法として慣用のできたもの。また，そのような用字法。「目出度（めでた）い」「野暮（やぼ）」「呉呉（くれぐれ）」の類。借字。
でも、まだ高価い、美味いなどは、まだすべての人に受け入れられていないから、この辞書の定義のように当て字とは言い難いかな。
そのうち、辞書に載る日も近いかもしれませんね。
辞書より
びみ1【美味】
（名形動）文ナリ
① うまい味。おいしい物。「山海の―をとりそろえる」
② 味がよいこと。おいしいこと。また，そのさま。「旬（しゆん）の魚は―だ」
美味しい おいしい
（形）〔形容詞「いしい」に接頭語「お」の付いたもの。「美味しい」とも書く〕
辞書には正式に書かれていますね。
うまい2【旨い・甘い】
（形）《文クうまし》
① （「美味い」とも書く）飲食物の味がよい。美味である。おいしい。《旨・甘》 ↔まずい。 「―い料理」
ちなみに、甘い は普通「あまい」と読みます。Sweetです。
- ＠TheHardSixさん、 シンプルで分かりやすい解説です。。。。私、日本語が上手くないので説明できない。。。 あ、頭が悪いからだ。笑
あてじ【当て字】
【音への】a phonetic equivalent; 【文字への】a substitute character.
当て字ってこれでわかるのかな？ - いやあ、私の説明なんかｐｃを消すついでの取り急ぎの回答でしたよ。もっと考えてから答えればよかったです ^^;.
モグモグさんは綺麗に説明してくれましたね。じゃ、それで伝わったかどうかが心配のようなので、念の為にもう一度今まで集まった情報を簡潔に英語でくりかえしてみましょうか。
So if I get it right, both 高価い and 美味い are ateji. Ateji are not the original characters used to refer to the word they are attributed to. They can either be attributed to a word because they have a similar pronunciation (like クラブ→倶楽部) or because they have a similar meaning.
In this case, the "correct" manners of writing the words in question with kanji are respectively 高い and 旨い , and both 高価い and 美味い are used by some people because they express the same meaning, even though the pronunciation of these characters does not match.
However, their use is not common enough to be considered standard.
という感じかな ^^
皆が話しているのはスレ主の本来の質問への答えになっているかは未だに不明ですが、少なくともこの問題は解決されたようでスッキリしましたｗ。 - Very interesting responses. I also wrote my reply a bit hastily, as I needed to turn my PC off and go to work. I added the bit about 美味 without giving it much thought. I now notice that 旨い is the standard way to writeうまい, and that 美味い would be an 当て字 form.
Thanks for all the other interesting details too.
@mogmogさん I'm actually more interested now in w - (bleh... hit the comment button by accident...)
@mogmogさん I'm actually more interested now in what your wrote from your dictionary. The ~い adjective 形 is listed as 文ク, but the ~しい adjective is listed as 形容詞. Why isn't the ~しい adjective listed as 文シク, and aren't both ~い and ~しい adjectives classed as 形容詞 ?
Fortunately, as I've spent (or wasted) some time learning about 文語 from some websites like http://kafkafuura.wordpress.com/classical-japanese , so I understood the terms used. :P
