生憎 (あいにく) "likes and dislikes, (sorry), but..." I see the meaning has now been changed… - Feed Post by mog86uk
生憎 (あいにく) "likes and dislikes, (sorry), but..."
I see the meaning has now been changed slightly? Oh... http://japaneseclass.jp/forum/thread/1353
This change from capital 'S' to lower case 's' has probably made the meaning more wrong and definitely more confusing than it was before! xD
The reason for it being capital 'S' was because "Sorry, but" is a single expression (although I think the parenthesis make it more confusing). E.g. "Sorry, but I don't have any left to give you".
It's not that one translation is "sorry" and another translation is "but". This has become even less obvious now, as you can't tell where one translation stops and the next one starts. It now looks like there are three translations: "likes and dislikes", "(sorry)", and "but".
More importantly... I've never understood why 生憎 has "likes and dislikes" in the listed for it on JCJP. Isn't this a mistake?
I mentioned this once a long time ago. The most basic interpretation of 生憎 is "unfortunate" or "unfortunately" (depending on whether used as a noun or adverb). So you can use 生憎 to translate "unfortunately" into Japanese in this sentence: "Unfortunately I don't have any left to give you". This English sentence is interpretted as a form of apology. So, in this sentence, 生憎 means "Unfortunately [...]", or can alternatively be translated as either "Sorry, but [...]" or sometimes just "But [...]" (hence the parenthesis around 'sorry').
I see the meaning has now been changed slightly? Oh... http://japaneseclass.jp/forum/thread/1353
This change from capital 'S' to lower case 's' has probably made the meaning more wrong and definitely more confusing than it was before! xD
The reason for it being capital 'S' was because "Sorry, but" is a single expression (although I think the parenthesis make it more confusing). E.g. "Sorry, but I don't have any left to give you".
It's not that one translation is "sorry" and another translation is "but". This has become even less obvious now, as you can't tell where one translation stops and the next one starts. It now looks like there are three translations: "likes and dislikes", "(sorry)", and "but".
More importantly... I've never understood why 生憎 has "likes and dislikes" in the listed for it on JCJP. Isn't this a mistake?
I mentioned this once a long time ago. The most basic interpretation of 生憎 is "unfortunate" or "unfortunately" (depending on whether used as a noun or adverb). So you can use 生憎 to translate "unfortunately" into Japanese in this sentence: "Unfortunately I don't have any left to give you". This English sentence is interpretted as a form of apology. So, in this sentence, 生憎 means "Unfortunately [...]", or can alternatively be translated as either "Sorry, but [...]" or sometimes just "But [...]" (hence the parenthesis around 'sorry').
posted by mog86uk
Comments 4
In short: The meaning listed on JCJP for 生憎 definitely still needs to be changed.
I think simply "unfortunately" on its own would be good enough, but here are larger range of definitions to choose from: http://www.excite.co.jp/dictionary/japanese_english/?block=57856&offset=1556
Also, I finally figured out why JCJP incorrectly lists "likes and dislikes" as a meaning for 生憎!
愛憎 (あいぞう) "love and hate; likes and dislikes" is the word where this meaning comes from.
愛 (アイ) "love, affection"
憎 (ゾウ, にく.む, にく.い, にく.しみ, にく.らしい) "hate, detest"
The first kanji is different to 生憎 but read with the same reading "あい".
The second kanji is the same kanji as 生憎 but uses on'yomi instead.
Every time I've encountered 生憎 up until now, I've always wondered if there may be some possibility "likes and dislikes" is actually correct. Now I can stop wondering about it, now that I know for 99.999% sure that this meaning is wrong. ^^
thank you! I changed it to, unfortunately (Sorry, but ...)- I re-encountered it earlier today, not long before you posted this. I will probably have to wait a long time before the word comes back round to see this change. :P
That word was the most major error I had noticed with any word on JCJP, so very glad to know it is now fixed. ^^ - ya.. sorry for the problem.. you can find it here too :) http://japaneseclass.jp/lessons/vocabulary/6/56
