In the last article, I talked about the ambiguity between Japanese singular and plural nouns through the following proverb:

Me kara uroko ga ochiru 目から鱗が落ちる(めからうろこがおちる)

The scales fell from my eyes.

For meanings of Japanese words above, please refer to the article, Singular and Plural in Japanese. What I’d like to say here is that this is not the only one example showing the Japanese ambiguity between singular and plural nouns. In this article, I will talk about it in the same way.

First of all, I have to find a proverb which is common in English and Japanese. Perhaps, it sounds difficult, but unexpectedly, it’s relatively easy. To be honest, I’m not sure why we have some common proverbs in different languages. I guess that these proverbs exported from China or other big countries a long time ago. Anyway, please take a look at the example below:

Buta ni shinju 豚に真珠(ぶたにしんじゅ)

Cast pearls before swine.

Here, the word, “buta 豚(ぶた)”, corresponds to the plural noun, “swine”, but it is usually translated to “pig” or “pigs”. “Ni に” is a case particle used to indicate the direction of action. “Shinju 真珠(しんじゅ)” can be translated to “pearl” or “pearls”.

Again, you can see how ambiguous Japanese is! The noun “buta 豚(ぶた)” can be considered as a singular or plural form depending on the context. Unfortunately, the above sentence is too short to tell us the context or tell us the situation behind it. Thus, we cannot understand how many pearls are casted before swine. Contrary to this, the English expression gives us more information. From the grammatical point of view, at least more than two pearls are casted. I’m not sure if really more than two pearls are casted, but the English one would succeed in emphasizing the meaning of the proverb, I think. “Cast pearls before swine” is much better than “cast a pearl before swine” in expressing the waste of values.

I believe that I’m not the only one who tends to consider these nouns appearing in proverbs as singulars. Or perhaps, I would have to say that Japanese people usually don’t pay attention to the border between singular and plural nouns. I think the latter expression is more precise. I’d like to introduce the above English expression to my Japanese friends and explain how Japanese is ambiguous. It cannot be interesting to them though…

By the way, Japanese has another proverb which is very similar to “cast pearls before swine” and also very famous among Japanese people. The following is it:

Neko ni kohan 猫に小判(ねこにこばん)

Here, “neko 猫(ねこ)” can be translated to “cat” or “cats”. A case particle, “ni に”, is already mentioned above. “Koban 小判(こばん)” is Japanese old gold coin or coins.

Its meaning is the same as the previous proverb, “buta ni shinju 豚に真珠(ぶたにしんじゅ)”, but English doesn’t have an expression which can be a mirrored pair with it. Interestingly, after I realized that “buta ni shinju 豚に真珠(ぶたにしんじゅ)” can be translated to the English expression which contains two plural nouns, I started to think that two nouns used in “neko ni kohan 猫に小判(ねこにこばん)” were plurals. When I didn’t know English expressions, I didn’t understand the ambiguity of Japanese languages. I strongly believe that we should know more than two, hopefully, three languages. Through our second or third language, we can understand the depth of our native language.

I digressed a little bit, but I could explain all I want to say in this article. I think, it’s about time to write a new article about Japanese particles again… I’ve been away from them for several weeks.