I’m pretty sure that those who learn a language know that translation does not always work well and also that sometimes there are no corresponding or appropriate words for translation. In this article, I’d like to think about this problem, in other words, a kind of gap between languages.

We learn a language to communicate with others. Mastering characters, checking vocabularies, following grammar rules and learning sentence constructions are necessary. These steps are not easy, or rather, I’d have to say they can be way too difficult for language learners. We want to believe that after these steps we can master a language and that mastering a language is sufficient to communicate with others, but unfortunately, mastering a language is not enough for smooth communications. As I already mentioned, translation does not always work well. This means that learning a language by comparing your first language with your target language does not always help you. To have good communications with others and to understand languages more, we have to know cultural backgrounds. Learning a language is apparently more difficult and interesting than we expect.

I know a good example. In Japanese, we have the word “wani 鰐(わに)”. This word can be translated to “crocodile”, “alligator”, “caiman”, “gavialis” and so on. This means that while other languages have a lot of words to express predatory reptiles having snouts and living in a swamp, liver or shore, Japanese has only one word. Japanese people basically don’t care the difference among these reptiles. Therefore, when we hear a word “alligator”, “crocodile”, “caiman” or “gavialis” in English, we cannot translate it appropriately. All different reptiles can be the same in Japanese. For those who are familiar with these reptiles, it can be weird because they are obviously different. Why Japanese people do not care the difference among them? This question is highly related to the relation between Japanese people and reptiles called “wani 鰐(わに)”.

In Japan, there is no wild crocodile, alligator, caiman and gavialis, so fortunately, Japanese people have never been under threat from these reptiles. This means that Japanese people didn’t have to consider the difference among them and how dangerous they are. If crocodiles were in Japan and threatened lives of Japanese people, a word to express crocodiles would be required and also Japanese people had to differentiate crocodiles from other reptiles. However, actually, Japanese doesn’t have a word for crocodiles. Probably, Japanese people had never seen these reptiles for a long time. I guess that when these reptiles were introduced first to Japan, people decided to use “wani 鰐(わに)” for them.

While reptiles expressed by the word “wani 鰐(わに)” don’t have a long history in Japan, the word itself has. To tell the truth, in Japanese ancient era, the word “wani 鰐(わに)” used to express sharks. In some regions, today, it still has the same meaning. This means that the word “wani 鰐(わに)” has been used for predatory aquatic creatures. And then, at the certain point of time, its usage was extended to “crocodile”, “alligator”, “caiman”, “gavialis” and so on. Interestingly, Japanese people decided to use “wani 鰐(わに)” instead of inventing new words for them. Perhaps, we haven’t felt the necessity to create unique words to differentiate one from others. Checking words and vocabularies is not funny, but knowing cultural backgrounds through it is relatively interesting in my opinion.

In this article, I introduce a little bit strange piece of Japanese language and culture. In my experience, gaps between languages are usually keys to understanding cultural differences. In future, I will introduce other examples.