Gengo Girls #44: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Gengo Girls #44: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Lots of katakana today, so if you only memorized the hirogana you might need to reference a chart to memorize today’s vocabulary.

There’s probably some interesting cultural background to the fact that the Japanese use the same word (chigau) to mean both “to be different” and “to be wrong”, but I have no idea what. Was it considered more polite to tell people they were “different” instead of bluntly telling them they were “wrong”? Or was being different considered to be wrong? Or maybe it’s just the fact that being wrong means to say something that is different from the truth. Who knows? Not me.

Vocabulary

違う = ちがう = to be wrong; to be different

鉛筆 = えんぴつ = pencil

ペン = pen

ケイタイ = cellphone

スマホ = smart phone

Transcript

言語ガールズ #44

Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Blue: Let’s play a game where I say something wrong and you correct me.

Yellow: I would us 違う for that, right?

Blue: これは鉛筆です

Yellow: 違います。鉛筆ではありません。ペンです。

Blue: これはケイタイです

Yellow: 違います。ケイタイではありません。スマホです。

Yellow: Being right felt kind of good…

Yellow: Is this how you feel ALL the time!?