| Author | Message | ||
     Nathan W. |
what does the word or particle "zo" mean in these two sentences? What is it used for? ugoku na, samonai to utsu zo. Don't move or I'll shoot. ugoku to, inochi wa nai zo. Move and you're a dead man. | ||
| info |
Welcome to our Japanese forums, Nathan. "Zo" is an old expression to insist your action or a fact, something equivalent to the usage of "Do" in English like "I did finish it". The original form was "So" that transformed to "Zo" during the middle ages. Anyway, the foreigners are advised not to use carelessly "Zo" because it appears too peasant or vulgar for the actual Japanese. | ||
| Nathan W. |
I also have a question about Katakana and hiragana. I was playing a gameboy color game called Shin Megami Tensei Trading Card Summoner and it popped up a table to enter your name. A full list of Hiragana and Katakana characters was displayed. The line that started with "wa", you know "wa", "o", and "n" which is how those characters are usually ordered in a list of the characters, and there were two extra ones in between "wa" and "o". In katakana, one looked like the character for "a" with a horizontal line under it and the other one I can't remember. So my question is do you know if there have been any new additions to both the Hiragana and Katakana character sets? | ||
| info |
Good question. In the old Japanese, the sounds corresponding to the column or the row of "wa" existed in a full extension. So wa-wi-wu-we-wo was written in the ancient Japanese with hiragara as:  and with katakana as:  The letter of "wu" doesn't exist because its sound disappeared before the invention of katakana and hiragana during Heian period. The sounds of wi-we-wo disappeared during Muromachi period but people continued to use them in the written language until 1945. Now only the letter of "wo" is used in a particle, though it is pronounced nowadays like "o". The letter of "n" was added in order to transcript Chinese words: genius Japanese words never end up with a consonant. Kinds regards, | ||
| Nathan W. |
i need to know what these words mean: ikenie majuu majin i'm thinking majuu and majin are contracted words but i'm not sure... and, something that goes along with "zo", what does "ze" after a verb mean? | ||
| Nathan W. |
Here's an example of a sentence with "ze": yakunitatsu joumau ga kikaru kamo shirenai ze! could you translate this sentence and tell me what ze means? also, could you tell me how to say "I'll be back" like in the movie Terminator 2? | ||
| info |
Dear Nathan, "Ze" is the phonetic deformation of an old expression "zoe" that was used in order to call an attention or to get an agreement of your listener. You should use it cautiously because the expression is now considered a bit vulgar. You may say "kaette kuru ze" for "I will be back". Kind regards |