Words don’t always translate well. Sure, dictionaries tend to give one single word that is supposed to correspond one English word with one Japanese word but more often than not, the nuance between the Japanese word and the English word are slightly different and an explanation is very useful. It is important to be careful of this when you study Japanese and make note of the words that don’t translate well, otherwise you will use Japanese words as if they are English words and people are going to be a bit confused about what you are trying to say. This time we are going to talk about how to express some extreme situations that will hopefully come in handy for anyone studying Japanese.
大変 Taihen
This is a negative word. It may be the ultimate negative word because you can use it in just about every bad situation. It can be used to describe a difficult situation or some kind of trouble as well as express that something is terrible or extreme. When used alone 大変です is pretty close “That’s pretty rough” or “This is pretty bad!”. People often say this as a sign of sympathy for others. If you tell someone about your hard day at work or about your boyfriend flirting with other girls, you are bound to have this thrown at you. You can also use it as an adjective to describe a difficult situation with 大変な状態。. You can use the word to express extremity as well such as 大変暑い or “It is extremely hot!”
やばい Yabai (Yabe)
This is a tricky one because depending on the situation it could express something great or something terrible. Sometimes I like to translate it as “Holy Shit!”. It is basically a word to express surprise over something but usually this surprise comes with a nuance of being either really good or really bad. If you see a movie and it was really good you can say あの映画はやばかった which might translate to “That movie was really something!” or “That movie was crazy!”. You have to use the context to figure out if it was a really good movie, a really bad movie or just a surprising movie. If you say テストはやばかった, it probably means something like “the test was really hard” You can also use it to describe a person. A やばいやつ could be a variety of things. If you see a scary looking guy on the street, it probably means he is a “dangerous guy”, if he is on a basketball team he is a “tough opponent” and if its a cool looking guy, it might just mean he gets all the girls. My personal favorite: if a bear is chasing you, you can turn around and shout to your friend “これはやばい”, which I would translate as “We’re f—ed!”.
If you liked this check out my Japanese concepts part 1 post Ganbare and Gaman
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