キャプテン、何てことをしてくれたんですか！

my tag: #yuria-studies

[nihilistens-luftslott]

Hi, my name is Yuria. This is a Japanese/Swedish langblr where I share what I find interesting about those two languages.

I've been studying Japanese since 2012 and Swedish since 2018. I'm certified with JLPT N1 and have a background in fan-translation as well as working with Japanese people.

In the future, I plan to learn Finnish and Italian. I also studied German for 6 years of school to an intermediate level, but I no longer study it.

Feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions!

[nihilistens-luftslott]

No idea why but recently my choice of reading in Japanese is investigation reports for train and plane accidents

[nihilistens-luftslott]

I want to be able to write long ass novels in Japanese so I started a blog on note to get more comfortable with writing, and I am happy to notice writing blogs comes quite effortlessly to me.

Of course novels are different but so is writing blogs, it's is a separate skill from just knowing the language. I will keep doing my best...!

[zzzora]

Som med allt annat, så skyller jag denna skapelse på att jag hade tråkigt lol

[nihilistens-luftslott]

yojijukugo drill today 💕

[nihilistens-luftslott]

During my stay in Japan I got zero 日本語上手 but I was constantly asked how long I lived in Japan 🤣 I didn't expect to actually be asked this so often

[nihilistens-luftslott]

2025 summary

Rough year in many areas, but I am choosing to be kind to myself and celebrate the small achievements that I found the energy for :)

This year's accomplishments:

The biggest one for sure - I befriended an absolute best friend from Japan at the start of the year. This will sound corny but I feel like I've found a long lost sibling from another part of the world! Of course my language also benefitted from this, I've learned tons of slang, tons of new words, experienced my beloved Osaka dialect from a native, we spoke for hours on the phone. To chat on LINE more efficiently I learned flick input (I had been typing in romaji all these years) and it's pretty neat, even if I'm still not super slick at it. I was able to learn of Japan's problems first hand, confirm my questions from someone who lives there... They also helped me grow as a person. And we're meeting in January as I will be visiting, so it's going to be amazing!

Also, a friend from Sweden visited and I got to ask the same amount of culture and life related questions as well as use my questionable Swedish a bit. Yay.

Went to a gig by a Japanese band, with a lot of Japanese people in the audience, and mustered the courage to chat up a nice lady next to me. She turned out to be from Osaka and was plenty surprised to find a Japanese speaker in a foreign country, let alone a 関西弁 lover.

I started teaching Japanese privately for some bonus income. So far I have two students and it's such a nice new experience.

This year was more of a manga year than novel year (over 160 volumes in total, all in Japanese of course). I got into the works of Fukumoto Nobuyuki. My favourite is Akagi, but I also liked Kaiji and Ten. Another manga that I loved was Seto Utsumi, a manga written mostly in Osaka dialect and focused on comedy. The story underneath the light-hearted surface really resonated with me.

One could think that Fukumoto got me into mahjong, but it was the other way around. I took up mahjong right at the end of the previous year and then discovered Akagi. After having been playing the game for a whole year now, I can say I'm probably somewhat of an intermediate player. It's fun and for the first time in my life I've sunk hundreds of hours in a game! It's also a good field for learning Japanified Chinese words.

Keeping up with learning new vocab in Swedish, unfortunately, took a back seat due to many circumstances that left me low on energy to actively study. That said, I kept listening to Sveriges Radio semi-regularly, so my listening has definitely got better.

I travelled to one of my dream destinations - London! And it was so fun I'd love to go back.

Played Megami Ibunroku Persona wholly in Japanese on PS1, what a fantastic game! I also tried to play both Persona 2 games but it was hard to adjust to a new system so I gave up 4 hours in... Next year I'll try again.

Next year I really want to read my favourite book by Stephen King, Needful Things, in Japanese. The Japanese edition is so beautiful, just touching it and flipping the pages is a joy.

Happy New Year <3

[coupleofdays]

There's a Swedish expression, "knyta näven i byxfickan", which translates to "clenching your fist in you pants pocket". It means to become angry, but to supress that anger, not expressing or acting on it. Supposedly, this is an attitude common among Swedes, to be polite, keep quiet, not make a fuss, not protest against being mistreated or against injustices. To be lagom.

With that in mind, it's funny that Allenby Beardsley literally don't have any pants pockets in her outfit. When she clenches her fists, people are definitely going to see it, possibly in a very up close view.

[nihilistens-luftslott]

funniest mistake this year goes to: is accidentally reading 逆境 as 虐待 🤣

[nihilistens-luftslott]

I wouldn't neccesarily say I'm a horror fan, but I do enjoy a scary story every now and then.

着信アリ is one book series that I strongly recommend whether you know the popular film adaptation or not. It's very beginner friendly, so if you're looking for an interesting entry into Japanese books and horror is up your alley, this one is perfect.

Even if you're already an advanced reader, the books are gripping enough to enjoy reading them in one go. The first instalment is my favourite, and my copy is pretty worn because of how often I've read it in full or fragments 🥰

[nihilistens-luftslott]

memo to remember:

賄う - to supply, to maintain financially, to provide board or meals

賄い - staff meal, boarding, etc.

[coupleofdays]

The Swedish Sailor Moon song in English

I decided to make English subtitles for the Swedish intro song to Sailor Moon. You can watch it on YouTube, but the video is apparently not viewable in the US. So I uploaded it to the Internet Archive as well.

Sailor Moon Swedish opening with English subtitles : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The title song to the Swedish dub of Sailor Moon, with subtitles in English and Swedish. The Swedish lyrics were written by Olav F. Andersen

The Swedish lyrics were written by Olav F. Andersen, and the singer is prolific Swedish voice actor Annelie Berg.

[jariten]

Hii! I’ve noticed you’ve read a horror anthology by nanae sasaya - Ikisudama etc. Could I ask you what you thought?

I read the 1996 bunko version which has a few more stories than the tankobon with the same title. The titular story and Kanawa were good bloody stories of teen jealousy manifesting in living ghosts, while Utsuho Ishino is a haunted house set in a massive housing complex similar to the one in Domu. I wouldn't call any of them unique by any means but they are excellent examples of the Japanese school of modern ghost stories. Ikisudama and Utsuho Ishino even made it into two really great horror manga anthologies that i like, Mangaka-tachi ga Kaita Kaidan: Samayou Reiki and Kowai Hanashi: Kessaku Manga Sen. The last two stories were more like short ghost story vignettes and didn't leave a huge impression on me but I think anyone who likes that format will enjoy it. I haven't read too much Sasaya in general but her ghost stories have made the biggest impression on me so I absolutely recommend them as an entry point to her bibliography.

[svensklangblr]

HOW TO sound more natural when speaking swedish

A compilation of things to help you speak more natural and relaxed, remember that most of these are things that only work when spoken, not written, and should not be said in formal settings!

1. “E” instead of “är”.

Native speakers often compress words and change the prononciation of shorter words when speaking, a good example of this is the word “är”, meaning “is”, and the often accompanied “det”. If you want to sound more natural, try saying “de e” instead of “det är”, for example: “De e väl en ABBA låt?”

2. “Asså” 

Asså this, asså that, asså everything! Asså is a shortening of the word “alltså”, with a slightly changed field of use. When speaking to young people this is a word that you’ll hear a lot. It’s also a word that many people are annoyed by, particularly older generations, so don’t use it excessively when speaking to for example a professor! Example: “Asså jag älskar den här boken”, “Nej, asså, jag blev sjuk så vi träffades aldrig”, “Asså jag tycker typ mjölk är äckligt”

3. Say things twice

Words that work as sentences by themselves are often repeated, when thanking for example a waitress you often say “tack, tack”, when greeting someone (back) you often say “hej, hej!”, when denying something you could say “nej, nej”, followed by an explanation. It works for alot of reactions to things other people say, “coolt, coolt”, “nice, nice”

4. Throw in some english

If you’re not natively swedish this may be mistaken as lack of knowledge, but in Sweden we throw in english words in almost every conversation, even when there are swedish words to describe what we’re trying to say! For example: “Ja, asså, det tog en unexpected turn!” 

[japanwords]

晴耕雨読　(sei-kō-u-doku)  “in fine weather do work; when it's rainy, read”

晴 = sunny

耕 = ploughing

雨 = rainy

読 = reading

The message here seems to be to do everything at its proper time.

Work when it’s sunny, and rest when it rains.

This is a special kind of Japaneses idiom known as a 四字熟語 (よじじゅくご、yo-ji-juku-go), or 4-character idiom. As the name suggests, these are idiomatic phrases made of 4 kanji.

They often contain a small life lesson or moral message, similar to English sayings such as “you reap what you sow” and “the early bird gets the worm”.

[japanwords]

喫茶去 (kissako) "Please have a cup of tea"

喫 = drink

茶 = tea

去 = leave

"Drink tea and leave"?

Not exactly.

The intention of this 3-character idiom isn't to tell someone to go away after they've drunk some tea, but rather to welcome all guests to have a cup of tea before they leave.

This idiom comes from a Chinese Zen monk who gave this same instruction to any visiting monk, no matter who they were, regardless of whether they were a first time or a regular visitor.

The message is that we should serve tea with the same attitude to anyone, regardless of who they are and what the circumstances are.

It is a reminder to behave with integrity and treat every situation with respect.

[thegreenmay]

I saw this TikTok about Swedish words that don’t have any good English equivalents, and the comments gave an interesting look at how a lot of people *think* about language. For one thing, many of these have several direct translations, depending on the context. And I think that’s what tripping a lot of people up, because there isn’t a neat one to one translation.

Let’s use ”behörig” as an example.

I’m actually not sure I agree with most of these translations. ”Duly qualified” is most accurate out of these, but I would also like to add ”eligible” and ”authorised”, again depending on the context. Just look what happens when I add two words to the end of this sentence.

Notice how the translation of the verb also changes? And the shorter sentence could just as well be translated into ”I’m eligible to take it” if that’s the context.

There are of course Swedish words that represent certain ideas much better than any translation, simply because the meaning is condensed int a singe word. ”Lagom” is the most popular example, essentially translated into some variation of ”just right”. It’s become part of our outward identity, we even like to call ourselves ”Landet Lagom”.

Other words are simply benefitting from our use of compound words. The famous german ”schadenfreude” has a direct Swedish equivalent in ”skadeglädje”. Both just consist of the words ”damage/injury” smashed together with ”joy”.

Grammatical differences also means a single Swedish word sometimes translates into multiple English. ”Smidigast” is just our way of writing ”most smidig” and there are lot of ways to translate that.

The way I use it most often I would probably have translated it as ”most convenient”, or even just ”easiest”. And here you can actually see another important quirk of language. The words ”easy” and ”convenient” uses different types of modifiers. I don’t know all the technical terms but ”easy” uses similar suffixes as in Swedish. I don’t know why ”convenient” falls into a different grammatical category, but all those factors make translation such a mess, even with related languages.

One fun example regarding Swedish-English is our words for window. That English word comes from the old norse ”vindauga” or ”vindöga”/”wind eye” in modern Swedish and English. Danish and Norwegian still uses version of that old norse word, but Sweden’s was replaced by the german ”fenster”, itself derived from the latin ”fenestra”. The Swedish word ”fönster” thus shares its etymological root with the bizarre ”defenestrate” that apparently exists in both English and Swedish.

Anyway my point is that you can’t fully enjoy a second language (in my case English) if you try to hold it to the standards of your native language. Swedish has a lot of great words that feel uniquely Swedish, but English is an extremely versatile language because it draws from so many different sources.