JapanNewbie

Keep on Trying or Writhe in Agony

Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 @ 1:58 am by harvey in Culture, Language

Here are two similar proverbs with extremely different meanings.

shichiten hakki

shichiten battou

That’s 七転八起 (しちてんはっき) and 七転八倒 (しちてんばっとう)

七転八起 literally means “to fall down seven times, and to get up eight times.” The moral of this saying is obvious, no matter how many times you’re knocked down, you gotta get right back up again! Get back on that horse… As we say in the United States.

七転八起 is also known as 七転び八起き (ななころびやおき）

Many people believe that this proverb is referring to Daruma in some way. Even if he’s knocked around he doesn’t really fall over… Well… he’s round… Of course the story of Daruma is much more complex than that, but I’ll leave the Daruma explanation to Wikipedia.

七転八倒, on the other hand, has a different meaning all together.

七転八倒 roughly means, “to fall down seven times, and to fall again 8 more times.” A Japanese-Japanese dictionary will give you a definition like, 「何度も転び倒れる意。」Which means, to fall down over and over again.

(By the way, you should get a Japanese-Japanese dictionary for things like this. You don’t have to take my word for it! @Rainbowhill blogged recommending monolingual dictionaries today as well.)

The verb 転ぶ is to fall, and 倒れる is also to fall. They’re a bit different, 転ぶ has a kind of a rolling and tumbling image to it, while 倒れる is more of an exhausted collapse. Anyway, they both represent failure.

All in all this proverb conveys pretty epic fail. My dictionary gives a translation of, “excruciating pain,” or “utter agony,” or “pain that makes one writhe in agony.” Ouch. You get the picture.

The same proverb exists in Chinese, so it was probably adopted from Chinese by the Japanese. The meaning in Chinese seems to be similar as well.

Anyone out there who knows Chinese that can shed some more light on this?

Anyway, there’s some fun phrases for you. Enjoy!

- Harvey