I had fun writing up the first “What the Textbooks Don’t Teach” post and so, for now, I’d like to continue the series.
The word I’m going to talk about today is 中途半端 [ちゅうとはんぱ]. I love this word. It means “halfway; incomplete; unfinished”. The way I hear it used in a lot of conversations is more like “half-assed”.
Here are a couple of examples, followed by my own translations and then a very literal translation:
何事も中途半端にするな。
“Give your all in any endeavor.”
[Don't do an incomplete job at anything.]
「ブラッディ・マンデイ」はなんとも言えない中途半端な終わり方だった。
“I can’t even describe how half-assed the ending of Bloody Monday was.”
[The way Bloody Monday ended was indescribably incomplete.]
I haven’t watched Bloody Monday myself; I just came across the sentence in some random Japanese person’s blog. But if they’re describing the ending as 中途半端, maybe I’ll just make a note not to watch it.
では、皆さん、日本語の勉強を中途半端にしないでください！
Related posts:
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Aww man. I’m on the last episode of Bloody Monday and was going to watch it tonight. Guess the ending sucks! Still, I recommend watching the drama if you watched 24 and liked it. It’s a bit over the top, but addictive.
Oh, one other thing. For these posts, I think it would be good to give the pronunciation （ちゅうとはんぱ） when you first introduce the word. I had to look it up, which isn’t such a big deal, but for completeness I’d recommend throwing it up there for readers.
I like this series of posts! Thanks for writing them!
Aha! Good idea, Thomas. Thank you!
Perhaps now that you have such low expectations for the ending it’ll turn out you like it?
Finished it. And the ending was a bit weak.
Not a bad show though.
a little too advanced for me but I’m looking forward to coming back to this series in the future to practise and learn
What’s the show about? I never even caught it once on TV, although I mainly search for quiz/game/trivia programs which are usually amusing, so it could just be my television bias.
Bloody Monday = a 中途半端 attempt to copy 24, involving a good amount of the melodrama and bad acting that tend to make so many doramas so terrible. I couldn’t sit through a full episode of it.
Is that the show where the guy’s hacking is metaphorized as a halk flying?
I recommend The Daily Yoji’s post on this saying too!
Thats the one, Claytonian. It was one of the few examples worse than the movie “Hackers”. I was waiting for Mathew Lilliard to come in and start screaming ” Hack the Planet! ”
zzz.