I’m thinking about making this a new series of posts I’ll get to every once in a while here – Talking about Japanese language that you don’t really come across in standard textbooks.
The terms I’d like to talk about today are ど and 素人.
You may have heard ど used with terms like 田舎 – ど田舎. What ど does is it modifies nouns to emphasize a great degree of the term. If you want to keep things clean you might translate it as “very”, “complete” or in the case of 田舎 “way out”. Compare “countryside” to “way out in the countryside”. You might also want to change the word completely to emphasize how negative it is – “Boonies”.
You can also translate it a little bit more explicitly like, “Way out in the damned country.”
素人 or sometimes シロウト, is a great word that colloquially we’d translate to something like “Newbie”. Literally it means “amateur”, but whenever I see it in context in manga it’s never very complimentary.
The reason I chose these two words is because you’ll often see them paired up together – ド素人. To put it bluntly, “F@*%ing newb!” Maybe if it’s an older person saying it you could translate it as, “Know nothing little punk!” or something similar.
Not that I encourage you to go out and pick a fight, but the next time someone steps on your toes, you’ll be ready to knock their socks off!
[At the local pachinko parlor]*
Random imagined thug: このガイジンが何やってんの、こんなとこに…早く帰れ！
The empowered you: 何だと？！俺、ど素人と思ってんのか？！なめんじゃねえよ、この野郎！
*Note: I’ve never even once stepped foot inside a pachinko parlor, nor have I ever encountered a person in Japan who talks like the imagined characters in the above scenario. This is all the result of reading too much testosterone-filled manga. Seriously, don’t go out looking for a fight!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the lesson, dude. Very interesting. My nihongo is suspect at best so I’m nowhere near being able to talk like that, but you make me wanna study harder. Good idea for a series. Be interested to se where it goes
Ganbatte ne
Loco
PS: chotto typo ne “Know” nothing little punk, I think is how it goes
Thanks for the heads up!
Always fun writing that stuff.
「俺、ド素人どころかド玄人だぞ！ささっと消えてお前の前に二度と来るな！」
ド忘れた is a good one too