Re: QUERY: Japanese word for "bull***."

mirror wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Jul 2005 11:09:44 +0900, "necoandjeff"
> <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Sorry, when I said "many people" I meant non-Japanese. Unless they
>> are taught differently I think there is a tendency to believe that
>> tondemonai comes from tobu --> tonde mo (i)nai. It's only natural. I
>> can't claim to have any clue what goes on in Danny's head, but I'll
>> bet that's what led him to write it with spaces the way he did. The
>> nai in the word actually does come from the aru/nai historically
>> (just as with the words mittomonai and mottainai), which is why
>> changing it to arimasen and gozaimasen isn't that much of a stretch
>> (although this is done with way less frequency, if at all, with the
>> words mittomonai and mottainai. I can't ever recall hearing people
>> say things like mittomoarimasen or mottaigozaimasen, but examples
>> like these get a handful of Google hits.) But in any event, phrases
>> like tondemogozaimasen were not used before the war, so they are a
>> recent development that have merely become quite common. And words
>> like tondemonai, mottainai, and mittomonai are generally thought of
>> today as single words (to the extent such a concept even makes sense
>> in Japanese) and hence probably shouldn't have spaces breaking them
>> up.
>
> I've seen glosses for tondemonai use the kanji for "to fly" (tobu).
> Are you saying these are incorrect? If so, what is being negated
> here? What concept? And what is this "tonde" being "mo'ed"? Or is
> it a "ton" being "demo'ed"?
>
> I am not picking a fight. These are honest questions. No bull***
> intended!

Maybe you did miss the earlier post that gave the etymology of this word: 途
でもない. Are you sure that people who write 飛んでもない aren't just
engaging in some clever play on words or 駄洒落? If they are seriously
writing it that way out of the belief that it is a correct construction,
then I would say they are incorrect.

Jeff

.

Quantcast