I read this weblog title on one of my favorite Japanese blogs: 「今年はボーナスがない代わりに休みをたっぷりやろう」. It reads, "Let's take a heaping helping of vacation this year in place of the [Christmas] bonus we're not getting!"
Sounds to me like someone wants to get fired. ^_^;
But yeah. I never even gave it any thought, but it's true: the American tradition of a Christmas bonus will probably be on hiatus this holiday season at most workplaces. Which will be tough for those families whose bad spending habits will be further penalized when the Christmas bonuses they had been counting on for payments won't be there.
Still: to try and use your vacation days as leverage over your boss for withholding a Christmas bonus from you sounds ... dumb.
(the first 4 replies are my own)
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「今年はボーナスがない代わりに休みをたっぷりやろう」
Some additional grammar reading for those who are interested or who contest my translation:
「今年はボーナスがない代わりに休みをたっぷりやろう」
今年 (kotoshi, "this year")
は (wa, topic particle)
ボーナス (boonasu, "[year-end salary] bonus"
が (ga, subject marker)
ない (nai, "does not exist")
代わり (kawari, "in place of")
に (ni, the "in" particle in the English equivalent phrase "in place of")
休み (yasumi, "vacation/break/respite"
を (wo, direct object particle)
たっぷり (tappuri, "plenty")
やろう (yarou, the plain volitional conjugation of the verb yaru, "to do", i.e. "let's do", where yaru is the more vulgar or base word for suru, "to do", and where yarou is the informal conjugation and yarimashou the formal)
That last bit is very interesting and will get a 2nd reply here in just a second.
Granted, it is possible to read this sentence as the employer being the one speaking it, where "let's take vacation" could be read contextually as "let's give [you guys] extra vacation time [as compensation for the loss of your bonuses]", but for one thing it doesn't change the fact that somebody isn't thinking, and second an employer probably wouldn't have used a conjugation of やる yaru, the quasi-vulgar form of する suru, "to do", to address them, even if they are his subordinates and he can talk down to them as much as he likes. Anyway,
Unfortunately, I don't have any additional context to work with: the main body of the blog is one simple exclamation of joy, わーい (wai).
For those of you who are interested in understanding what the difference could possibly be between one axis of politeness (plain vs. formal) and the other axis of politeness (polite vocabulary vs. crude vocabulary) and how, if ever, those axes could combine to create "rude-yet-polite" words, allow me to explain. :)
Plain speech in Japanese is associated with the dictionary infinitive form of verbs. In other words, in a dictionary, it will tell you that the Japanese word for "to do" is suru. This is correct. It is also plain. Plain speech is only to be used amongst equals or in talking down to inferiors. You can use plain speech with superiors under very limited circumstances (e.g. parents) but only if they permit it. To use plain speech in place of formal speech is to show disrespect. But it is not vulgar or crass. Just disrespectful. The formal conjugation of suru is shimasu. They are both the present tense verb used in the simple sentence "I do".
Polite speech (often confused with or interchanged terminologically with "formal speech" detailed above) refers to the 3-part axis of Japanese polite words. What I mean is, there are three core verbs for "I do" and their politeness levels vary:
VULGAR - yaru
NEUTRAL - suru
POLITE - HUMBLE - itasu (said of the speaker)
POLITE - HONORIFIC - nasaru (said of the listener)
The best way I can explain this, since we don't have a 3-tiered politeness axis for most verbs in English, is with defecating. So forgive the comparison, but (verbs // nouns):
VULGAR - "I shit" // shit
NEUTRAL - "I poop" // poop
POLITE - "I defecate" // feces
Feces is the polite word for poop. You would never say to your parents, "I had to go defecate." You'd say, "I had to go poop." (Ignoring alternatives like silence, "I had to go use the restroom," etc.) You also wouldn't tell your parents "I had to take a shit." That would be rude. Right? So ...
PLAIN NEUTRAL - suru
FORMAL NEUTRAL - shimasu
PLAIN RUDE - yaru
FORMAL RUDE - yarimasu
Of these, ranked in order of common usage from most to least: suru, shimasu, yaru, and yarimasu.
suru > shimasu and yaru > yarimasu because you will most often be talking to friends, family, and other social equals or inferiors or persons with whom you have a close personal relationship
suru family > yaru family for the reason of suru being less vulgar
You may be wondering, does anyone ever say "yarimasu" ? And the answer is an immediate "YES", but it's one of the weirdos. There are other pairings I can think of (e.g. taberu and kuu, "to eat") where the vulgar formal (kuimasu) is almost never heard. As a general rule of thumb, the step-wise order of politeness is:
1. Be both polite and formal. ("shimasu")
2. Be polite, but you can be casual. ("suru")
3. Be whatever. ("yaru")
The "rude yet formal" guy ("yarimasu") would seem to get lost in the works, but he does show up frequently. As we'll explore below. :)
Some of you may be thinking, "Well hold on a second, Ryan. I've heard plenty of polite people in anime or on TV say 'yarimasu' in polite contexts!" So let me continue to explain. If you don't already appreciate that the bulk of an expert student of Japanese's study time is dedicated to learning politeness, maybe now you will. :)
If a mother tells her son to get off his butt and help her set the dinner table, chances are he'd just say ha~ai :\ ("o~okay :\"), but one option you often hear is "yarimasu." He is showing politeness to his mother on the superior/inferior axis but rudeness to her on the vulgar/polite axis. Does this make sense? So he is simultaneously being "rude but polite." He is being polite to *her* (by using formal speech), but he is rudely protesting *her request* (by using a vulgar word).
Again, with the awkward-but-adequate pooping metaphor, the best way I can explain it would be if your mother were to ask you to poop (say you were at the hospital and your stomach hurt and she was begging you to poop so the doctors can get a stool sample), the ways in which you could respond would be:
- "I don't want to poop." (ruder, plain)
- "I do not want to poop." (ruder, formal)
- "I don't want to defecate." (politer, plain)
- "I do not want to defecate." (politer, formal)
In this example, the vulgarity axis is reflected in the infinitive choice while the formality axis is reflected in the verb choice.
Here's where our cultures clash: in modern American society, the formality axis has fallen to the wayside. For example, no physician would take offense or would think you were a rude child if you said "I don't want to defecate." In fact, he would think you were a very modest and proper child who is so self-conscious and polite that he couldn't even bring himself to say "poop," much less "shit" in front of the physician. But in Japan, it would turn heads if a child said "I don't" instead of "I do not" to an adult physician who ought to command his respect. In fact, it would probably be even worse than saying "I do not want to poop."
The formality axis trumps the vulgarity axis in many subtle contexts, whereas the vulgarity axis trumps the formality axis in all of the obvious (to an American) contexts. This is because Americans understand the concept of vulgarity-politeness, so they can understand "this is more polite than that" (irrespective of spoken formalities) because they can detect the differences in vulgarity. An American can recognize that it is ruder to say "shit" than it is to say "poop," but he doesn't ever -- nor does our society expect him to ever -- drop his contractions when speaking to his boss. The politest subordinate may say, "We can't find Johnson, Mr. President" despite the availability of "cannot". And most alien of all to the American (myself included, when my brain is thinking in English) is a sentence like "We cannot shit here, gentlemen" as being in any way, shape or form on par with "We can't poop here, guys."
(more in Reply #4)
I guess the take-home message for those of you who are interested is this:
the moment you use the plain form with somebody, you are conveying to them that you see yourself as their equal or their superior. Use of vulgar words merely conveys how uncouth or unrefined you are: it says little of your genuine respect or lack thereof for your audience's rank.
For example, in a Japanese movie, if the lovable salt-of-the-earth character said to his king, "Let's give 'em hell, sire!" at the climactic onset of the final battle, he would say "___________ yarimashou." That would be the appropriate wording. He's a crass old fart for saying something from the yaru family, but he's truly respectful of his king and doesn't deign to say "yarou" (informal and least polite) or "shiyou" (informal and politer), nor can he say "itashiyou" (informal and politest, since that would draw the king into the humbled group) nor "nasaimashou" (formal and politest, since that would elevate him to the king's side and thus be self-referentially honorific at the same time as being honorific to the king, paradoxically NOT honoring the king!). The only available word choice for a salt-of-the-earth servant is "yarimashou." :) Do you get it? Do you see that?
Last but not least, all of this politeness is very subtle most of the time. That is to say, yaru is in and of itself not necessarily a bad word. For example, the Japanese way of saying "how to _____" follows this pattern:
kaku (to write) = kakikata (how to write)
yomu (to read) = yomikata (how to read)
suru (to do) = yarikata
There is no "shikata." No such word at all. The polite way to say "how to do" is "yarikata".
As another example, I had mentioned kuu (the rude form of "to eat") earlier. But kuu also has the polite contextual meaning of "to devour." You can politely *and* formally say "I ate a horse" by saying "kuimashita" (lit. "I devoured"). But if you wanted to ask a pal to go out with you to get a bite, you'd say "tabe ni ikou?" and not "kui ni yukou?" The latter is the equivalent of saying "Wanna pig out?" It's embarrassingly rude to say, right? Not very flattering! But a polite context for using it, in theory, would be if two people were both starving from wandering the desert for 14 days and they entered the military base (who rescued them)'s kitchen and saw trays and trays of food piled up for them. You can imagine the one sarcastingly saying to the other, "Hey, you wanna go pig out with me?" and the other saying "Sure :)", ~Fin~ . But I think the more likely English choice would be the sarcastic "Hey, you wanna get a bite to eat?" ANYWAY ...
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