My answers to some questions asked in class today...
- Weren't there any restaurants in Japan before?
I think レストラン refers to a place where Western-style dishes are served. Since Japan had been closed to foreign countries until the late 19th century, I suppose there weren't any レストラン... We have words like 飲食店（いんしょくてん）and 料理店（りょうりてん）which I think are Japanese equivalents of レストラン. The first one means "a store where you drink and eat" and the second "a store of cooking."
- My high school friend said ヤニ-something means "to smoke"...
I looked it up in an online dictionary and found that ヤニる is a slang for "to smoke." ヤニ is cigarette tar, and people started to use it as a synonym of たばこ in colloquial speech. Then, る, a suffix that verbifies a noun, was attached to ヤニ to make it a verb "to smoke."
1 comment:
どうもありがとうございます！
I am always curious about the etymology of words in any language. It struck me as odd that there was a borrowed word for "restaurant" and that certainly is a good explanation.
-E
Post a Comment