Dear Bilingual Friends,
You may know but there are just so many variations in Japanese that can express our strong emotion to indict something to be fake, bogus, or just “bullshit”!
「うそっぱち」、「空々しい」、「しらじらしい」
「うそ」という簡単な言葉を強めた表現として、「うそっぱち」を聞いたことがあると思います。
ほかにも、「しらじらしい」、「空々しい」(そらぞらしい)といった上級者の表現があるので、見てみましょう!
The former one means someone is lying and it is quite obvious that he is not saying what he really thinks genuinely. 本音じゃなくて建前のことを言っていたりとかね!
The latter one has stronger meaning that someone is lying through their teeth. His statement is complete bullshit, or a sham, lacking even a shred of evidence.
英語で、上品に「うそ」って言うには?
日本の皆様、すこしかたい文書で使える言葉として、(特に法律上や弁論等で「本当ではない」)と言いたいとき、spuriousという言葉を使ってみたいですね。
These claims are questionable and spurious.
Some arguments in his book are downright suspicious and even blatantly spurious, not backed up enough with valid theories or practical experiments.
「濡れ衣」とは
By the way this beautiful Japanese word below has a literally meaning in semantics, of “wet clothes,” but it actually means someone is being framed for some crimes or actions that he did not really commit.
この罪名は「濡れ衣」(ぬれぎぬ)だ!
こちらも根拠がまったくないという意味合いが強いので、英語の強い言葉のニュアンスに近いと思いますよ。
Another word – the one below – I hope that you could get yourself familiar with (or perhaps will hear quite a lot in daily Japanese conversations) has two meanings.
「あとかたなく」
痕跡もなくという意味でで使う
山小屋はあとかたもなく焼けた。Here this word means “without a trace,” as if nothing has happened, as if it never existed.
根拠もなく、という意味で使う
The other meaning is again, “bogus,” in Japanese, describing something that misses any shred of evidence, or even unthinkable, making no sense.
終わりに
ちなみに、日本の皆様も強い意味で「わけがわからない!」って言いたいとき、その驚きを表現するためには、以下の英語を使ってみてくださいね。
I am flabbergast! What the heck?!
I am completely lost. He is such an enigma. His handlings are just bizarre.
Hope you enjoyed today’s travel to the fun world of vocabularies!