Good morning, good to see you, good to get started! In today's StudyOke! we're going to look at the legendary technopop group Yellow Magic Orchestra and the tongue twisting linguistic concept of onomatopoeia!
About the Song
While the influence of YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra) on technopop (and video game music, for that matter) can hardly be overstated, you might find it worth remembering that the band is in many ways a side project for three insanely talented artists - all of whom appear twice on the Top 100 list.
Haruomi Hosono was a member of the previously mentioned Happy End, and had a hand in that group's creation of true JPop. Ryuichi Sakamoto is an internationally famous solo composer (with an Academy Award, BAFTA, Grammy, and two Golden Globes). And Yukihiro Takahashi rounds out the group as the drummer of the Sadistic Mika Band, solo composer, and occasional actor.
Any one of these three talents would be impressive, but the combination made for a group that absolutely dominated Japanese music in the early 1980s and left an international legacy in electronica. To be fair, YMO's domination is more about musical influence than number one singles. The "YMO children" who grew up with their music are still active in the JPop scene, and still carry the influence of YMO.
While the bulk of YMO's music is instrumental (and thus not karaoke-friendly) their discography is a valuable listen. Their first album (Yellow Magic Orchestra) was released in 1978, but you may be surprised at how fresh it sounds. Solid State Survivor is a true masterpiece of electronica that easily earned its No. 1 chart rank. Today's song, Kimi ni Mune Kyun comes from Naughty Boys, YMO's final No.1 album.
Back when your humble author was a strapping young hellion, I had a conversation with my dear mother about fisting.
Not the activity of fisting (thank God) but about the slang term, and how it did not mean "punching." As a substitute teacher, she heard her students use slang words and would ask me what they meant, being blissfully unaware of their horrible meanings.
At any rate, once I had explained fisting (with much more delicacy that it is performed, let me assure you) I cautioned her to also watch out for the word "onomatopoeia."
"Why?" she asked. "What does it mean?"
"I really can't tell you. It's so embarrassing - just imagine the most horrible, disgusting act imaginable. It's even worse than fisting, just so gross."
My mother seemed surprised, since "onomatopoeia" actually means sound words, that is to say, words that are the sounds that they mean. For example, the word "bark," as in a dog's bark, sort of sounds like a dog barking. Not exactly, but you can tell that the word came from the sound. Same goes for a cat's meow, a crow's caw, and an earth-shattering ka-boom. These are all onomatopoeia.
Onomatopoeia words are a big deal in Japanese, and not just animal sounds. Some of them get weirdly esoteric from an English point of view. Today's song has one right in the title: kyun.
One of my favorite definitions of kyun is "momentary tightening of one's chest caused by powerful feelings," because it's just so ridiculously specific. This is the sort of onomatopoeia we're talking about in Japanese. Just that moment when your chest tightens due to strong emotions. How the heck do you translate that literally? "To you, heart momentary tightening of one's chest caused by powerful feelings?"
These sort of words in Japanese are usually called "onomatopoeia," but you may find it more useful to think of them as sound effects. Many of them sound nothing like their meanings (your heart doesn't go 'kyun!' when you see a sexy person).
You can think of it more like a sound effect that plays in a movie like the "wha wha whaaaaa" when someone does something stupid or the "dun dun dun" of a dramatic scene. These sounds have nothing inherently to do with those situations, but we still associate them anyway.
PS. Japanese also has more traditional onomatopoeia. The dog says wan, the cat says nyaa, the explosion says, dodoun.
PPS. Some dictionaries may not list kyun as an onomatopoeia - that's because it doesn't fit in our English definition of onomatopoeia. In Japanese, however, it is classified as a 擬音語 (giongo, 'sound-like word'), which carries the same meaning as "onomatopoeia."
PPPS. "Onomatopoeia" isn't actually a dirty word for some unspeakable sex act. And boy, was my mother mad when she figured that out.
That's all for today, but remember to keep an eye out for onomatopoeia and remember to keep StudyOkeing!
While the bulk of YMO's music is instrumental (and thus not karaoke-friendly) their discography is a valuable listen. Their first album (Yellow Magic Orchestra) was released in 1978, but you may be surprised at how fresh it sounds. Solid State Survivor is a true masterpiece of electronica that easily earned its No. 1 chart rank. Today's song, Kimi ni Mune Kyun comes from Naughty Boys, YMO's final No.1 album.
Today's Topic: Onomatopoeia
Back when your humble author was a strapping young hellion, I had a conversation with my dear mother about fisting.
Not the activity of fisting (thank God) but about the slang term, and how it did not mean "punching." As a substitute teacher, she heard her students use slang words and would ask me what they meant, being blissfully unaware of their horrible meanings.
At any rate, once I had explained fisting (with much more delicacy that it is performed, let me assure you) I cautioned her to also watch out for the word "onomatopoeia."
"Why?" she asked. "What does it mean?"
"I really can't tell you. It's so embarrassing - just imagine the most horrible, disgusting act imaginable. It's even worse than fisting, just so gross."
My mother seemed surprised, since "onomatopoeia" actually means sound words, that is to say, words that are the sounds that they mean. For example, the word "bark," as in a dog's bark, sort of sounds like a dog barking. Not exactly, but you can tell that the word came from the sound. Same goes for a cat's meow, a crow's caw, and an earth-shattering ka-boom. These are all onomatopoeia.
Onomatopoeia words are a big deal in Japanese, and not just animal sounds. Some of them get weirdly esoteric from an English point of view. Today's song has one right in the title: kyun.
One of my favorite definitions of kyun is "momentary tightening of one's chest caused by powerful feelings," because it's just so ridiculously specific. This is the sort of onomatopoeia we're talking about in Japanese. Just that moment when your chest tightens due to strong emotions. How the heck do you translate that literally? "To you, heart momentary tightening of one's chest caused by powerful feelings?"
These sort of words in Japanese are usually called "onomatopoeia," but you may find it more useful to think of them as sound effects. Many of them sound nothing like their meanings (your heart doesn't go 'kyun!' when you see a sexy person).
You can think of it more like a sound effect that plays in a movie like the "wha wha whaaaaa" when someone does something stupid or the "dun dun dun" of a dramatic scene. These sounds have nothing inherently to do with those situations, but we still associate them anyway.
PS. Japanese also has more traditional onomatopoeia. The dog says wan, the cat says nyaa, the explosion says, dodoun.
PPS. Some dictionaries may not list kyun as an onomatopoeia - that's because it doesn't fit in our English definition of onomatopoeia. In Japanese, however, it is classified as a 擬音語 (giongo, 'sound-like word'), which carries the same meaning as "onomatopoeia."
PPPS. "Onomatopoeia" isn't actually a dirty word for some unspeakable sex act. And boy, was my mother mad when she figured that out.
That's all for today, but remember to keep an eye out for onomatopoeia and remember to keep StudyOkeing!
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