Here, Piggy Piggy Piggy...

Japanese Lesson #8:

1) Iruka: Dolphin

I always wonder why the Japanese sometime use katakana for animals when they have proper kanji to begin with. For example:

Cat‡ Neko‡ネコ‡ 猫
Dog‡ Inu‡ イヌ‡ 犬

The same thing goes for the word dolphin, which I provided above:

Dolphin‡ Iruka‡ イルカ‡ 海豚

My Japanese grammar teacher is rather eccentric, and likes to make fun of everything, including us. So if we have trouble understanding the grammar, she makes examples and draws us on the board. However, it does keep us on our toes, and from falling asleep. Everyone knows she is one of the best teachers in the department. Today, when explaining what a dolphin was to a Chinese student, she drew a pig with fins on the board.

“Sea pig!”

Everyone else knew what a dolphin was, but to hear it described as a “sea pig” was quite hilarious. Everyone burst out laughing – a pig for a dolphin? When I typed in the word for “pig” (“buta”) it was right, the same character popped up. The first character is for sea, so a dolphin is literally a sea pig. Given the fact that the Japanese borrowed a lot of words from the Chinese, we have to ask Chinese people or speakers why a dolphin is a pig in the sea.

The question of pigs is rather appropriate these days – 2007 will be the year of the boar. Pigs are very popular now. Cute pigs are even better.

On a wry note, I also noticed that if you pronounce the word for pig in Japanese with the wrong accent and add “na,” it becomes a bad Greek word.

Here, piggy piggy piggy...here piggy!