The Text:
Characters: Kinpira, Random Kid 1
K: ポロ～～～～ン！ポロ～～～～ン！
(poro~~~n! poro~~~n!)
K: ひとりでにピアノが…
(hitori de ni piano ga…)
K: ポロ～～～～ン！ポロ～～～～ン！
(poro~~~n! poro~~~n!)
RK1: 近くで人間の死骸が発見されたりしてて…
(chikaku de ningen no shigai ga hakken sare tari shi tete…)
RK1: 森で迷ったヤツのモノらしいけど
(mori de mayotta yatsu no mono rashii kedo)
RK1: ソイツの亡霊が夜な夜な現れてピアノを弾くんじゃないか…って噂なんだ！
(soitsu no bourei ga yonayona arawarete piano wo hikun janaika…tte uwasa nanda!)
My translation:
K: Poron! Poron!
K: All by itself, the piano goes
K: Poron! Poron!
RK1: A person’s corpse was discovered nearby
RK1: It seems like he was lost in the forest
RK1: Doesn’t that guy’s ghost appear every night to play the piano? …that’s what I heard.
Thoughts and shenanigans
人間(ningen) is the first time in this book we’ve seen the definitions deviate. In Japanese, 人間 means human being (in this context). In Chinese, 人間(ren2jian1) means “the human world”, as in the mortal realms. Breaking it down, we get 人 – person and 間 – space1. It seems what has happened in Japanese is that this started out as a Buddhist phrase: 人間界(ningenkai), meaning the human world in Buddhist cosmology. Perhaps, since 界 already means “world”, 人間 was taken to mean “human”.
発見(hakken), meaning discover, and 現(arawan), meaning to appear, are linked in my mind because in Chinese, to discover is 發現2(fa1xian4), whereas 見(jian4) means “to see”. 見 has a pretty great (creepy) glyph origin, as a person 儿 with an eye 目 for a head.
弾く(hiku) means to play the piano. But you can’t 弾く a trumpet, because at its foundation, 弾 means to bounce. In Chinese, 弾(tan2) also means to flick or to be elastic. You can 弾 guitar or xylophone, but you have to 吹(jap: fu, chi: chui1) blow a flute or trumpet, and 叩(jap: ta)/打(chi: da3) hit drums.3
ヤツ(yatsu) and ソイツ(soitsu) are both informal (and probably rude, the speaker is a 8-year old boy after all) ways to refer to a person. Google and Jisho translates them into “that guy”. Today I learned that katakana can also be used to communicate an informal tone, even if the words are native Japanese.
Other kanji
近 (jap: chikai, chi: jin4) means nearby.
死骸 (jap: shigai, chi: si3hai2) means corpse. 死 means “dead” and 骸 means “bones”. In Chinese, both characters are still used with the same meanings, but the phrase is very uncommon now. A more common use phrase is 屍體(shi1ti3).
迷 (jap: mayo, chi: mi2) means lost.
亡霊 (jap: bourei, chi: wang2ling2) means ghost/spirit. This is also still used in Chinese, but uncommon.
噂 (jap: uwasa, chi: zun3) means “gossip” in Japanese and “to talk together” in Chinese. I have never seen this character in Chinese before, so TIL.
References:
Jisho is Japanese dictionary I am using here.
MDBG is my all-time favorite Chinese dictionary.
Wiktionary is where all my etymology info is coming from.
An English translation of Piano no Mori can be found here, and I use this to check my work.
This IPA Chart helps me guess what words sounded like historically
1 間 depicts the sun 日 peeking through the space between two doors 門. There isn’t a direct translation of the Chinese concept of 間 into English. It’s kind of like “the space between or within.” Thus you can have 房間(fang2jian1 – room = space in house), 時间(shi2jian1 – (interval) time = space in (cosmic) time), or 空間(kong1jian1 – leeway = empty space (in which you can be flexible)). 人間(ren2jian1) thus means “the space that humans occupy”, and assumes there must be other spaces too, perhaps occupied by other beings. ↩
2 発(jap: ha) is a simplified form of 發(chi: fa1) ↩
3 You can use 弾く for “to play violin” in Japanese, but in Chinese, you have to 拉(la1) pull a violin.↩
Etymology Adventures 