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The headbangers' glossary
I've wailed often enough about the Japanese tendency to call people ketchi and what a pain it is for a NAmerican to translate, when all notion of miserliness as a character trait has passed out of the culture. I'm not sure when that happened- post-war is my guess- or why, though I'm coming to a vague notion that in societies where few people are very rich, like Edo Japan and 19th century Britain or America, the notion of hoarding and not sharing and being ungenerous in general is not only more widespread, it's more in the forefront of people's consciousness. It's one of those vices that weakens the social net people depend on. Reach a certain level of affluence and it becomes less of an implied social crime. Misers existed and were condemned in the 1860s and had all disappeared a hundred years later, when the meaning of 'mean' had gone from 'skinflint' to 'unkind.' Misers existed- I think Howard Hughes was probably one- but it wasn't a character trait by then, it was a pathology, and no one was much interested in it. Japan took longer to reach that affluence and was always more of a mutual-dependence society, is possibly why the miser sense of ketchi hung on longer.
The current use of ketchi in fact takes in both senses of mean- niggardly and unkind, one who withholds out of malice or ungenerosity: but it bugs me that most people reading it will only take it in one sense. I could rant here about the flattening effect of American English, but I won't.
But I *will* rant about 'greedy', which is currently driving me bats as well. The sense of 'greedy' has gone beyond 'gluttonous' in current English, and that's fine. Greed for money or power or whatever is more serious than simple greed for food. My translator's problem is that gluttonous itself has passed out of colloquial usage. This matters when you're dealing with Asian characters for whom gluttonousness is a) a defining characteristic b) sort of condemned and c) humourous. The guy who eats a lot in NAmerica isn't called gluttonous. The opprobrious word is fat: which causes problems when the guy isn't. Gokuu, Luffy, that kid in Kou Josei: they're hungry all the time, and they overeat, but that's OK- linguistically at least- because they aren't fat.
So what's the word that conveys condemnation of the thin guy who lives for food? 'Piggy' exists, but I hear it as a kid's word; it's also a problem if the character's name already is 'Piggy.' ^_^ When gluttonous is one characteristic being condemned among a list of others- he's lazy, he's selfish, he eats too much and he sponges on other people (that last is another crux) what's the adjective that fits in that list?
Some days I hate being a NAmerican English speaker. Language here has as little flavour as the food. I think I'll move to Scotland where I can rejoice in a vocabulary of abuse that derives from Middle English. (Or Newfoundland, which is closer to home.)
The current use of ketchi in fact takes in both senses of mean- niggardly and unkind, one who withholds out of malice or ungenerosity: but it bugs me that most people reading it will only take it in one sense. I could rant here about the flattening effect of American English, but I won't.
But I *will* rant about 'greedy', which is currently driving me bats as well. The sense of 'greedy' has gone beyond 'gluttonous' in current English, and that's fine. Greed for money or power or whatever is more serious than simple greed for food. My translator's problem is that gluttonous itself has passed out of colloquial usage. This matters when you're dealing with Asian characters for whom gluttonousness is a) a defining characteristic b) sort of condemned and c) humourous. The guy who eats a lot in NAmerica isn't called gluttonous. The opprobrious word is fat: which causes problems when the guy isn't. Gokuu, Luffy, that kid in Kou Josei: they're hungry all the time, and they overeat, but that's OK- linguistically at least- because they aren't fat.
So what's the word that conveys condemnation of the thin guy who lives for food? 'Piggy' exists, but I hear it as a kid's word; it's also a problem if the character's name already is 'Piggy.' ^_^ When gluttonous is one characteristic being condemned among a list of others- he's lazy, he's selfish, he eats too much and he sponges on other people (that last is another crux) what's the adjective that fits in that list?
Some days I hate being a NAmerican English speaker. Language here has as little flavour as the food. I think I'll move to Scotland where I can rejoice in a vocabulary of abuse that derives from Middle English. (Or Newfoundland, which is closer to home.)
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My issue with pig is that it is value laden and addresses the issue from the speakers point of view. As in 'she's a pig! she ate the last orange and *I* wanted it!' rather than gluttony, which I've always thought speaker independent (though perhaps not value independent).
So: he's lazy, he's selfish, he's a pig and a leech
Thank goodness he's not emo and a whiner as well! Although one can chalk up the way he eats to his stroke, or the mismatch between body and mind, table manners wise, he's a slob as well.
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However if we add ravenous appetite to eating messily in one's haste to cram food in one's mouth, we have an aesthetically displeasing sight that one condemns not from personal outrage but because it is indeed ugly. To make matters worse the French word goinfre expresses just that pig at a trough connotation, but there's no English word to equate to goinfre. (Once upon a time there was 'greedyguts', but that's gone too.)
Ritsu's terms for Aoarashi in fact aren't 'greedy' ones by and large; they're far more difficult things that IIRC mostly turn into 'demon that guzzles.'
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speed demon, for example
I don't mind priggishness in small children, that verbalizing is part of how they learn right from wrong. The other is blatant selfishness or sometimes disappointment, but still selfishness.
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We may of course be talking different aged kids. Still, you see this happening in fandom a lot among 'adults' hahaha. If I don't like slash I condemn it for moral reasons like 'it trivializes the lives of a traditionally oppressed group of people.'
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Among fandom, it's a completely different thing. None of them are in the age range I'm thinking of.
PT reports that when people act like slovenly gluttons amongst her friends, everyone else get very formal and polite in their language, until someone says "LOL" at which point the entire group cracks up and the behavior stops. She's abnormal, as I've said before. Her friends are abnormal, too, as I'll observe now.
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I suppose people usually say "that pig" or "he's such a pig" (assuming you're talking about Aoarashi). Although I personally have no problems with just saying "gluttonous" outright.
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As for the thin guy who's always eating, hm. I know that I might call someone who was stuffing themselves like that a "greedy hog", but that requires the situation to be aware that I'm referring to action and not physical shape.
As for "sponges on other people" -- layabout? No, that's not quite right. Drat the English language.
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Leeches?
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My kids in the Nursery school would call an over-eater a *pig* whether the person was thin or over weight. As for a stingy person, they would call them selfish.
It's funny, when I think of greedy I don't not link it to gluttony, I think automatically of hoarding money, or someone who doesn't share even though they have more than they themselves need.
An insatiable appetite might be a good substitute for gluttony, though my concept of gluttony is one of someone constantly over indulging in things, be it food or alcohol or drugs, that are detrimental to your health. Think of all the rich people in the 1800's that had gout that was blamed on their gluttony
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Yes, the problem with greedy is that it's far wider than gluttonous, but other cultures' glutton words get dictionaried as greedy: because we don't have stock glutton words any more.
Probably it's my Catholic upbringing that zones gluttony onto food. Drink was included in it as well but ahem the Irish version of Catholicism current in my youth forgot to stress that bit: and my personal Catholicism was French, so... Excess is always detrimental to health, of course, so any overindulgence is gluttony by your definition. But again, now we see truly insatiable eating as a pathology, not a moral condition. (Lack of willpower is a moral condition in NAmerica: as well as ain fact, a cardinal sin; but compulsive behaviour is a disorder and is thus forgiven.)
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(I mean yes, quite probably, but aren't you more likely than I to know what it is?)