I think that today's trivia paints a really funny picture in a way that our English equivalents don't quite capture.箱入り娘
はこ いり むすめ
hako iri musume
はこ いり むすめ
hako iri musume
My girlfriend is an only-daughter (she has three brothers), and in a culture that's big on filial obligation, especially on the part of women, you can imagine how 大事 her family considers her.
This term is used a lot for only-daughters, and where we might translate it as "daddy's little princess," or merely "over-protected" or "sheltered" it literally means "the daughter who gets put in a box."
You can use this in a friendly manner to tease a girl who's an only child, or if you are "daddy's little girl," you can refer to yourself as such. I'm gonna try it out next time I hang out with my girlfriend's family, because whenever I see them we always end up having a long 感動する conversation about how great and special she is.
Side note: I wonder if you can mix-and-match this phrase with 玉手箱 (たまてばこ; tamatebako) or 宝箱 (たからばこ;takarabako), which both mean, treasured box or treasure chest? A 宝物 (treasured item) goes in a 宝箱, so would a 宝箱入り娘 make sense? I'd worry about the fact that 玉手箱 has other connotations. Pandora's box is called a 玉手箱, as is the box that contains Urashima Taro's lost years... This one might be better confined to the pages of Jokes that Japanese People Might Not Get.
This term is used a lot for only-daughters, and where we might translate it as "daddy's little princess," or merely "over-protected" or "sheltered" it literally means "the daughter who gets put in a box."
You can use this in a friendly manner to tease a girl who's an only child, or if you are "daddy's little girl," you can refer to yourself as such. I'm gonna try it out next time I hang out with my girlfriend's family, because whenever I see them we always end up having a long 感動する conversation about how great and special she is.
Side note: I wonder if you can mix-and-match this phrase with 玉手箱 (たまてばこ; tamatebako) or 宝箱 (たからばこ;takarabako), which both mean, treasured box or treasure chest? A 宝物 (treasured item) goes in a 宝箱, so would a 宝箱入り娘 make sense? I'd worry about the fact that 玉手箱 has other connotations. Pandora's box is called a 玉手箱, as is the box that contains Urashima Taro's lost years... This one might be better confined to the pages of Jokes that Japanese People Might Not Get.
3 comments:
And these are boxes that you're going to want to be sure to mark 天下無用...
***天地無用
Unless you want the contents to have no use whatsoever in the whole wide world.
In which case you'd be better off marking them simply as ニラヴ. But then you'd have the problem of Japanese people not knowing how to pronounce the ヴ.
Nice catch.... my bad.
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