「日刊四字」へようこそ!

Now Featuring 1級 Grammar, Everyday Japanese That You Won't Find in the Book, and Language and Cultural Trivia!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Torture, Murder, and The Legal System

I really like テレビドラマ。

I've spent way too much of my life watching shows like The Shield, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Justified, Boardwalk Empire, and Dexter.

You might notice a common thread: they're all about cops and criminals.



Recently, I've been rewatching Dexter because my wife has gotten into it. I'm currently caught all the way up through season 5. Yuri's just finished season 3. Yuri's conversational English is great, but there's an awful lot of Dexter that has to be explained. I'm sure it would be the same if I was watching this kind of show in Japanese: most people just don't come across vocab related to homicide investigations and crime during their day-to-day.

So today, I'll share with you a helpful list of vocabulary to help get you through a crime drama, a detective novel, and the occasional story on the nightly news. In making the list, I was surprised at how many of these words I can actually remember not being able to come up with in conversation... I'll mark those ones with * so you can wonder why the hell I'd need to know those words so badly.

Here we go:

Criminal

犯人 (はんにん);犯罪者(はんざいしゃ)

An incident of murder

殺人事件(さつじんじけん)



A crime scene
    
(事件の)現場 ((じけんの)げんば)

Murderer
       
殺人 (さつじん)

Serial Killer
      
連続殺人犯 (れんぞくさつじんはん)

Serial Killings

連続殺人 (れんぞくさつじん)

*Victim

被害者 (ひがいしゃ)
*Evidence/Proof
 
証拠 (しょうこ)

Witness
        
目撃者 (もくげきしゃ)

Motive
         
動機 (どうき)

Alibi
        
アリバイ

Informant
  
通報者 (つうほうしゃ)

A rat
  
密告者 (みっこくしゃ)

Investigate
 
取り調べる (とりしらべる)

*Interrogate/Cross-Examine
   
尋問する (じんもんする)

****Torture
  
拷問  (ごうもん)

To torture someone

人を拷問にかける (ひとをごうもんにかける)



*Trial
    
裁判  (さいばん)

Prosecutor
     
検察官;検事  (けんさつかん;けんじ)

Defense (Attorney)
 
被告側(弁護士) (ひこくがわ(べんごし))

Jury

陪審   (ばいしん)

**Guilty Verdict

有罪判決   (ゆうざいはんけつ)

Innocent
 
無罪;潔白  (むざい;けっぱく)

Illegal Drugs
        
禁止薬物;麻薬  (きんしやくぶつ;まやく)

Stimulants

覚せい剤 (かくせいざい)

5 comments:

Blue Shoe said...

Nice post. Think you have a typo for the reading of 殺人事件.

I recently had a look at that popular manga 名探偵コナン and it seemed entertaining. I think I may check it out some more at one of my school libraries, so this vocab list could come in handy.

Do you know of any good Japanese detective/cop shows?

Bobby Judo said...

Good looking out. Typo fixed.

I know there are a couple of shows modeled after CSI, Law & Order, and I saw one the other day that looked like it was based on that show Numbers... but I really don't care for Japanese dramas.

Blue Shoe said...

Yeah, neither do I, but they're better for Japanese study than watching American dramas.

Unknown said...

Nice post indeed! You can never have too many topic-based vocab lists. I could do with loads more of these, f'sho.

Tori-kun said...

Hey Bobby,

not related to this topic especially, but I came across your blog and as far as I know you are in a relationship with a Japanese. So am I. I wanted to ask you what kind of things I have to be aware of, or rather, what's important for me as a Japanese learner using this 'ressource', a native speaker around me? I must say I'm quite afraid of speaking..
Please also have a look at my blog!
I envy you. My deepest respect,

Tori-senpai, stay all healthy over there.

http://tanukijapanese.wordpress.com