笑止千万

しょうし　せんばん
shoushi senban

As promised, today's yoji came up yesterday during my research of 「ちゃんちゃらおかしい.」

Definition:
この上もなくばかばかしくて吹き出したくなる様子。
Translation:
1. Exceedingly absurd.
2. Nothing could be more ridiculous.

Important to note the inclusion of 吹き出す, which in this instance means "to burst into laughter," which takes the connotation away from the realm of あほ臭い, and into the realm of knee-slapping funny.

I like to think of this one in relation to 破顔一笑, in that they both talk about uncontrollable displays of amusement or pleasure.

例文：外国人が日本について思っている一部分のイメージは笑止千万です。その人たちに「ジャパンカルチャラブ」というビデオシーリーズは役に立つと思います。
Some of the ideas that foreigners have about Japan can be laughable. In those case, the "Japan Culture Lab" series of videos can be a real help.

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

Did you know how funny Japanese tea was? Neither did I, until someone called me お茶目. Never content to let a potentially interesting origin story go unexplored, I did some internet research and discovered that "tea" is hilarious!

First, you should know that 茶 by itself, can be defined as "mockery," and you should know that in all likelihood, it's 当て字。Many of the kanji in the words we're about to look at are listed as 当て字 on various internet sources.

お茶目
おちゃめ
ochame

playfulness; mischievousness

The 茶 here means おどける.






茶番
ちゃばん
chaban

farce




茶々
ちゃちゃ

disruption






茶々を入れる
ちゃちゃ　を　いれる
chacha wo ireru

to tease; make fun of







茶利
ちゃり
chari

the name for funny, farcical, humorous scenes in old Kabuki or bunraku dramas; archaic, but important for us because, according to some theories, it spawned ちゃら.






ちゃら
chara

nonsense; bullshit; random speech.

I don't know if ちゃら is ever used by itself, but it lends its meaning to all of the following compounds.



ちゃらほら
charahora

speaking senseless lies.

「ほら」 is a common attention getting utterance, that I always thought just meant "Look!" Along the same attention-related lines though, there's 法螺: which means boasting or bragging, which is where ちゃらほら pulls in the meaning of 嘘. Or it could just be, 「ほら！You're lying!」　But ちゃらほら is thought to be the precursor of the next word, ちゃらんぽらん。



ちゃらんぽらん
charanporan

off-hand, off-the-cuff, devil-may-care speech

There's an お笑いコンビ that goes by the name ザ・ちゃらんぽらん. You can see some of their stuff on YouTube, but they don't seem particularly funny to me.



ちゃらける
charakeru

irresponsible talk.

This gets used with an honorific, as either 「おちゃらける」 or 「おちゃらけ.」







べんちゃら
benchara

flattery

Again, use with the honorific 「お.」









ちゃらちゃら
charachara

Extremely hard to define, but it covers ideas of "messing around," "showing off," "lavishing someone with flattery," "the appearance of cheap flashy clothing," and "flippant behavior." I find all of these kinds of 擬音 words hard to use (I've had some DISASTERS, putting ぎりぎり into practice), but if you want to use it, it goes along with する。

ちゃんちゃら
chanchara

Probably the most commonly used of these phrases, judging by the number of internet posts devoted to it, 「ちゃんちゃら」 goes with 「おかしい」 like 'q' goes with 'u.' There are two definitions of something that's ちゃんちゃらおかしい:

1. So ridiculously funny that you can't help but to burst out laughing. Here's the Japanese definition , in case my translation is bad: 身のほど知らずで、噴き出したくなるほどおかしい.まったく滑稽だ.
2. A boast that is so brazenly untrue that it's strange/ridiculous: 身のほども知らない大言壮語を吐いておかしい.

You guys got a bonus 四字熟語 in that last definition there, and I found another one in my researches today that I'll post for you tomorrow. See you then.

Here are some of the links I used to write this post:
1
2
3

Jokes That Japanese People Might Not Get:

With all of the effort you put into reading and trying to use our 四字熟語, imaginary readership, you might find yourself tempted to try and make jokes using them, or out of them. My advice is this: Don't.

Now that I'm back in Japan but not yet regularly employed, one of the things that I've been doing to make ends meet is working at a local bakery. I've actually been able to use a number of yo-jis in the course of conversation there:

切磋琢磨: (re: learning Japanese so I can shove it in Brett's face)
孤軍奮闘: (re: the boss's joke that I would have to come in to work tomorrow, even though the rest of the company has a day off)
画竜点睛: (re: the chocolate cream breads that someone (me) tried to put out for display before the chocolate cream was in them)

But today, when we were making these cow face cream pastries (モウモウクリーム), and I noticed that the chocolate ear spot had fallen off of one, the head bakery dude (パン長?) said 「いいよ。色々な牛がいるから、」and I replied 「そうですね。十牛十色,」　I may have taken things too far.

FAIL.

If you want to joke with your 四字熟語, there are a couple of things you want to make sure of first.

One is that the target of the joke knows you well enough to figure out that you are in fact, making a joke, and not just retarded. I've mentioned before the frustration of the non-native speaker in Japan. If you say something that doesn't match up to their imagined responses, Japanese people around you are more likely to assume that you made a mistake than to try to figure out if what you said has another meaning.

The second thing is that your yoji-juku-joke is an established one. Your best bet is to go with one of the common jokes that we've mentioned before in the comments, but would be good to include in a real post.

There's 焼肉定食, infamous for being the answer most Japanese students provide when given the following problem: Complete this 四字熟語：＿肉＿食.

And then there's 鹿素麺, which is a mangling of 四面楚歌.

Do you know of any other humor-fied yoji out there?

喜怒哀楽

きど あいらく
kido airaku

Today's yo-ji is a great one for kanji learners, because the kanji it uses cover a broad range of commonly used words. So we can get through to the yo-ji quickly, I'll refrain from writing out the readings and definitions of the words below. Rikai-chan provides the answers faster than I can, anyhow.

喜：　喜び、喜ぶ、　喜悦、　喜劇
怒：　怒る、　怒られる、　怒り、　怒らす、　怒気、　怒鳴る、　怒髪天
哀：　哀しむ*、　哀れむ、　哀れ、　哀情(not to be confused with 愛情)
楽：　楽しむ、　楽しい、　楽、　気楽、　楽ちん、　音楽、

*This is an outdated way of writing 悲しむ ( or 悲しい and other related words). Just included these readings for the sake of the yo-ji definition.

Definition:
喜び・怒り・哀しみ・楽しみなど人間の持っている様々な感情。
Translation:
1. The full range of human emotion
2. Joy, rage, pathos, humor

Using　喜怒哀楽 is pretty easy. You can use it as a noun, with the addition of any particle you want, but the fortunate positioning of 楽 at the end makes it easy for people to use it commonly as an adjective by tacking on ～な.

In terms of applications, you're free to use it anyway you think you can make it work, but I've found two regularly occurring instances that I can share with you:

1.　喜怒哀楽　(な or の) + (time, like　「日々、」　「瞬間、」　or 「毎日」：
This usage speaks to the human condition, the emotional ups and downs of daily life.

If you've ever heard a school related speech in Japan, you know how much emphasis gets placed on the the idea that there will be/have been "tears and laughs, and hard times, and challenges, and happy memories, and fun, and upsetting moments, etc, etc." Japanese students are inundated with the idea that the entire spectrum of feeling is a valuable part of life.

Though this particular phrasing gets used by a lot of people in writing or blogging, you can also use it when you've recently had a particularly turbulent ride on the rollercoaster of life. Have you, say, won the lottery, been dumped, finally finished that novel you were working on, and found out that your favorite steampunk necklace was radioactive in the last week? それは喜怒哀楽な一週間です。

2. 喜怒哀楽が激しすぎる
It can be used to talk about people who are over-emotional.

The construction above is only one way to do this, and I THINK (native speaker check, maybe?) that you could probably accomplish the same feat by reffering to a person as a 喜怒哀楽な人, or by merely saying 「あの人はちょっと。。。喜怒哀楽が。。。」 Gotta love the contextuality of Japanese. It's the other person's responsibility to understand what you're trying to say, even if you don't express it completely. Or at all.

例文：　ぼくの彼女は喜怒哀楽が激しいので、かなり気遣いますよ。怒られたかと思うと、ラブラブに戻ります。逆もあります。
My girlfriend's emotions change so fast that it's pretty trying. One second she's mad at me, the next it's back to lovey-dovey. It happens the other way around too...