2005-06-19

ONO Mayumi: about to crack

"Someone who says ['[I] love all of you', a line in her new single] to me? No, there's no-one like that. Anyway, even if someone says that to you at first, they stop saying it before long, right?" Aww!

In Japanese, the 'I love* all of you' part in that sentence is 君を丸ごと好き, which is interesting because in "proper" Japanese, that を is incorrect. In real Japanese, however, my experience has been that people prefer the "correct" が in sentences like that but young people, at least, will readily switch to を if they want to be really clear about who loves who.

(Actually, if you go and listen to the sample at her webpage, it sounds more like at least in the first chorus she sings 君も丸ごと好き[だから], which is prescriptively OK -- I wonder if a later chorus has a variant on the line, or if the newspaper reporters just mangled it because they wanted to prod her as directly as possible about her relationship status. ('"Me, get married, you say? I hadn't heard anything about that," she smiled bitterly, brushing the question aside.'))

The greatest thing about her new single is that the title is 『アイノチカラ』, "The Power of Love". I hope Ono adequately addresses love's power to change one's heart to a little white dove. I have a feeling she may.

In a fantastic coincidence, UETO Aya just released a new single called 『夢のチカラ』, "The Power of Dreams". It's like they have really gentle and mellow beef with each other. If I was a TV producer I'd so get them both on my show and have them argue about which was more powerful, love or dreams.

* Warning: may just mean "like". May fall somewhere between and mean "like like". Demand confirmation in an impartial third language if unsure.

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roy:

In Japanese, the 'I love* all of you' part in that sentence is 君を丸ごと好き, which is interesting because in "proper" Japanese, that を is incorrect. In real Japanese, however, my experience has been that people prefer the "correct" が in sentences like that but young people, at least, will readily switch to を if they want to be really clear about who loves who.

...

I've seen that, and I think it's neat. And unnerving.


Emily:

That's hilarious--the "really gentle and mellow beef."

I've actually had my が好き corrected to を好き by a native speaker and linguistics professor, which confused me at the time because it had been drilled into me that it's never を好き, but it was a very ambiguous sentence.

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